Radical Group declares Tsunami punishment from God

Monday, January 3, 2005

Topeka, Kansas —

The Westboro Baptist Church (WBC), known for its radical anti-homosexual statements, has founded a website following the Asian Tsunami disaster targeting Sweden. It is the most recent in a string of websites formed by his followers, including ones against Canada, United States, and their original website, godhatesfags.com, campaigning against homosexuals.

The anti-Swede website — godhatessweden.com — proclaims "thank God for 5,000 dead Swedes" and indicates that the church members "pray for all 20,000 Swedes missing in the Tsunami's wake to be declared dead." The website also links to a recording of a recent sermon by Reverend Phelps and a flyer containing the church's official position. The flyer is a caricature of a devil with small signs declaring that Sweden is a "Homo-fascist state" and a "damned land of ... Sodomites".

The WBC's outcries against Sweden seem to stem from the arrest of Pastor Ake Green by Swedish authorities for describing homosexuals as "a horrible cancerous tumour in the body of society".

The Westboro Baptist Church, founded in 1955 by Fred Phelps, is known for its continuous series of protests and for picketing the funerals of homosexuals, w:AIDS victims, and gay rights activists. Other than the Asian Tsunami disaster, the group has, in the past, declared the September 11th attacks on the United States and the Columbia Space Shuttle disaster are messages from God warning of His wrath to come against homosexuals, whom he refers to as 'fags' on account of the fact that, like a faggot of wood, they "fuel God's wrath".

In the FAQ of their main website, GodHatesFags.com, Rev. Phelps expresses his followers' opinions of the Tsunami disaster:

"The tsunami was an adumbration of the wrath of God, a harbinger of things to come: that Great Day of Judgment... those Asian countries weren’t the only ones affected by the tsunami. Do you realize that among the dead and missing are 3,500 Swedes and over 3,000 Americans? Sweden, who recently jailed a Gospel preacher for a month because he preached Bible verses and sentiments about the abomination that is the homosexual lifestyle from his own pulpit to his own congregation. America, who is awash in diseased fag feces & semen, and is an apostate land of the sodomite damned. And you wonder if this is the wrath of God?"

References

Dale Hurd. "Swedish Pastor Sentenced for 'Hate Speech'" — CW News, September 10, 2004

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