Protesters affiliated with the loathesome Fred Phelps plan to be in my town Saturday to picket the funeral of a local Iraq vet who left behind a pregnant widow at 19:
PICKET PLANNED FOR LOCAL FUNERAL: The "God Hates Fags" group - that actively opposes gay rights with pickets and demonstrations - is coming
to Bakersfield to protest a soldier's funeral. In a flier - the group says that Army Private Ramon A. Villatoro was killed in Iraq by the
same type of bomb that was used against their church. The flier argues that God is killing Americans in retaliation - "They turned America
Over to fags - They're coming home in body bags."
I guess this isn't all that unusual for this vile gang. A Google search turned out numerous stories about such pickets.
I'll keep you posted as to local reaction, as this (Bakersfield, California) is quite a red area of the state, quite homophobic and pro-Bush. Will be interesting to see if the freepers' heads explode. I passed the news along to a local GLBT group I belong to but urged them not to counterprotest out of respect to the soldier and his family. The soldier's father has been quite outspoken about a "war for oil" rather than against terror, and is trying to keep his younger son from enlisting.
(BTW, tried to post this yesterday and didn't see it show up. I apologize if I screwed up and it posted twice.)