Bikers protect dead soldiers familes from church who say IEDs R gods anger 4 US gays

[master of the puppets]

AH biking, a true lineage of the newly civilian soldier as Papewaio said (after WW2 vets bough motorcycles which were cheapist thing around, its been a vet thing ever since) so i'm very glad that these people are doing this, its a great honorable enterprise. wish i could say they had this in Veitnam, a bunch of scary bikers to scare away the scumbags who were yelling baby-killers.

and honestly, shame on everyone who follows that thing who dares call himself a revrend, i really hope that the church ousts him. anyway i've been to his website and it REALLY pissed me off. so i say if i ever get called to jury duty for the guys who rapes/tortures/kills fred Phelps my vote will always be NOT GUILTY!!!

[A.Saturnus]

The church, Westboro Baptist Church, is not affiliated with a larger denomination and is made up mostly of Fred Phelps' extended family members.

How many people are those "extended family members" and what sort of family is that?

Bikers Roll to Soldiers' Funerals to Counter Anti-Gay Protests

This headline is certainly proof that we live in an extremely strange world.

[Mikeus Caesar]

Disgusting that humans can stoop as low as those Christians. First the soldiers die for a pointless war, and then have bible-bashing loonies holding an anti-gay protest at their funerals?

Those bikers should run them all down.

[Mount Suribachi]

I'm still trying to get my head round this story.

Its so bizarre I'm actually wondering if this Rev Phelps character and his website is actually some kind of spoof by someone with an axe to grind against christianity (wouldn't be the first time).

But this is just too wierd to have been made up.

So let me get this right. This Rev Phelps dude and his mates protest at the funerals of US soldiers killed in Iraq because their deaths are Gods punishment on America for harbouring homosexuals. And biker veterans go to these funerals to protect the funeral from the protestors. Right?

*confused*

But what I don't get is this. Why are they protesting at the funerals. Many of those killed in Iraq will have been christians. Indeed, christians who, like most christians, probably think homosexuality is a sin (but not one more deserving of Gods wrathful judgement than any other sin).

Weird.

[Don Corleone]

There's a certain crowd within Christianity (think Navaros) that finds homosexuality intolerable, wicked above all other sins (how it gains that status is anyone's business as Leviticus puts it right up there with sleeping with a woman during 'that time of the month'). Technically speaking, Leviticus calls for the death of men who lay with men as women, but it also calls for the death of those who:

Eat shellfish or pork
Cast a lustful eye at any married women (whether they act on it or not, by the way gents, Pamela Anderson has been married of most of her career)
Make and/or wear garments from multiple fibers (cotton & wool in the same sweater? Into the bonfire with you, bucko!)
A whole host of other prohibitions, some of which have survived antiquity, some of which have gone the way of slaughtering every last child of your enemies (which we are commanded to do, btw), we simply don't hold that passage as particularly valid anymore.

So, to these folks, who believe homosexuality is some special sin, they would say that allowing homosexuals to live is equally wicked. We have been commanded in the Torah to put these people to death, and allowing them to live is putting us at odds with God. Apparently, allowing German and Japanese babies to live at the end of WWII was okay though, even though He specifically commanded we not do that either...

So, to this crowd, America, which at least 'tolerates' homosexuality and protects the rights of homosexuals, is breaking God's law and should be destroyed. Interestingly enough, as far as I know, homosexuality, while frequently criminal in the Colonial legal codes & throughout state & federal statues in the USA, has never been a capital offense. If God finds Americans to be so aberrant for allowing homosexuals to live, which we have for the history of entire existence, why hasn't He struck us down at some point in the past ~400 years? What's more, despite what they say about 'the good old days', relying on the passages they're choosing to cite, there has never been a time when America has NOT been wicked and godless and deserving of destruction.

[Mount Suribachi]

Except OT law only applies to Jews, not to Christians, and especially only to Jews in OT times.

Quoting laws from the books of Moses is something that, ironically, both ultra-right wing christians and ultra-left wing anti-christians like to do in order to back up their beliefs and opinions. Hell, you can argue from a theology standpoint that even the 10 commandments don't apply to Christians (being part of the covenant between God and the Jews).

Both of them are under the misconception that Christians are under OT law, when they are not. As Gawain is fond of saying, "show me where it says in the New Testament..."

However, you do make a valid point, that biblically speaking, no sin is better or worse than any other. Sin is sin is sin. One of the great mistakes of Christian history is to elevate some sins above others - traditionally sexual sins above, well, everthing. But part of that could probly be put down to human nature and its love of salicious gossip.

BTW, Jesus said that if you look at another woman lustfully you have in effect committed adultery

[Don Corleone]

BTW, Jesus said that if you look at another woman lustfully you have in effect committed adultery

Yes, but He didn't say the rest of us should kill you for it.

You asked me where these people are getting their justification from. I don't agree with them, I have a hard time calling them Christians, as they don't jibe with the teachings of Christ.... I'm merely letting you know what they claim is their basis for their views & beliefs.

