Westboro Baptist Church Gloats Over Wisconsin Temple Shooting
The Westboro Baptist Church waited only minutes after news broke of a mass shooting at a Sikh Temple in Wisconsin before taking to the internet to spread hatred about the attack.
The hate mongering church took to their Twitter accounts, asking if “God sent another shooter?, the Huffington Post reported. Church members were referencing the July mass killing in Aurora, Colo., at a midnight showing of “The Dark Knight Rises.”
In that occasion they also said the shooter, James Holmes, was sent by God. Church members also threatened to picket the funerals and memorial services for Colorado victims, but it turned out the threats were empty and they failed to show.
It could be that the church’s Phelps family is still bitter over a string of high-profile setbacks. The church’s virulent anti-gay pickets have been thwarted both by some creative counter-protesters and by Congress, which has restricted their ability to picket at the funerals of soldiers.
The shooting at the Sikh Temple is seen as one of the worst acts of domestic terrorism in recent memory, Fox News reported. Authorities said that 40-year-old ex-Army soldier Wade Michael Page entered the temple and began firing, killing six people and wounding four others before dying in a shootout with police.
Police haven’t released many details about the killing or the reason why Page did it. Page is reportedly a white supremacist and was once the member of a skinhead band, The Huffington Post reported.
Though members did their usual victim-blaming for the attack, the “church” leader Fred Phelps took it a step further, saying the attack came because God was angry that the Westboro Baptist Church members were once treated poorly in Wisconsin.
Beautiful work of an angry God who told Wisconsin to keep their filthy hands off his people (WBC)!
#godsenttheshooter!m.cnn.com/primary/wk_art…— Fred Phelps Jr (@WBCFredJr) August 5, 2012
The Westboro Baptist Church has not indicated whether it plans to picket the funerals of those killed in Wisconsin.
