Getting It Right

Deborah Venable

10/05/06

 

In a week filled with suffocating mud slinging, irksome revelations, and political rodeoing, the only thing that came close to overshadowing the BIG media heyday with the Foley story was the horrifying attack on those innocent Amish schoolgirls.  One more very untypical school shooting involving a deranged man and a schoolroom of total innocents shocked us back to reality – politics can’t solve all of our problems.

 

The analysts will be sifting through this one for some time to come, but don’t look for anything definitive to come from it.  Media attention will be focused on the Amish religion, which is sadly paradoxical since the Amish wish only to be left alone.  It is, after all, one of the few religions that do not wish to intrude on others or seek to convert.  That in itself is refreshing these days. 

 

If we are to take a lesson from this tragedy, we must look to another group, which has been operating too much under the radar of mainstream media lately:  the Westboro Baptist Church of Topeka, Kansas.  If you’ve heard anything about this group recently, it was probably in connection with their sick need to invade private mourning services of combat troops killed in Iraq with their demonstrations of hate.  They have appeared around the country at these funerals bearing such signs as, “Thank God For IEDs,” "Thank God for Dead Soldiers," "America Is Doomed" and "Soldier Fag in Hell."  They will use any excuse to blame America’s problems on tolerance for homosexuals.  That is their message.  Their first protests, if you want to call them that, began with local funerals of AIDS victims about sixteen years ago.  Since they managed to garner some national attention, they moved on to other senseless demonstrations, always preying on the innocent survivors with malicious hatred to equal the worst religiously inspired hatred in history - just short of murder. 

 

So, it is no wonder that they announced their intentions to intrude upon the private mourning of the Amish community in Pennsylvania Dutch country.  They had some particularly cruel plans for that one.  Imagine calling those innocent, little girls “whores” while their devastated parents wished only to bury them in peace.  It is probably even more irritating to the Westbobro monsters that these Amish families are able to forgive the man (and his family) that killed their children in the truest sense of Christian forgiveness displayed since Christ uttered those famous words from the cross:

           

“Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”

 

Compare that to the quote from the Westboro’s spokesperson, Shirley Phelps-Roper:

 

"Those Amish people, everyone is sitting around talking about those poor little girls — blah, blah, blah — they brought the wrath upon themselves, the Amish don't serve God, they serve themselves." Source

 

As of this writing, Westboro’s plans to attend those funerals have been canceled, thanks to the generous offer of a conservative talk show host, Mike Gallagher, who offered to give the group one hour of valuable air time on his nationally syndicated radio show if they would lay off their sick plan to invade the funeral services of those little girls.  They took him up on it and will get their hour on his October 5th show. 

 

It is a Catch 22 when you weigh the proposition of giving this hate group the attention they demand, or having them take it anyway in a much more personally harmful venue, but my hat is off to Gallagher’s efforts.  I believe he got it right when he said:

 

"It's awful for me to give up an hour of my radio show ... but I think it’s worth the sacrifice to keep them away."

 

Yes, there is a lesson here, but whether or not anyone in the mainstream media can get it right remains to be seen.  They love to label some things as “hate crimes” that are best described as crimes.  Period.  Liberals are guilty of passing judgment on a particular point of view as “wrong” because the actions of sick groups like Westoboro are so easy to portray as the result of those views.  Case in point – anyone who believes that homosexuality is wrong cannot be automatically viewed under a label of hate.  That does as much harm as viewing those who think abortion is wrong with the same hatred involved in senseless attacks on abortion providers.  The message is lost in the hate. 

 

Getting the right message separated from the wrong actions - that’s the lesson.  Let’s hope the media can get it right!

 

 

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