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Loading ...Anti-gay Phelps group sneaks into Canada
08.08.2008 3:39pm EDT
(Winnipeg, Manitoba) Members of an anti-gay group which describes itself as a church managed to enter Canada overnight despite a directive to border agents to bar them.
The Canwest News Service reports that the group, members of Rev. Fred Phelps’ Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka, removed all material that referred to the “church” from their vehicles and shipped them by courier to Winnipeg after the material was used to blocked them from another crossing into Manitoba on Thursday.The group announced earlier in the week it would picket the Winnipeg funeral of a man decapitated on a Greyhound bus. Another passenger is charged with the sensational killing.
The group says by protesting the funeral of Tim McLean it will show Canadians the murder was God’s response to liberal Canadian policies toward homosexuality.
Pat Martin a New Democratic Party member of Parliament from Winnipeg asked Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day to send an alert to the border patrol to look out “for people with signs and pamphlets that fit the hateful messages that the church promotes and to keep them out of the country.”
Canadian hate laws give the government the power to deny entry to people likely to violate the law. The so-called church was listed as a hate group under the law following previous protests.
Shirley Phelps-Roper, Phelps’ daughter and a frequent spokesperson for the “church” confirmed to Canwest that a group of followers had successfully entered the country overnight.
Earlier she had warned that the group would “cross in another spot. They’ll have to strip search everyone who crosses that border or they won’t know who we are. They’ll have to see the WBC [Westboro Baptist Church] tattoo on our butts.”
In addition to the threatened protest at the McLean funeral the group had said it would demonstrate in Toronto where a satirical play titled “The Pastor Phelps Project.” is being performed. No members of the church showed up for the demonstration which had been planned for Thursday evening.
Westboro Baptist members frequently demonstrate at funerals for American servicemembers killed in Iraq. The group claims the deaths are God’s punishment on America for being too pro-gay.
Westboro’s members are made up mostly of Phelps’ relatives. Although it professes to be Baptist it is not affiliated with any national Baptist group.
Westboro operates Web sites including GodHatesFags and GodHatesAmerica and has been described as a cult.
Phelps and the church first came to national attention when he organized a protest by his followers outside the 1998 funeral for Matthew Shepherd, the gay college student who was beaten to death in Wyoming. The killing, Phelps’ protest, and the reaction of townsfolk led to the play “The Laramie Project.”
Church members routinely demonstrate at the funerals of people with AIDS and most recently at the funerals of soldiers killed in Iraq.
These “people” are terrorists…Plain and simple. They are showing the same pattern that Al-Qaeda went in there attacks from their formation to 9/11.
First, they show up at gay pride parades, holding up signs and spewing their hate. Al-Qaeda, through the Taliban, enacted Sharia law over Afghanistan, killing gays and blowing up sacred religious sites of other faiths. Then, this group started showing up on the talk shows, gaining free publicity and support. Al-Qaeda started asking for donations over the internet, saying that they would use them to destroy Americans and Israelis in their jihad. Phelps’ nuts then started going to ANY funeral of an American soldier killed in Iraq. Al-Qaeda then gets more “courageous” and starts attacking foreign targets: the USS Cole and one of our embassies in Africa. Now, Phelps’ bunch had plans on protesting at Heath Ledger’s funeral in Australia (clear on the other side of the planet) and is now attacking “targets” in Canada…
It won’t be too long before someone in this CULT, or someone else sympathetic to them, will do their own “9/11″…and I think that this new wave of hate crimes against us gays is the beginning of it.
All religious denominations are cults, no difference.
Phelps and his little band of hooligans need to be marooned on a little island in shark infested waters. Kind of like Alcatraz in the old days. But should be just kept to themselves with noone else there and no building. Should be made to exist in survival mode living off of wild plants, animals, insects, fish etc. and forced to live in crude lean-tos of sticks and tree bark or in a cave with creepy, crawling things and of course forgotten and ignored by the rest of humanity.
Robert Pierce,
I am an Episcopalian and I am staying in my Episcopalian “cult”, my church in my “cult” does far more good for me and for many others and works to meet many human needs with a focus on feeding the hungry and the needy and there are gay couples and singles who gladly go there.
I would rather spend every Sunday morning there than do anything else on a Sunday morning.
Members of the Fred & Shirley Phelps clan were turned away at our border for a very obvious reason. It is because of their history of hate and inciting violence, particularly against the gay community, that they were turned away – we have federal laws in this country to protect all of our citizens. For these people to violate our laws and enter our country illegally by sneaking in under the cover of darkness, obviously they don’t get it. We can only hope that the authorities catch up to them very quickly and deport them back to the United States before they do any serious damage.
“Yes, let’s hope that Canada will round them up and DEPORT THEM.” Sorry, Godfrey, but I don’t think any of us in the U.S. want Canada to send them back! Perhaps if we make a good case for declaring them terrorists Canada may establish a nice, Guantanamo-style holding facility for these religious extremists.
I’m an American citizen who has been constantly trying to stop the phelps group and there cult activities for years. Hopfully Canada will have the balls to take charge of the situation and finally give them the time in jail thy deserve. For years Phelps and his church have been getting away with the unthinkable and under our current laws in the U.S. we can’t do anything about it. its a shame that America, who says all are equal and preaches it to other countries can’t even prove it on our own land. It’s time for phelps church to get the punishments they deserve.
Shirley says: “They’ll have to strip search everyone who crosses that border or they won’t know who we are. They’ll have to see the WBC tattoo on our butts.”
Hmmm…Wishful thinking on her part! I wonder if she got wet imagining that?
Whoa… They have tattoos on their butts? Guess that blows the whole ‘God Doesn’t Want You to Mark Your Body’ thing.
FADE IN ON:
Phred Felps leans each follower over his knee and pulls their pants down. His right hand hold the tattoo pen. His left rubs their creamy soft butts, fingers them gingerly in their ’special cave’. He tells those who get hard ‘not to worry’ as this is god’s natural law of showing pleasure to the chosen one; Phred.
Once Marked For Life, he pats them each on their asses, declares them Lambs of Christ, gives them a cookie and sends them on their way.
BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA
I think what would be appropriate is for them to have to read the book “The Man without a Country”, as they are shipped from Canada to the US and back and forth, forever.
They may have snuck into the country but they didn’t show up at the funeral.Read for yourself:
http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/local/story/4210503p-4803220c.html
Oh Canada! Oh Canada! Please keep them.
Oh sweet Canada, Can you lock them up for “hate something” and never let them go!
Keep them (under lock and key if you can, It would be one less hateful group of bigots to deal with!
This evil group has been causing disruption and distress for far too long… this poor McLean family has lost their young son in the most horrible way imaginable. Only an evil “church” would seek to increase that family’s pain. This cruelty to bereaved families is not “free speech” and Americans and Canadians shouldn’t tolerate it anymore.
To all those that want us Canadians to keep the scum. Sorry, too stinky, we have to send them back.
The Phelps clan of nut-jobs are our own creation and are our problem. Canada, nor any othe rcountry, should not have to contend with them. Now, if only the media would stop giving them the attention they so obviously and desperately thrive off of.