Rule #1: Intolerance Will NOT Be Tolerated

That's one of the rules that I established at the end of my very first blog. Actually it's the only rule that I established. If I ever had to do one of those dating surveys where one of the questions always is "what is your biggest turn-off?", intolerance probably would stand a pretty good chance of being the answer. Specifically what I'm referring to is intolerance to people or groups of people who happen to be different or have different views. More specifically I mean close-minded intolerant people who preach hatred. And it always seems that the strength of their ridiculous pea-brained views is directly proportional to the strength and volume of their voice and their desire to use it. They're not happy just hating, they have to advertise to the world that they hate. And show everyone just how proud they are of it. As if that's not bad enough, they further compound their flaming idiocy by usually claiming to be a member of a group that by it's very nature is fundamentally against everything that these morons are shouting. Not only are they intolerant, close-minded, pea-brained idiots but they're hypocrites to boot.

Yesterday I was siting in the car in front of a store. Outside the store was a newspaper box with the Sunday edition of the local paper. One of the headlines read "Anti-gay Protest Ends Peacefully". Now I don't live in the biggest of towns. There isn't a great deal of exciting activity going on around here on a regular basis and you don't normally see much in the way of protests so I had to check it out.

It seems that on Saturday a group of anti-gay protesters came to town and did what anti-gay protesters do. They (showed themselves to be tiny-brained hate mongers) protested gays. That was irritating enough but what really got me was that these people were from out-of-town. They were from another state! In another part of the country. The paper said they were from a Baptist church in Kansas. I looked it up and found that they were from the Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka (ironically enough their zip code is 66604, coincidence?). Their website is godhatesfags.com, isn't that special? What amazing people they must be to actually know the mind of God. Turns out these are the same vermin that show up to protest at military funerals. A particularly virulent strain of parasite are they. To be fair, while they call themselves Baptist they are independent and not affiliated with any know Baptist conventions and they follow "primative Baptist" principles (their words, not mine). They believe that every world tragedy can be linked to homosexuality and that homosexuality should be made a capital crime. Of course, they don't stop there. They also hate Roman Catholics, Muslims, Jews, Swedes, Canadians, Irish, and Americans. If you're trying to make sense of that list don't bother, sense doesn't apply. They are a hate group, pure and simple. A hate group that gets to enjoy a tax-free status because they happen to call themselves a church. These are the kind of people that make me hope the Christian belief that Jesus is coming back is true because if he does, boy is he gonna be PISSED. He's going to have special VIP reserved seating in hell for all the people that pull this kind of shit in his name.

Now the numbers involved in this story may not seem impressive but what happened is important in principle. Six out of town protesters showed up to do their thing. In no time at all they found themselves surrounded by about a hundred counter-protesters (a hundred and one if I had know about it). The Topeka-based loonies hung in there for about 15 minutes before heading for their car. The counter-protesters then followed them and surrounded the car. It took about a half hour for the police to clear a path for the visiting guests to make their escape. I believe it was made clear to them that they were not welcome here.

I have to say that my little town done me proud. This is exactly the kind of greeting they should receive in every town. We all have different views and we may not agree on all the issues but hopefully we can all agree that these people and those like them are destructive. That they will never be a part of the solution. That they have no place in our towns. Or in our world.