Posted by
Tim Busovsky on Saturday, April 21, 2007 2:02:34 PM
I have known about your organization for a few years,
mainly after 9-11. Instead of mourning the loss of innocent life, you
praised and thanked God for 9-11. I heard about you again after the wars
with Afghanistan and Iraq began. Instead of being thankful for all the
men and women who put their lives on the line, and often lost them, you chose
to thank God for dead soldiers. Why is that? Why would you,
apparent Christians, be thanking God for loss of human life as a result of war,
natural disasters, and disease? Why do you thank God for AIDs, Hurricane
Katrina, and mine accidents? What goals do you wish to achieve?
The Westboro Baptist Church (WBC)
has a relatively large following of anywhere between 80 and 150 members and is
headed by Fred Phelps. The primary goal of the church is basically to
preach what they believe is the true version of the Bible. Though they
are not considered direct followers, they quote and advocate the King James
Bible. The basic summation of anything I've ever heard from their
followers in interviews or have read off of their website is that homosexuality
in all forms causes the fall of man. According to the WBC, all of the
great governments that have ever existed fell because of the tolerance,
acceptance, and practice of homosexuality, bisexuality, and bestiality.
This is the primary basis for their teachings, as their public activism
generally steers clear of preaching about any other topics that the bible
covers.
I cannot debate the finer points of the
Bible with anyone, as the versions that I always studied in years past have
been watered down, spoon-fed, and mother-approved. I don't think I ever
really received the full, unabridged versions of the Bible before reaching out
and discovering them on my own. What I can debate and what arguments I
can present against the Westboro Baptist Church lie in my own view of ethics.
The church's view of the United States is that it fosters those sinners whom God sees as an
abomination and therefore, unfit for heaven. These people, casually and
affectionately referred to as "fags" and "sodomites",
are bringing the wrath of God's destruction upon Americans for not obeying
God's law, namely not rooting out a suffocating homosexuality. Their line
of logic continues to state that God has been punishing American's for this
apparently hellish act through war, disease, and disasters.
The reason I laugh at WBC instead
of become angered by their statements is because there are ideals in life that
trump their pseudo-religious debaucheries. The most prevalent of these can be found
in the words penned by Thomas Jefferson and John Locke before him. Every
man has the unalienable right to life, liberty, property, and the pursuit of
happiness. No matter the judgment of God, if we deny homosexuals their
basic rights to life and freedom, then we have failed to uphold the highest
moral truths that our nation stands for. The concept of freedom and
letting people do with their lives as they wish is the ultimate moral obligation
of humans. Biblically speaking, the King James Bible states in Genesis
1:27 the following verse.
So
God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and
female created he them.
The very essence of creation is
freedom and the ability for man to choose his own path in light of the fact
that his creator gave him the ability to do so; to choose right from
wrong. If God wishes to condemn me to hell on the basis that I believe
that all people have the right to make their own decisions, to believe what
they want to believe, and to be as they wish to be, then so be it. I
would rather be in Hell then worship a God of slaves.