LYNCHBURG, Va. — A Liberty University student was arrested after telling a family member he had made bombs and planned to attend the funeral of the Rev. Jerry Falwell, authorities said.
Mark David Uhl, 19, was arrested Monday night on charges of manufacturing an explosive device, Major Steve Hutcherson said. A family member notified authorities.
Now ordinarily, I would be trying to decide which of two predictable snarkastic remarks to use here post-Virginia Tech -- the "here's another example of collegiate tolerance run amok", or the "maybe everyone on campus should arm themselves with soda cans of homemade napalm". But no, there's a fun detail to this. Really.
Investigators determined that Uhl had problems with a group that protested at the funeral, Gaddy said. The group, the Kansas-based Westboro Baptist Church, sent about a dozen members who claimed Falwell was a friend of gays to protest across the street. The group also has picketed soldiers' burials, claiming the deaths are God's punishment for a nation that harbors gays.
Falwell frequently spoke against homosexuality, and gay rights advocates have consistently opposed him. A group of Liberty University students staged a counterprotest; it wasn't clear whether Uhl was involved.
Jesse Benson, 19, of Zanesville, Ohio, said that he roomed with Uhl this year and that both shared the view that the Westboro group is a "sorry, disgraceful bunch of people," but that he was certain Uhl would never have done anything to harm them.
I dunno. If there's one group of "people" -- besides these skeevy cocksuckers -- that's practically begging for someone to do a little karmic house-cleaning and take them out, it's the inbred weaselly fuckfaces at the Westboro Craptist "Church". I am genuinely surprised that, after all the military service members' funerals these bastards have disrupted, some Marine's grief-stricken brother hasn't just walked up and whomped the shit out of a few of them.
I suppose instead we'll just have to wait for nature to take its course, and when Fred Phelps finally does the rest of the planet a huge favor and croaks, the rest of us can converge en masse on his outhouse of a church, and give him and his a taste of their own medicine. Hopefully a Fire Island-sized group pulls a sausage-train on his grave.
The interesting thing about the Phelps' protests is that if you didn't know anything about them, you'd be totally confused about why they're protesting a funeral. Their "message" is so far beyond meta that no one could possibly intuit their motives at a military funeral, much less at Falwell's funeral.
ReplyDeleteThey're like God's little non sequiturs for heterosexuality. Creepy, disgusting jackasses, sure - but without a scorecard, you'd be hard pressed to find any relevance in their protests. The world will be a better place when Right Rev. Fred is gone, though.
Yeah, it's still very unclear exactly what about Falwell's policy towards gays they're protesting. Maybe because he didn't explicitly advocate stoning or crucifixion, or burning them at the stake.
ReplyDeleteIt's very tempting to say that I wouldn't shed a tear if some goofy asshole strapped himself with Semtex and ball bearings and went off in the middle of those fuckers, but that would be wrong and make me just as bad as them. But damn, they are vile fucking people.
Yeah, that is their problem with him. I remember press here in Va. where he was calling Falwell a liberal, and this was in '99 or so, right after Matthew Shepard. I'm surprised none of them have actually taken the plunge and killed a gay person themselves.
ReplyDeleteGotta disagree on the morality of doing the Snoopy Dance every time one of these shitstains takes the long dirt nap, though. It's like the whole tolerance paradox; there's no need to apply the same standards that you use normally to those who refuse to even accept the ground rules to begin with. I'm not saying "would someone please shoot the bastards!"; I'm just saying if Fred's corpse is found along with Pat Robertson's, with both of them in a 69 position having choked on each others' schlongs, well, you're damn right I'm celebrating.
But anyway, did you ever see the Awful Truth episode where Michael Moore took a busload of flamboyantly out-and-proud gay guys on a trip to Kansas to counter-protest Phelps and crew? Classic.