Hate group to picket memorial service for dead miners

The Record Delta Online in Buckhannon, WV reports a hate group based in Topeka, Kan. plans to picket a memorial service planned for twelve miners killed who were trapped for more than 40 hours and died in the Sago mine near Tallmansville, W.Va.

A hate group based in Topeka, Kan. released a press release on Wednesday entitled “Thank God for 12 dead miners” and promises to picket the funerals for the slain men.

The hate group, which operates as Westboro Baptist Church, runs the website www.godhatesfags.com.

The release states, “God is laughing, mocking and deriding hypocritical fag-infested West Virginia.”
The release also says the WBC will picket the funerals of the miners.

When reached by phone, member Shirley Phelps-Roper confirmed that 10 to 15 picketers were making plans to protest at the funerals of the West Virginia miners.

When asked why the group was planning protests at the miners’ funerals, she responded with questions of her own.

According to the press release, “They died in shame and disgrace, citizens of a cursed nation of unthankful, unholy perverts who have departed from the living God to worship on ‘Brokeback Mountain’ and who have replaced the Bible with ‘The Da Vinci Code.’”

The group has picketed at 80 funerals since June, as many as four to five a week, according to Phelps-Roper. Most of these funerals have been for soldiers.

“Our purpose is to cause America to know our abomination,” she said.

God is punishing America, according to Phelps-Roper.
“America is doomed,” she said. “We have cracked the Bible. We know.”

During the phone interview, Phelps-Roper told this reporter to read all of Malachi (an Old Testament book).

“It covers all of the issues,” she said.

Westboro Baptist Church was established by Pastor Fred Phelps in 1955 as a Primitive Baptist Church, according to the website. It engages in daily peaceful sidewalk demonstrations “opposing the homosexual lifestyle of soul-damning, nation-destroying filth.”

The WBC has conducted more than 22,000 such demonstrations since June 1991 at homosexual parades and other events, according to the website.

When informed about the expected protests, Sgt. Chris Smith, detachment commander of the Buckhannon detachment of the W.Va. State Police, said protection would be provided as needed.

Smith could not immediately say how far back the protesters would be located.

Buckhannon Police Chief Matt Gregory and Sheriff Virgil Miller could not be reached on Thursday evening as this story was developing.