I love people sometimes...

Because, you know, this is appropriate:

SMYRNA, Tenn. (AP) - Members of a church say God is punishing American soldiers for defending a country that harbors gays, and they brought their anti-gay message to the funerals Saturday of two Tennessee soldiers killed in Iraq.

...snip...

The church members carried signs and shouted things such as "God hates fags" and "God hates you."

Now I'll be honest, the second time sign doesn't bother me as much as the first, if for no other reason than it's vague enough to be right at least some of the time. But God? Hating "fags"?

Lets review, from my vague recollection of biblical history from sunday school 12 years ago:

When God is pissed at you, he:

• Sends down 10 plagues upon you, ending with every first born son being killed by the Angel of Death
  
• Rains fire from the sky and turns people into pillars of salt
  
• Floods the earth for 40 days, and 40 nights, resulting in the death of every living thing except 2 of each species
  
• Sends you and all his "chosen" people on a 40 year trek through the desert for something so little as Moses hitting a rock. With a stick. Hitting a rock. With a friggin stick.
  
• After that 40 year trek, God refuses to allow Moses to enter the Promised Land, cause he was still pissed about the whole "rock and stick" incident. From 40 years ago.
  

Now let's just review what he's done to the people he despises so much:

• Not killed them all off
  
• Not rained fire from the sky
  
• Not turned them into pillars of salt
  
• Not smitten them with a pandemic plague (or 10)
  
• LA has lots of em, and we had a lot of rain this year, but no flood of biblical proportions. Ditto for NYC and SF. (Check what's happening to the Bible Belt with all those hurricanes, though...)
  
• Made the people who supposedly speak his true will to look like complete nutjobs
  
• Killed thousands of other people, all presumably straight (or at least in the closet), just to show the "fags" that he's upset
  
• Given them a fabulous fashion sense.
  
• And killer abs.
  

Clearly, we're talking about different Gods. When the God I know is pissed at you, you know he's pissed. Then you die. Or if you're lucky, you get to march around in a desert for a few decades. The God I know doesn't play games with his vengeance.

And finally, screw these clowns for taking this ridiculous bullshit to a funeral. It's one thing to stage these demonstrations at public events, but to taint two families losses with this bigotry and intolerance is beyond disrespectful, let alone unchristian.

There is, at the very least, some shred of goodness coming out of this:

Hundreds of Smyrna and Ashland City residents and families of other soldiers turned out at both sites to counter the message the Westboro Baptist members brought.

So many counterdemonstrators were gathered in Ashland City that police, sheriff's deputies and state troopers were brought in to control traffic and protect the protesters.