I read this today in the Milwaukee paper...
West Bend - Police Capt. Toby Netko looks pretty good for a guy who has just been sentenced to the hellfires of eternal damnation.
"They already damned me to hell," noted Netko, in what is really just an aside.
He is standing in a parking lot just west of Main St. while eight people who normally inhabit what must be a very unique corner of Kansas picket a military funeral taking place at St. Frances Cabrini here.
"I told them not to scream at the cars."
Now, for the most part, the itinerant members of Topeka's notorious Westboro Baptist Church are singing at them - albeit quite loudly.
Sara Phelps, a 25-year-old woman who holds two signs, one in each arm, unquestionably has the loudest voice.
One of her signs says, "Thank God for Dead Soldiers."
The other reads, "Semper Fi Semper Fags."
Behind her, at the corner of Hawthorne and Main, is a local business, the Lynear Hearing Aid Center, and what is coming out of her mouth makes you think your ears are among the ones not working quite right.
One of the politest utterances is belted out to the tune of John Denver's "Take Me Home, Country Roads."
Only instead of singing, "West Virginia, mountain momma . . ." Phelps sings this:
" 'Brokeback Mountain,' made God angry . . . soldiers died and went to hell."
The family of the particular soldier who died, a hero by the name of Kevin M. Kryst, can't possibly hear them.
St. Frances is up on a hill about two blocks away behind both a couple of squads and a phalanx of American flags being held by about 50 members of the Patriot Guard Riders, a group of bikers mostly who don't appreciate the message the picketers have brought to countless similar funerals across the country.
Two of the eight Westboro members have ventured up closer, but even they are basically just standing on a sidewalk abutting a vacant field and disgorging themselves into the darkness.
One of those two is carrying a sign that insists, "America is Doomed," and there is also some sort of babble emanating from them about somebody being "the first to eat a baby."
Nobody is listening or paying attention but for two young men some ways away on the other side of the street, and they look like they have no idea what to make of it.
What they are seeing resembles some sort of amateur rendition of "Saturday Night Live" at the Hate Group.
Brode Powers, a 40-year-old delivery guy sitting in his truck down by Main St., says the obvious: These "goofballs" are disrespectful and, "I never thought I would see them in West Bend."
Westboro members say God is striking down soldiers for defending a nation that tolerates homosexuality. But the connection between homophobia and a Marine funeral is too nonsensical to really register with any rational person. Similarly, the protesters have no more connection to the selfless man being mourned than they do to an American president - not that it will stop them.
They have promised, according to their Web site, to be at the National Cathedral by Monday to begin protests against Gerald Ford.
Back in West Bend on Friday evening, the hateful little protest they staged did eventually attract a small coterie of counterprotesters, teenagers unaware of what older folks passing by in cars and people like Netko, cops and soldiers, most certainly know.
Part of American life is the incessant blathering of the fringe. It is a good rule of thumb that the people who shout the loudest say the least while those who are silent now, off in the distance on the hill, make the real statements.
Now it seems that the same people that use the freedom of speech that the soldier paid for, are using it to try to degrade his life...i DON'T THINK IT IS WORKING, KIDS... It makes me want to stand up for the soldiers more . This is not the first time they have attended a funeral of a Wisconsin soldier being laid to rest. Let me know what you think about this ...
