On the one hand, I wonder if $11 million is overly stringent. But mostly, I’m just really, really glad Phelps is getting what he deserves, and likewise really, really hope that all appeals fail and they manage to take every single penny away from these blasphemers, so they cannot afford the gas to get to the grocery store, let alone cross-country trips to mock mourners.
Ah…God bless the American judicial system for this one.

Thank the Lord this has happened. What they do is not Godly or Christ-like, and it is blasphemous to spread this filth, especially in the way they have chosen. I feel awful for the family members of the soldiers who have fallen, especially for the ones who had this “church” at their funerals!

There is one thing to have your beliefs but Fred Phelps and his crew got what they deserved.A funeral is a time for mourning and paying one’s respect not an avenue to spew hateful views.I know lots of people who would love to thrash Phelps and his band of psuedo-Christians but this is better. If Christ were here I know well enough he wouldn’t condone the Westboro Baptist church’s behavior.
SGT R.E.Riley
US ARMY

Joey-
Well, we agree completely on this topic!
Peace!

Sgt Riley -
Christ is here, and he doesn’t condone Phelps’s vitriol.
Thank God he’s starting to get what he deserves!

It has been speculated that Fred Phelps is a provocateur, that his over-the-top, hateful protests and equally hateful website are designed for the purpose of embarrassing the right. This idea is supported by the fact that Phelps actually built his reputation as a lawyer taking on civil rights cases and fighting discrimination. If this is true than it is a masterful job. If it is not true, and Phelps’ protests represent his actual point-of-view then he is sick, sick, sick. One of his relatives who has left the Westboro Baptist Church has said that he believes Phelps is simply addicted to hatred and the notoriety it brings him.

These people are being a good example. A good example of a group with a dismal understanding of their duties as Christians, a good example of a small group that refuses correction, and a good example of what happens when legalism trumps love in the Christian heart. Of course, in their eyes it is most likely “tough love,” albeit sick and misguided.
It is spiritual arrogance at its worst to believe that you are God’s only little group of good soldiers with “special” knowledge that nobody else quite “gets,” regardless of what millions of Christians try to tell them. But, then, they may think that they’re the only Christians around.
They remind me of the unteachable and calloused ancient Israelites who refused to be taught or corrected. They are described in the Old Testament as ones who “…will not hearken to me: for all the house of Israel are impudent and hard-hearted.”
I would like to ask them: who are you drawing to Christ with your behavior? Who are you causing to turn away as you portray Christ as you are doing? From the outcry against your misguided zeal, you should be able to figure this one out and realize that you are doing far more harm than good.
Christian growth goes like this:
(1 Knowledge, which is just cold, hard facts; the “what.”
(2 Understanding, which is the “why” and “how.”
(3 Then, finally, wisdom, which is the tact, the finesse, the restraint, the faith, the caring, the love, the ability to weigh our actions and non-action, all brought to bear to put the knowledge and the understanding to work.
These folks haven’t proceeded beyond number one, apparently, and I’m not sure they’ve even grasped very much in that area. That’s what often happens when people start whole-heartedly buying into one man’s blind obsession. It’s a lesson to all other Christians, so maybe it’ll do some good in the long run.

I feel really bad for the father of this soldier. I have a son in Iraq who is working for the government to minister to our soldiers over there. He was in the war in Baghdad in 1991, when his father was killed here at home. Knowing how hard it is to overcome the loss of a loved one, I can not imagine those who are supposed to represent my Lord Jesus Christ inflicting more injury on a man who just lost His son. God forgive them and help them. We all need to pray for them to see the light of the truth. The real truth.
I do feel God is lifting his grace off this country, but it goes a lot deeper then homosexuals, that is a sin just as lying is.It begins with our government and our tolerance to let God and his word to be taken out of schools, and other public places. When so many take a stand to deny He is God, and set up other Gods then him, then yes we are in trouble as a nation. Our nation isn’t the only one in trouble, all we have to do is look around and be honest with ourselves and see how bad the world has become,and watch the weather, and the deterioration of mankind and morality and we will understand we are spiraling out of control and we are reaching the end of this planet as we know it. I would be scared as the dickens if I didn’t know God, His son and the knowledge that because of his love for me I would be lost and in trouble. Jesus died for our sins to set us free of all these horrible things that are happening. Read the Bible, read history, search the web, maybe you’ll get scared too, enough to reach out to a God who only means you love and peace.

I haven never posted here before, but this makes me so mad. I don’t want to believe there are people out there who would hold such a protest. I am not, and have never been, in favor of this war, but the fault lies with the politicians and not the soldiers!
Yesterday I was looking at a picture of a Vietnam protester. She was holding a flower out in front of a line of armed soldiers and I was wondering how many of the soliders would have loved to have her freedom of expression, but were required by their job to be the ones with the guns.

Thank God that Phelps and the Westboro so-called “Baptist Church” are getting what was coming to them. They have a right to their opinions and to hold the sick, twisted version of Christianity that they have, but when they protest the funerals of soldiers who died in Iraq and provoke grieving families, then they have gotten completely out of hand.
They are a sick group of people who are Christians in the same sense as Jim Jones and his cult were Christians. They pervert the Gospel and turn it into something evil.
“Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father in heaven.” God became flesh because he loved the world. His greatest commandment was for us to love God with all our hearts and to love our neighbors as ourselves. In deed, God is Love! Phelps’ theology has no love. It is the thology of demons.

