It is no surprise that I am not a fan of monotheists in general and christians most specifically. I have often said that I feel christians who claim to be progressive are complicit with those who are not progressive when they do not stand up to the hatemongers. I am happy to report that a group of christians finally stood up to the westboro baptist hate mongers in Buffalo, New York of all places.
Living in California for over twenty years has had it's high points and it's low points like anything in life. Of the greatest disappointments, AB 101, the knight initiative, and prop 8 have been the toughest to suffer through. These setbacks have had republican christians at their core. It might not seem like much to those who are not of the GLBQTI community, but for those in the community, it is hard to see your fellow citizens vote against your existence and get away with it.
When Flight 3407 went down, Alison Des Forges was on board and perished with the rest of the people on the plane. The whacked out westboro baptist church, led by fred phelps and based out of topeka, kansas,
http://en.wikipedia.org/...
decided to bring their "god hates fags" campaign to her funeral. Similar to the Matthew Shepard funeral, a group of 150 counter-protesters showed up wearing angel wings big enough to block out the hatemongers. The counter-protest was organized by University of Buffalo students, a secular SUNY campus. However, several of the protesters were affiliated with christians.
http://www.buffalo.edu/
Christians who stand up to hatemongering christians and say, "Enough!" are the kind of people that I can and do respect. Unfortunately, there just aren't enough of them. I don't know if christians are afraid of creating more schisms in their community than there already are over the GLBQTI issue, but they usually cower and say something like, "not all christians are like that" without doing anything to prove that statement. Hopefully many more christians will take up the mantle and start standing up to the haters. I mean come on, if people in Buffalo are willing to come out of their houses in February and stand up to hate, then the rest of you have no excuse not to do the same.
http://www.buffalonews.com/...