Religious Left

CTV.ca News Staff Shirley Phelps-Roper, the daughter of the founding member of the Westboro Baptist Church, told CTV.ca a group of seven members was turned away when they tried to cross the U.S. border into Canada Thursday night. But she said other members managed to get through at another border crossing, although she would not say how many. Phelps-Roper and her church have outraged Canadians by planning to protest Tim McLean's funeral. Members of the ultra-conservative Christian church claim McLean, who was decapitated by a fellow-passenger on a Greyhound bus last month, deserved his fate. Although no member of the group ever met McLean, they claim he lived an immoral and godless life, just like all other Canadians. full article

original article In a 52-page decision, U.S. District Judge Richard D. Bennett affirmed the jury's verdict in favor of the father of Lance Cpl. Matthew Snyder. Albert Snyder successfully sued the church for emotional distress and invasion of his family's privacy after Westboro Baptist Church members waved signs decrying homosexuality at his son's funeral in March 2006. "There was more than sufficient evidence to support the jury's verdict that [Westboro's] conduct before, during and after the funeral of Matthew Snyder was outrageous [and] highly offensive to a reasonable person," Bennett wrote. But the judge also more than halved the $10.9 million award announced in October to $5 million, noting constitutional concerns of appropriateness. He held up the jury's compensatory damage award of $2.9 million but reduced the total punitive damages to $2.1 million. full article comment by tom: Where was all the concern for the gay funerals (mostly AIDS victims)...

(Baltimore, Maryland) In what is believed to be the first civil lawsuit against the Rev. Fred Phelps' church over an anti-gay protest at the funeral of someone from the military killed in Iraq, the father of the dead Marine said the demonstration made him sick to his stomach and gave him nightmares. Albert Snyder is suing Phelps and his Topeka, Kan.-based church after church members demonstrated at the funeral of Lance Cpl. Matthew Snyder last year in Maryland, and then posted pictures of the protest on their Web site. Cpl. Snyder was killed in March, 2006. "They turned this funeral into a media circus and they wanted to hurt my family," Albert Snyder testified. "They wanted their message heard and they didn't care who they stepped over. My son should have been buried with dignity, not with a bunch of clowns outside."