Barb-
I agree with you on how unfortunate it is that a Baptist Minister leads protests at the funeral’s of our brave soldiers.
“I do feel God is lifting his grace off this country, but it goes a lot deeper then homosexuals, that is a sin just as lying is.It begins with our government and our tolerance to let God and his word to be taken out of schools, and other public places.”
There have been wars in the world for thousands and thousands of years….probably since the earliest of times. There have always been weather disasters. They probably pre-date mankind.
Why would God want someone forced into prayer? Our son prays in school everday before eating. And, next year when our daughter goes to school for the full day, I am sure she will also. There is nothing that prevents people from prayer anywhere they wish to do so. Each time I visit our kids’ school I pray several times while there. There are laws that prevent people from being forced to pray. However, there are no laws that prevent us from praying. As a Christian, I completely support such laws.
As far as equating homosexuality with sin, perhaps a little deeper Bible study and prayer….rather than relying on the manipulated message of others would provide you with a truer understanding of both the Bible and God’s children. No place in the Bible does is say that God has a problem with homosexuals….nor, that homosexuality is a sin.
Peace!

“Joey-
Well, we agree completely on this topic!
Peace!”
That’s the one good thing about Fred Phelps—everybody can agree on him! It’s ironic in a way—he unites people better than any public figure I can think of.
God bless.

God HATES NO ONE!!!!!!
God loves all his children. And the church should realize that judging someone for their sin is just as much of a sin as the sin that they feel they have the right to judge. GOD IS LOVE NOT HATE!!!!

Can’t agree with you Barb about God taking his grace off our country. God gives grace to all that love him. There are many kinds of people in our country, and in all the countries of the world. Our laws and how we use our laws for justice to all people gives us the results we live with, not God punishing us. We punish ourselves by not living with Love for all. We punish ourselves by being judgmental, greedy, and being intolerant.

I don’t know if it is a blasphemous behavior but I am in agreement that it is disgraceful, shameful and offensive. God is love but God also has the capacity to hate and the Bible does state homosexuality if an offense to God but there are limits in which we should address it, and Phelps is way over the line. He seems to have an extreme focus and hate. Our military people stand between us and chaos.

You should get more than 11 million, the church destoryed the last moment with your son,
No matter what you fill about the war, you always stand beside your country and the people serving in the armed forces,
Those Church people showed they are not for are country..
and what this poor family has to remember is the last time
with there son’s body and the people at destoryed the sad moment of
this family.
You should be ashamed of your self!!!!

Phelps and family believe that Gay people are sinful, they use profanity to express this. They go to Gay funerals if they know, in some way, that the deceased is Gay. They think God sits up on a cloud and allows all manner of disaster to happen, because we break his laws. Sometimes it’s the storms, accidents, wars, you name it. He’s not the only fundamentalist that believes this. He just does something about it! Like deciding that because Science and thinking members of our society have accepted GLBT as the same as Heterosexuality, and are included in our Armed Services that all Service people should be punished, and through their evolved thinking process it makes sense to them to invade a private service to bury these sons and daughters of Americans who have put their lives in jepordy to keep people, even the dark entities such as Phelps safe. Perhaps we should add a clause to our ‘protection of peoples religions’, that when they cause sorrow, and destroy others beliefs they should be held responsible in a court of law.

Sadly, it is all going to be nothing more than blood from a turnip. I cannot imagine that Phelps has any sort of assets worth a small fraction of 11 million. Nor is he likely to have any kind of insurance that would cover it. A moral victory is nice, but I expect Phelp’s martyr complex will compell him to keep on with his spit and viniger. Until he is ignored and his venom is cast into a vaccuum, he will continue. Sad man, sadder followers.

So their god is punishing the United States for it’s accepting of homosexuality with the deaths of soldiers???? What a stupid notion! And they express this by intruding on the grief stricken families of those men and women who have died in the war? That is just totally SICK! The $$ will probably never be collected by the families, but the court at least made a statement by ruling in favor of the soldier’s family.
“Sad man, sadder followers” as said by jestrfyl. So right!

Barb,
“I do feel God is lifting his grace off this country, but it goes a lot deeper then homosexuals”
Um, the protest was against soldiers fighting for a country that professes freedom for ALL its citizens. No one cared that Phelps protested gay people, and only seemed to “care” when it became about soldiers.
As for your belief that homosexuals are “a sin just as lying is”, I pray you will someday come to understand the hurt your words cause God’s gay and lesbian children because of their untruth.
“It begins with our government and our tolerance to let God and his word to be taken out of schools, and other public places.”
God and “his” word should not be forced into public institutions. The public are not all Christian, let alone your particular sect of Christianity. What about the God of Jewish Americans? What about the God of Islamic Americans? What about Americans who don’t believe in YOUR God? Why should their rights be abrogated?
In fact, why isn’t someone pointing out that maybe ‘God is removing grace from America’ because America has failed to live up to its “promises” of liberty and justice for ALL, and of ALL men (and presumably women too) being treated equally before the law, and of the rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. America holds (held?) them out and then snatched back the hand from those ply (people like YOU) consider ‘unworthy’. Mayb eGod is p!ssed at the ‘right’ for being lying hypocrites and is taking it out on AL Americans. But that’s just a guess.

Henrietta22,
There was an implication in your post that GLBT “are included in our Armed Services”. Sorry, but they aren’t.
Hey, maybe THAT’s why “God is punishing America” (TM) – the Constitution says that all should be treated equally, but America renegs on the “promise”. Maybe God hates the bearers of false witness most of all.