Picture of previous WBC protest
Written by Alex Seitz-Wald for Think Progress
Today, friends and families gathered in Raleigh, NC to mourn Elizabeth Edwards, who died this week after battling cancer. Outside, a small group of protesters from the extremist anti-gay Westboro Baptist Church picketed the event because they said Edwards “spent her life in defiance and disobedience to God.” The church regularly harasses the families of dead American soldiers by picketing homosexuality at their funerals with signs like “pray for more dead soldiers, “and ” your sons are in hell.”
But at Edwards’ funeral today, the tiny group of hate mongers was confronted by more than300 counterprotesters, who turned out to stand against hate, despite the rain:
Members of the controversial Westboro Baptist Church picketed the funeral of Elizabeth Edwards in Raleigh, N.C. Saturday. But they were vastly outnumbered by a “human buffer” of people who quietly stood in the rain singing Christmas carols and carrying signs reading “God loves Elizabeth Edwards” or simply “Grace” and “Hope.”
In a 2007 interview, Mrs. Edwards described herself as “completely comfortable with gay marriage,” hence the Westboro protesters at the funeral. But on Saturday just five church members (two of them children) showed up to picket, waving hateful signs about Mrs. Edwards and the United Methodist Church where the service was held.
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