OFF THE WIRE
First, some Alpha Biker commentary... I got my most recent chance to see the Patriot Guard in action at Big Tom's (Mortal Skulls MC... LJ's brother) funeral in Long Island. Much respect to these men and women who truly preserve the honor of the fallen American Patriots. Thank you for what you do.
Chuck DeCost
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Williamsburg turned out to make honor and gratitude the message for a fallen hero
Todd Weaver was the kind of man any family, any community, any nation would be proud of.
Not so the members of the Westboro Baptist Church of Topeka, Kansas, who traveled to Williamsburg for the funeral of the young officer, killed in Afghanistan.
They didn't come to pay respect. They came to disrespect. To disrupt. To display what can only be described as their deranged version of Christianity.
They've become a tired stereotype at memorials for our military fallen — rag tag groups waving placards claiming "Thank God for dead soldiers" and "God hates your tears," blaming our tattered moral values for everything from 9/11 to wars. They have also brought their message of vengeance to concerts, football games and the funerals of religious leaders and victims of disasters and murder.
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In this free country, they're free to believe, as their signs say, that "God cursed America" for homosexuality. But they're free to co-opt the discussion only if the rest of us let them, if we allow their vicious voices to be the loudest in the public arena.
Last weekend, hundreds of determined men and women in the Williamsburg area refused to let that happen, and delivered some well-deserved comeuppance to Westboro Baptist Church.
Church members stirred local passions by announcing their intention to picket the Saturday memorial service for Weaver at the Williamsburg Community Chapel. It was a cruel attempt to dishonor the memory of a Bruton football star and Phi Beta Kappa graduate of the College of William and Mary, whose sense of duty was so strong that he served our nation in two wars, in Iraq and later Afghanistan, where he was killed shortly after his daughter's first birthday.
When local residents got wind of the intended desecration, they responded angrily on bulletin boards and in the Last Word column of the Virginia Gazette. They mobilized local residents to outnumber and out-demonstrate the Westboro Wackos.
So more than100 people lined the way to the church, creating a virtual wall of honor in support of the family and friends who came to remember the 26-year-old fallen soldier. From W&M students to elderly veterans, good Americans turned out to surround the Westboro protesters with placards and flags, shouts of support and patriotic hymns.
They outnumbered the three pathetic Westboro protesters.
To make sure mourners saw something more inspirational than Westboro's ugliness, the Patriot Guard Riders motorcycle club — who give bikers everywhere a good name with their dedicated service sheltering grieving relatives from Westboro at military funerals — erected their own wall, this one of American flags. Drivers passing by honked their horns and gave thumbs up signs. Signs emblazoned with "Support our troops" lined the road.
It's obscene that families grieving the loss of loved ones should be confronted with despicable messages from people who hate. It's sickening that sacrifice is met with condemnation, honor with dishonor. At least one stricken father tried to stop Westboro in court but failed, rightly, because our constitutional freedoms protect unpopular speech as much as that with which we agree.
But the residents of Williamsburg proved that one need not use violence or tamper with the First Amendment to put people like Westboro Baptist in their place. All they need to do is exercise their own freedoms to assemble and to speak — proudly and more loudly.
They showed the people who love Todd Weaver that their son and husband and father and brother and friend did not die in vain, and that his community respects his sacrifice.
original article
