Time Immortal

Let’s hope this sticks. Stockwell Day += cool.

Canadian border guards have been told to bar a fanatic church group that was planning to protest the funeral of a man beheaded on a Greyhound bus, reports say.

NDP MP Pat Martin told the Winnipeg Free Press that Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day sent the alert to border guards Thursday.

The church group, described in a British documentary as “the most hated family in America,” told CTV.ca earlier Thursday that it planned to protest at the funeral of 22-year-old Tim Mclean on Saturday.

The Westboro Baptist Church nutters are all kinds of crazy. Heck, their crazy went crazy long ago, and they’re still dealing with the fallout.

To wit:

The daughter of the founder of the Westboro Baptist Church, based in Topeka, [Kansas], told CTV.ca she and several other church members will go to Winnipeg on Saturday to demonstrate against what she described as McLean’s “filthy way of life.” Shirley Phelps-Roper said his life was emblematic of Canada’s moral decay.

“God handed us a gift,” Phelps-Roper said in a phone interview on Thursday.

She said McLean deserved his death by beheading on a Greyhound Bus last week.

“(His death was) supremely unemotional. You got God shaking in rage. There is no emotional component…He was a rebel against God. He was taught to be a rebel by his parents. He came from a rebel country…They brought this wrath upon his head. And it sucks to be him and it sucks to be them,” Phelps-Roper said.

She said his brutal murder was a sign from God.

“You gotta connect the dots, people…from your idols to your filthy way of life,” she said.

“Here’s what I know. He is dead and God does not do that to people that serve in his truth.”

I think I speak for pretty much every Christian when I say: get out and stay out! There is little else I can say about the Westboro crowd without devolving into rage, and so will not comment on their odious practices further.

I’m glad Stockwell Day has taken steps to ensure these malicious people are not allowed into Canada. Now, if we could just do the same for Sharia enthusiasts and Hezbollah/Taliban supporters, we’d be off to a great start.

Update: Damn. Apparently some of ‘em got through That’s okay…we can arrest them for that, can’t we? Ah, well, no harm, no foul — it would appear that even those who got through didn’t have the guts to actually show up and protest.

I echo BCF’s question: can’t they both lose?

Fred Phelps is the lunatic in command of the Westboro Baptist Church, a lunatic-fringe religious cult (I refuse to call them “Christian”) that runs websites with such lovely names as “God HatesFags”, “GodHatesCanada“, and so forth. A more hateful man — and a less fitting witness for Christ — you would be hard-pressed to find. The Westboro cult are known from their habit of protesting the hell out of everything they disagree with.

They revel in the deaths of American soldiers, proudly proclaim that the space shuttle Columbia was destroyed by God, and claim that homosexuals are “worthy of death.” Not a nice bunch.

Conversely, Darren Lund is the anti-Christian activist and wannabe censor who hauled pastor Stephen Boissoin before the Alberta Human Rights Commission. The complaint was decided in his favour, and pastor Boissoin was essentially ordered to renounce his Christian beliefs as a result (an order he has not complied with, of course). Also not a nice sort.

And it looks like there’s going to be an activist vs. activist cage match in Red Deer, Alberta, coming up!

WBC will picket The Laramie Project - at
6:30 to 7:30 p.m. - Friday & Saturday,
August 8 & 9 - at The Matchbox Theatre,
Red Deer, Alberta, Canada

Darren Lund is organizing a counter-protest.

Oh, this should be good. Someone, please get this on camera!

Update: Welcome, Steynians!