Getting It Right
Deborah Venable
10/05/06
In
a week filled with suffocating mud slinging, irksome revelations, and political
rodeoing, the only thing that came close to overshadowing the BIG media heyday
with the Foley story was the horrifying attack on those innocent Amish schoolgirls. One more very untypical school shooting
involving a deranged man and a schoolroom of total innocents shocked us back to
reality – politics can’t solve all of our problems.
The
analysts will be sifting through this one for some time to come, but don’t look
for anything definitive to come from it.
Media attention will be focused on the Amish religion, which is sadly
paradoxical since the Amish wish only to be left alone. It is, after all, one of the few religions
that do not wish to intrude on others or seek to convert. That in itself is refreshing these
days.
If
we are to take a lesson from this tragedy, we must look to another group, which
has been operating too much under the radar of mainstream media lately: the Westboro Baptist Church of Topeka,
Kansas. If you’ve heard anything about
this group recently, it was probably in connection with their sick need to
invade private mourning services of combat troops killed in Iraq with their
demonstrations of hate. They have
appeared around the country at these funerals bearing such signs as, “Thank
God For IEDs,” "Thank God for Dead Soldiers," "America Is
Doomed" and "Soldier Fag in Hell." They will use any excuse to blame America’s
problems on tolerance for homosexuals.
That is their message. Their
first protests, if you want to call them that, began with local funerals of
AIDS victims about sixteen years ago.
Since they managed to garner some national attention, they moved on to
other senseless demonstrations, always preying on the innocent survivors with
malicious hatred to equal the worst religiously inspired hatred in history -
just short of murder.
So,
it is no wonder that they announced their intentions to intrude upon the
private mourning of the Amish community in Pennsylvania Dutch country. They had some particularly cruel plans for
that one. Imagine calling those
innocent, little girls “whores” while their devastated parents wished only to
bury them in peace. It is probably even
more irritating to the Westbobro monsters that these Amish families are able to
forgive the man (and his family) that killed their children in the truest sense
of Christian forgiveness displayed since Christ uttered those famous words from
the cross:
“Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”
Compare
that to the quote from the Westboro’s spokesperson, Shirley Phelps-Roper:
"Those Amish people, everyone is sitting around talking
about those poor little girls — blah, blah, blah — they brought the wrath upon
themselves, the Amish don't serve God, they serve themselves." Source
As
of this writing, Westboro’s plans to attend those funerals have been canceled,
thanks to the generous offer of a conservative talk show host, Mike Gallagher,
who offered to give the group one hour of valuable air time on his nationally
syndicated radio show if they would lay off their sick plan to invade the
funeral services of those little girls.
They took him up on it and will get their hour on his October 5th
show.
It
is a Catch 22 when you weigh the proposition of giving this hate group the
attention they demand, or having them take it anyway in a much more personally
harmful venue, but my hat is off to Gallagher’s efforts. I believe he got it right when he said:
"It's awful for me to give up an hour of
my radio show ... but I think it’s worth the sacrifice to keep them away."
Yes,
there is a lesson here, but whether or not anyone in the mainstream media can
get it right remains to be seen. They
love to label some things as “hate crimes” that are best described as
crimes. Period. Liberals are guilty of passing judgment on a
particular point of view as “wrong” because the actions of sick groups like
Westoboro are so easy to portray as the result of those views. Case in point – anyone who believes that
homosexuality is wrong cannot be automatically viewed under a label of hate. That does as much harm as viewing those who
think abortion is wrong with the same hatred involved in senseless attacks on
abortion providers. The message is lost
in the hate.
Getting
the right message separated from the wrong actions - that’s the lesson. Let’s hope the media can get it right!