Sam Harris

US church vows to picket Ledger memorial
Thursday January 24, 07:04 PM

An American church plans to picket memorials held for Australian actor Heath Ledger because he played a gay cowboy in the film Brokeback Mountain.

The Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka, Kansas, says it will protest against any memorial held for Ledger in the United States because the 28-year-old actor supported homosexuals.

“I’m going to picket him in two places,” parishioner Shirley Phelps told Sydney radio station 2Day FM.

“I’m going to stand outside of any public memorial service that he has here.

“And then the other place I’m going to picket him is when they prop him up to worship his dead, rotting carcass further at the Oscars. I’ll be right outside by the red carpet.”

It is understood Ledger’s body will be returned to Perth, where his former school has offered to hold a memorial service.

The church has ruled out travelling to Australia for the funeral.

meloncolin - 24 January 2008 06:45 PM

US church vows to picket Ledger memorial
Thursday January 24, 07:04 PM

An American church plans to picket memorials held for Australian actor Heath Ledger because he played a gay cowboy in the film Brokeback Mountain.

The Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka, Kansas, says it will protest against any memorial held for Ledger in the United States because the 28-year-old actor supported homosexuals.

“I’m going to picket him in two places,” parishioner Shirley Phelps told Sydney radio station 2Day FM.

“I’m going to stand outside of any public memorial service that he has here.

“And then the other place I’m going to picket him is when they prop him up to worship his dead, rotting carcass further at the Oscars. I’ll be right outside by the red carpet.”

It is understood Ledger’s body will be returned to Perth, where his former school has offered to hold a memorial service.

The church has ruled out travelling to Australia for the funeral.

Phelps? You don’t say!

Their boastful repugnance toward an ever-increasing population of just about anybody increases in proportion to the amount of joyous celebrating they must perceive will occur upon their own deaths.

They are the essence of puke.

I suspected that this thread was going to be about Phelps even before I opened it.

the 28-year-old actor supported homosexuals.

Is that anything like child support? Maybe we should drag Phelps to court for non-payment of his homosexual support.

God must be dead if someone like Phelps is alive.

It is a total mystery to me how people of faith can use holy texts as a basis for judging the morality of subjects that could not even be conceived at the time they were written (e.g. abortion, stem cell research, homosexuality, euthanasia, etc) but can disregard messages of tolerance that are written explicitly in the text.  Somehow, these people claim to have a definitive answer for any problematic issues that challenge their system of beliefs.  At the same time, they choose to blatantly disregard lessons of their faith that are clearly stated in their holy books.  Christians are taught “love your enemies” or “turn the other cheek.”  It is amazing how quickly people of faith may disregard their basic principles in order to defend man’s contrived interpretations of religious texts. In this case: hateful acts against a man whose only transgression against a religion was that he had PLAYED A PART of someone the religion considers to be immoral.