To Marine’s Father, Suit Is More Than Money

The " Rev." Fred W. Phelps Sr., is truly a nasty character and I find him personally reprehensible. Thus, I was pleased to see that his "church" was hit with a $10+ million judgment from a case arising out of the picketing of the funeral of an Iraq War victim. What is interesting is to hear the straight solder's family basically saying what the LGBT community has said about Phelps for years. Here are highlights from a New York Times story ( http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/02/us/02protest.html?_r=1&oref=slogin):

BALTIMORE, Nov. 1 —After a year and a half of anger, grief and legal maneuvering, the father of a marine killed in Iraq has said the success of his suit against a fundamentalist sect that picketed his son’s funeral means more than the jury’s $10.9 million damage award on Tuesday.

“If I can take whatever they have and stop them, good,” said the father, Albert Snyder, 52, a salesman from York, Pa., whose son, Lance Cpl. Matthew A. Snyder, 20, was killed two months after arriving in Iraq in January 2006. “I was not motivated by money. I want to shut this church down, if you can call it a church. I call it a cult or a hate group. I sat in that courtroom for a week and a half and never once heard them say a good thing about God.”

Mr. Snyder said he hoped that other military families whose relatives have been picketed would take his victory in Federal District Court here as a signal to step forward. “I had seen them do it to another family,” Mr. Snyder said, “and it brought back all the bad memories. I don’t even know how I got the courage to do it. I was like the papa bear: ‘You can do anything to me, but don’t try to do it to my children.’ Those people tarnished Matt’s coffin.” Mr. Snyder said his only hope was to cripple the church financially.

One does have to wonder why most of what one hears coming out of the mouths of "Christians" nowadays is mostly hate and the demonization of others. Not exactly what Jesus preached.