Church To Picket Marine's Funeral

Its Time To Tax The Churches! This Is Way Over The Line! A controversial Kansas church plans to picket the funeral of a Moorhead, Minnesota Marine who was killed in Iraq. Sgt. Bryan Opskar was killed on July 23 when a roadside bomb exploded. A military spokesman says the 32-year-old Marine was conducting combat operations near Ar Rutbah, Iraq. Sgt. Bryan Opskar Ten ANTI-AMERICAN MUSLIM TERRORIST WANNABEES from the Westboro Baptist Church of Topeka, Kansas, plan to picket for 30 minutes before Opskar's funeral in Moorhead on Tuesday, said Shirley Phelps-Roper, church Propagandist and daughter of church minister. The church operates two anti-gay Web sites and links soldiers' deaths in Iraq to a bomb that exploded on its compound in 1995. A news release from the church says Opskar was killed by "by an IED (improvised explosive devices), like the IED America used to bomb our church, in a terroristic attempt to stop WBC's anti-gay preaching." "We may be pardoned for seeing a direct correlation between the Improvised Explosive Devices killing American kids in Iraq and the IED that nearly killed a sleeping Westboro baby August 20th 1995," the release said. Phelps-Roper said the group pickets only public funerals where the military promotes the war and downplays the situation in Iraq. The funeral of Opskar, of the 2nd Marine Division out of Camp Lejeune, N.C., is scheduled to begin at 10:30 a.m. Tuesday at Trinity Lutheran Church. The Moorhead Police Department will send more officers to Opskar's funeral to prevent any conflict between the mourners and the picketers, said police Sgt. Chris Carey. Police also will videotape the picketing, he said. Carey also advised mourners to ignore the picketers. "If somebody was to address the West Baptist Church, they're playing right into what they would like," he said. "The best thing to do is ignore the message they're sending. They're an extremely small minority from the United States that feels that way." Opskar's father, Erling Opskar, did not return a phone message left by The Forum of Fargo. In 1998, the church picketed the funeral of Matthew Shepard, a gay college student whose murder sparked a national outcry for hate-crimes legislation. More recently, the group carried signs that read "America is Doomed" and "God Hates Fags" at a soldier's funeral in Oklahoma last week. On Thursday, services will be held for Opskar in Princeton, where he grew up.