We all know that Westboro Baptist Church planned protests at two area schools on Monday, Feb. 6 (Fort Zumwalt East and Clayton High) to protest their usual thing, gays. It seems to me that, not only do these people need to find real jobs, they need to find new things to protest and allow people to be people.

I will spare you from the faulty theology behind their reasons, but the fact that “God hates fags” is hard to prove using the Bible. All of this aside, I feel that the people involved in Westboro need to find lives of their own rather than make other people miserable with theirs.

It should go without a reminder that this same “church” protested the funeral of Howell Central alumnus Phillip Vinnedge last October. Phil wasn’t even homosexual, plus he served as a member of the United States Marines who fight so that these idiots even have the right to protest. I was a part of the funeral procession, and I must say that if it wasn’t for the Patriot Guard Riders, these protesters could have made an already sad day, ten times worse.

These individuals are now just finding scapegoats for reasons to protest. I find it hard to understand that God is punishing us for homosexuality through natural disasters and wars. Last time I checked, there were events like this before homosexuality became a large issue. Look back at Pompeii, the volcano wiped out the whole city and its inhabitants and these people didn’t even believe the same things as modern Christians do. Or we could look back at the extinction of the dinosaurs. Yeah, it’s a stretch, but this phenomenon can hardly be seen as God’s punishment for homosexuality.

Going back to Monday’s “protest,” Westboro cowards failed to even show up at Zumwalt East High School, but the community came out in full force. The streets were lined with these counter protesters who carried signs supporting the rights of gays. The protesters did show up at Clayton High School, though.

Here they were also met with a mass of anti-protesters who once again supported the rights and choices of homosexual people. I can only imagine what it would be like being a student on a bus, riding into the belly of the beast. This day was being covered on the news the night before and many of the students had an idea of what would be coming, but I would think that there is no possible way that any teenager could be completely prepared for what they saw on the way to school on Monday.

From experience, I knew that these people were coming for the Vinnedge funeral, but nothing could prepare me for the blatant disrespect shown by these adults. These radical, self-righteous, arrogant idiots were adults who should know the values of respect. Protesting the war is one thing, or protesting the government for acting outside of their given powers, but protesting at the funeral of a nineteen-year-old who gave his life fighting for your rights seems utterly immature.

If you ask me, I think these people should find more meaningful things to protest. How about the fact that there is an eight percent unemployment rate as of January, or that there are children and adults in America starving because they do not have the money to buy food to support themselves.

Or, like any real church would do, provide aid to those areas, such as Joplin, Mo. who have been hit by a devastating tornado and needs help to rebuild for their future. Any real church might also be involved in third world countries where children have no clean water to drink and suffer from malnourishment and simple diseases that they should not be exposed to because a vaccine exists to make them immune to these diseases.

Instead, all these radicals are concerned with is humiliating homosexuals who are contributing members to society, unlike the protesters themselves. It seems absolutely absurd to me that somebody who causes little problem to society has to be subject to such harassment and cruelty from a group that calls them self a church.