[Navaros]

There's a certain crowd within Christianity (think Navaros) that finds homosexuality intolerable, wicked above all other sins (how it gains that status is anyone's business as Leviticus puts it right up there with sleeping with a woman during 'that time of the month'). Technically speaking, Leviticus calls for the death of men who lay with men as women

So, to these folks, who believe homosexuality is some special sin, they would say that allowing homosexuals to live is equally wicked. We have been commanded in the Torah to put these people to death, and allowing them to live is putting us at odds with God.

So, to this crowd, America, which at least 'tolerates' homosexuality and protects the rights of homosexuals, is breaking God's law and should be destroyed. Interestingly enough, as far as I know, homosexuality, while frequently criminal in the Colonial legal codes & throughout state & federal statues in the USA, has never been a capital offense. If God finds Americans to be so aberrant for allowing homosexuals to live, which we have for the history of entire existence, why hasn't He struck us down at some point in the past ~400 years? What's more, despite what they say about 'the good old days', relying on the passages they're choosing to cite, there has never been a time when America has NOT been wicked and godless and deserving of destruction.

It is only those who are ignorant of the Bible who claim that the only reference to the grieviousness of "homosexuality" in the Bible is in Leviticus. That is not the case. Rather, the Bible explicitly condemns that in various books all throughout both the Old and New Testaments. And the claim that Christians need not heed OT law is also incorrect: there are two types of law in the OT, ceremonial and moral. Jesus rendered the ceremonial law of OT obsolete, but not the moral law.

"Homosexuality" is indeed a "special sin" because those who partake in it do so pridefully (which in itself is a very grievous sin) and are under the delusion that gratification of their own perverse fleshly lusts is to be put above all else. Whereas with most other sins, people realize and acknowledge they are wrong, ask for forgiveness and repent from it. "Homosexuals" do not ever acknowledge the wrongness of what they do, nor ask for forgiveness, nor repent from their sins. For all these reasons "homosexuality" is in no way comparable to any other sin.

As for saying why doesn't God strike America down: there can be arguments made that God has indeed done some things as claimed in the Bible he would do against evil nations: for example, send pestilence. Of which AIDS (originally named GRID; gay related immune defiency) definitely is.

Note: this post is in no way an endorsement by me of Fred Phelps or any statement made on his site.

[Watchman]

It is only those who are ignorant of the Bible who claim that the only reference to the grieviousness of "homosexuality" in the Bible is in Leviticus. That is not the case. Rather, the Bible explicitly condemns that in various books all throughout both the Old and New Testaments. And the claim that Christians need not heed OT law is also incorrect: there are two types of law in the OT, ceremonial and moral. Jesus rendered the ceremonial law of OT obsolete, but not the moral law.

"Homosexuality" is indeed a "special sin" because those who partake in it do so pridefully (which in itself is a very grievous sin) and are under the delusion that gratification of their own perverse fleshly lusts is to be put above all else. Whereas with most other sins, people realize and acknowledge they are wrong, ask for forgiveness and repent from it. "Homosexuals" do not ever acknowledge the wrongness of what they do, nor ask for forgiveness, nor repent from their sins. For all these reasons "homosexuality" is in no way comparable to any other sin.

And what is it anyway that makes homosexuality so abominably "perverse" in the first place anyway ? Betcha it's just the control-freak classificatory system of the old Judeo-Christian tradition talking; whatever breaches any of the nice orderly compartements the world's been divided into (say, bats, which fly but aren't birds - one can only imagine what the Prophets would have though of platypi or pangolins...) is promptly "vile in the eyes of the Lord" or however that phrase now goes in English.

Or at least that's about the only structurally logical explanation for the weird-ass bans and declarations of vileness in the OT the anthropologists have been able to come up with; many a learned rabbi over the millenia has tried to figure them out and came away with the conclusion they make no sense either...

As for saying why doesn't God strike America down: there can be arguments made that God has indeed done some things as claimed in the Bible he would do against evil nations: for example, send pestilence. Of which AIDS (originally named GRID; gay related immune defiency) definitely is.

So what've the sub-Saharan Africans done then ? It's a way bigger problem down there isn't it ?
Arguments can always be made, but that doesn't yet mean they hold water.

[doc_bean]

As for saying why doesn't God strike America down: there can be arguments made that God has indeed done some things as claimed in the Bible he would do against evil nations: for example, send pestilence. Of which AIDS (originally named GRID; gay related immune defiency) definitely is.

Well, seems like he missed again and hit Africa by accident...

AFAIK there's only one reference to homosexuality in the NT, and it was in one of the boring portions that have nothing to do with Jesus and everything with the visions of the early leaders of the church , letters to Romans or something...

[Reenk Roink]

If Pride and Arrogance are sins, then you're going to hell for this post.

Navaros may be preachy as hell (sorry for the irony), but I didn't see much pride and arrogance in that post, just ultra-orthodox Christian views...