Westboro Baptist Church Petition: Activists Aim To Strip Church’s Tax-Exempt Status

The Westboro Baptist Church is under full assault in the wake of the Connecticut school shootings, with online activists targeting the church and aiming to strip it of its tax-exempt status.

In the wake of Friday’s school shooting in Connecticut, Westboro Baptist Church members tweeted their intentions to picket memorial services for the victims, which included 20 children who attended Sandy Hook Elementary School. This caused an immediate and full-forced reaction from the internet, with the online hacker group Anonymous finding and releasing personal information on Westboro Baptist Church members.

Now activists have taken the assault on the Westboro Baptist Church a step further, threatening to cut off the church’s revenue by taking away its tax-exempt status. Two separate petitions have been created on the White House’s We The People website, which pledges that President Obama will officially respond to any that receive at least 25,000 signatures within a month.

In just a few hours, each of the separate petitions garnered more than 4,000 votes, and together they had more than 10,000 by Sunday evening.

“The members of this hate group make a practice of targeting funerals to make their case, routinely inflicting further pain and anguish onto the mourning families of deceased soldiers and, even worse, the victims of tragic crimes,” one petition read. :They hold signs thanking God and celebrating the deaths of these people. They wave these signs in the faces of the families.

“By granting their tax exemption WE ARE FUNDING THEIR HATE. This must change.”

The Westboro Baptist Church has not announced any more specifics on plans to picket memorials for the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting victims, but is continuing to earn venom for statements members have already made. A blog from the church praised the shooter and noted that there was a good ratio of children to adults killed, ZDNet noted.