Do we have a new Fred Phelps? Flip Benham disrupts funeral of UU church member who died from cancer

[ck4829]

On Sunday morning, the Rev. Deanna Vandiver was leading a service at the First Unitarian Universalist Church of New Orleans, a graceful, Gothic-style brick building in the city's Freret neighborhood. The sanctuary, with 70 or 80 people, was nearly full, and included a group of teenagers who had just finished a week-long training in social justice.

The room was silent, as the congregation prayed for a young mother of two who had just lost her battle with cancer, for a social justice lawyer who had recently died, and for peace in Gaza.

That’s when the shouting started.

At first, Vandiver told me Wednesday, she had no idea what was going on, as “we were in the deeply sacred collective space” of silent, communal prayer. She thought the noise might be coming from, oh, maybe a visiting Quaker, someone who didn’t understand the congregation’s tradition of silence during meditation.

Then she heard what they were shouting: “Abomination!” “You are going to hell!”

Flip Benham’s group, Operation Save America, has blockaded clinic entrances, violated the privacy of doctors and abortion clinic workers, and harassed women seeking abortions. And now they have invaded the sanctuary of a church, or as Benham described it on his website, “presented the truth of the Gospel in this synagogue of Satan.”

http://www.latimes.com/local/abcarian/la-me-ra-antiabortion-fanatics-invade-a-church-service-20140723-column.html#page=1

[blkmusclmachine]

1. Somebody's gonna fill the nutjob void.

[bluestateguy]

2. Did WBC ever bust into a church and disrupt a funeral?

No. They are all lawyers and they know the law, and they have been able to stay within the law by picketting on public streets.

So this asshole is just breaking the law.

[Historic NY]

3. In NY State its a crime to distrupt a religious service

S 240.21 Disruption, or disturbance of religious service,
funeral, burial or memorial service.
A person is guilty of disruption or disturbance of a religious
service, funeral, burial or memorial service when he or she makes
unreasonable noise or disturbance while at a lawfully assembled
religious service, funeral, burial or memorial service, or within three
hundred feet thereof, with intent to cause annoyance or alarm or
recklessly creating a risk thereof.
Disruption or disturbance of a religious service, funeral, burial or
memorial service is a class A misdemeanor.

[jmowreader]

4. Nooo...actually, Benham has always been this way

Fred Phelps and Flip Benham both ran under the radar for a lot of years. Fred never really made the mainstream media until he started picketing soldiers' funerals; when he was pulling that shit only in front of gay funerals, the MSM didn't care.

Now that Fred is in hell and we're running out of soldiers' funerals, WBC isn't fun anymore. So now they can turn their attention to Benham, who if anything is worse than Fred ever was.

(On edit: You might remember a lil' ol' anti-abortion group called Operation Rescue. Benham took it away from Randall Terry and renamed it Operation Save America. Someone needs to start a group "Operation Save America from Flip Benham.&quot

[MohRokTah]

5. Criminal trespassing.

Throw their asses in prison.

[H2O Man]

6. How ugly.

Our culture is being spun in a dangerous direction.

[MohRokTah]

7. And just think, his equally moronic sons came a hair's breadth away from their own Reality

Propaganda TV show.

[Initech]

8. And we have the makings of a new domestic terrorist group on the horizon.

Fuck you Operation Save America.