I'm currently reading Megan Phelps-Roper's interesting autobiography of her life; she's probably most well know for being part of Westboro Babtist Church.
Here are some laughable quotes that I just read about Sweden:
Our campaign against Sweden only intensified when we discovered that the royal court was looking into possible legal action against us under their hate crimes law. With this sort of attention, how could we let go? We added GodHatesSweden.com to our growing list of Internet domains and attacked the country’s leader, Carl XVI Gustaf: “The popinjay King of Sweden—a moral titmouse in the plumage of a peacock, who lives lavishly with his kids on Sweden’s largest social security check—is King of Fags.”
My grandfather spun out news releases, and we unleashed the power of our fax machines, sending the missives to every government-related number we could unearth. “The Swedish Royal Court has confirmed that it has been receiving abusive faxes from the fanatical Westboro Baptist Church sect.” The technology was antiquated even in 2007, and we found it hysterical that our ol’ Gramps could literally cut and paste together the elements of a press release, “send it out on that little machine,” and stir up the highest levels of the Swedish government.
The campaign wouldn’t be complete without protests, of course. Our policy was not to leave the country and the protection of the First Amendment, but we were undeterred by our inability to travel to picket in Sweden. Instead, we targeted the country through its D.C. embassy and consulates in Chicago, Omaha, Minneapolis, and Portland; the local performance of a Swedish chamber orchestra; a Kansas alcohol distributor whose wares included Absolut Vodka; and a Topeka hardware store that sold Swedish vacuum cleaners. Even we laughed at the dubious connection between the vacuum retailer and a man sentenced to jail for an anti-gay sermon preached halfway around the world, but we were determined to make those Swedes hear the truth about their Sodomite sin—and just as important, to make them feel their impotence, the futility of their resistance to our message.
This was God’s Word, and we were His servants. They had no power to stop us. No weapon that is formed against thee shall prosper; and every tongue that shall rise against thee in judgment thou shalt condemn. This is the heritage of the servants of the Lord.
All Westboro members had to be prepared to engage reporters and passersby on the picket line, but with the forwarding of the calls, my mother became the church’s de facto spokesperson. That she worked from home gave her the flexibility to field calls during the workday when almost no one else was consistently and readily available, and her willingness to take on that job meant that Westboro was in the news more than ever before.
One-sided conversations with members of the media would ring through our house at all hours of the day and night, our mother celebrating the hundreds of thousands of fatalities in the 2004 tsunami—the Swedish ones in particular—and cataloguing for an Australian radio station all the reasons that Heath Ledger deserved eternal torment. More than one host referred to my mother’s sassy, funny, take-no-prisoners attitude as “radio gold.” Margie was the go-to backup when my mother simply couldn’t spare the time, and they would even tag-team occasionally—one of my favorite things to watch. Each of the women was formidable in her own right, but together, they were indomitable.
Posted from my blog with SteemPress : https://niklasblog.com/?p=23694