I have mixed sentiments about the just announced US Supreme Court decision that supports the rights of free speech even the hateful and cruel speech of Westboro Baptist’s inane funeral picketers. I suppose this leaves me free to say most emphatically what I believe: that the Westboro people will be the ones in Hell for their hatefulness and indiscriminant choice of targets. When we speak of sexual love in combination with affection and commitment then we shall not distinguish what sort of body bumps and fluid exchanges and lip locks are involved. Love trumps hatefulness every time. Jesus assured the Roman soldier that his beloved male companion was healed. As the Last Supper was prepared the disciples were sent to find the man carrying water, which a Jewish man would never do unless he had a gender alternatives lifestyle. Deuteronomy 23:1 says a eunuch has no place in the assembly before the Lord; but Phillip found the Ethiopian Eunuch and gave “him” a pronounced place in scripture. The hatefulness of the Westboro people is presumably based on their understanding of Bible, but I believe Christians must look more to the spirit of Jesus’ teaching than to the bigoted traditions of of ancient Mosaic times. It is clear then where the condemnations fall, and they fall on the unforgiving, the hateful, the merciless, the sort of people who bring added anguish to a soldiers’ parents at his burial. I am free to speak. I live in neither Uganda nor Afghanistan. I live in the USA, where Taliban-like-Baptists spew their venom with abandon. God loves them but he loves the Lovers too, and when it comes to judgment, that is left to the Lord.
