Dear Westboro Baptist Church,

You know, at one time you guys were a great source of comedy for me.  Your ignorance and hate are so absurd that it’s actually funny.  Some of the best pictures I’ve seen on the internet are from counter-protests you inspire.  In short, your role of “ignorant fool jumping up and down at the back of the room” has been nothing if not entertaining.  You’ve been quite good at it over the several years I’ve known of your existence.  In fact, I’ve been quite willing to simply ignore your hatred and let you go about your business without complaint.  But not any more.  You finally planned the one protest that I cannot condone.  You committed the one sin that I refuse to believe even God would forgive.  What was it, you ask?  What was it that you planned that would inspire so much hatred where there was once simple amusement?  You made plans to use the death of a child to further your sick agenda.

What kind of sick, twisted, amoral, sycophantic organization are you that would even consider using the most heinous tragedy imaginable, the loss of a child, to further your own perverse ends?  Does your organization have no shame?  No sympathy?  Your country is in mourning and you actually believe that it is perfectly acceptable to use this tragic event to further your message that “God hates Fags.”  How dare you.  How dare you plan to take away a family’s right to bury their child in peace.  How dare you have the nerve to actually claim that Jared Loughner, the man who went to a grocery store parking lot in Tucson Arizona and opened fire on the crowd there, killing six people and injuring approximately fifteen others, was sent by God.  What is wrong with you?!  Do you even have enough common sense to realize that, by your own logic, you are claiming God is a child killer?

This man is an agent of God.  Really?  This is Jared Lee Loughner.  He is a Nihilist, and Atheist, and a potentially insane individual.  Jared Loughner is a man whose ideal reading list includes “Mein Kampf,” and “The Communist Manifesto.”  He has a history of untreated mental illness.  He is a conspiracy theorist of such extremes that the conspiracy fringe itself wants nothing to do with him.  Is this truly your idea of an “Agent of God?”  A crazy person?

Shocked by your insensitivity, I decided to take a look at your website to get an idea of what you’re truly about.  Or at least that’s what I would have done if your site was actually working.  Frankly, I hope there’s a hacker sitting in a basement somewhere who decided to do the world a favor and take your site offline.  As near as I can figure out from your Wikipedia entry, you’re not even a church.  You have no standing in the eyes of God whatsoever.  You’re a hate group.  For reasons I cannot even begin to fathom, you have deluded yourself into believing that God hates gays, jews, and presumably any other minority I could name.  While you claim that you practice “primitive Baptist and Calvinist” principles, I cannot help but claim amazement that you have the nerve to refer to yourself as “Baptist” let alone as a church.  You guys have never even read the bible have you?

Having managed to get onto “godhatestheworld.com” I took a look at your section on the “John 3:16 Arminian lie.”  Now essentially you claim that Jesus didn’t die for everyone, but only for those who believed in him.  You also seem to claim that Jesus did not want new believers because your article appears to claim that if you didn’t already believe in Jesus, you were screwed.  Really?  How about we ignore the basic logic found in the fact that religion is built on bringing in new believers.  Let’s ignore the fact that, by your own logic, Christianity should’ve died out several thousand years ago.  How about we, instead, look at the basis of your argument.  You claim that, by looking at the context in which John 3:16 is written, as well as the context of the verses that come both before and after it, Jesus is only interested in saving certain individuals.  Really?  You’re going to base your entire argument on context.  Really?  Do you even know what the word “context” means?  Let me give you a hand by providing you the dictionary.com definition:

con·text

–noun

1.

the parts of a written or spoken statement that precede or follow a specific word or passage, usually influencing its meaning or effect: You have misinterpreted my remark because you took it out of context.

2.

the set of circumstances or facts that surround a particular event, situation, etc.

3.

Mycology . the fleshy fibrous body of the pileus in mushrooms.

And the funny thing here is that “usually influencing its meaning or effect” part.  You see, it’s really easy to make a translated document like the bible (a document that has been translated by man so often that it’s doubtful its author would even recognize the current version) mean whatever you want it to mean.  Your argument that Jesus does not save everyone is false because you have chosen the meaning that is most convenient for you, and decided the context of John 3:16 based on what you want it to be.  I’d be willing to take you remotely seriously if you were to actually attempt to base your claims in fact.

That being said, there’s a fun part to using “context.”  And that fun is in the fact that it is not at all difficult for me to take your own logic, your use of context, and turn it against you.  In your article on John 3:16, you state that “The context is “the world of believers” (whether they are Jews or Gentiles). Those are the people God loves. Those are the people for whom Jesus died. Jesus didn’t come to condemn those people - He came to save them.”  The only context and meaning I can take from this is that God loves Jews and sent his only son, Jesus Christ, to save them.  After the Christianization of the Roman Empire, the word “Gentile” came to mean non-Jew.  Therefore, the context that I take from the words of you, the Westboro Baptist Church, is that Jesus died for the sins of Jews and non-Jews alike.  Therefore, Jesus loves everyone and by your own logic died for their sins.  Therefore your logic is false.  Again.

At this point, I believe it safe to assume that your most likely response is that “the only true Jews are Christians.”  Call a Christian a Jew.  I dare you.  I’m pretty sure that wouldn’t go over terribly well, which is why I seriously doubt that you have the guts to do it.

So essentially, I have come to the conclusion that the Westboro Baptist Church is not at church at all.  It has no business calling itself a Baptist or a church.  It is a hate group.  A hate group whose “congregation” is filled with self-centred, small minded, ignorant, cowardly, hateful sinners who wouldn’t know the Ten Commandments of Moses himself rose from the dead and held the tablets in front of them.

I myself am a non-practicing Pagan, Wiccan by definition.  Why?  Well there’s two reasons.  One is that Wicca is, in my view, the best fit for my spiritual beliefs.  Two, religious zealots like you, Westboro Baptist Church who are so close-minded and fearful of what they don’t understand that they deny themselves all the wonders our world has to offer.  It is bigots like you, whose hatred is at such a level that even the Klu Klux Klan wants nothing to do with you, who drive people such as myself away from the religion and the God you claim to support.

In fact, you know what?  The media has been looking for a target in the wake of this terrible tragedy.  Someone or some thing they can point to and say “It’s their fault this happened.”  I think I have a great target for them.  I think I know exactly who to point to and say “If these people were prevented from spewing their hatred toward anyone and any thing, if their calls for violence and encouragement of the worst parts of humanity were ignored, those people in Tucson would still be alive.”  Yes, that’s right, I’m thinking of you here.  You, the Westboro Baptist Church, and other hatemongers like you, are in my view partially responsible for the recent tragedy in Tucson Arizona.

While it saddens me that they had to essentially give you what you wanted in order to accomplish it, I must take a moment in this open letter to applaud the actions of 102.1 The Edge’s Dean Blundell in Toronto as well as radio station KXXT-AM in Phoenix Arizona for giving the self-rightious hatemongers of the Westboro Baptist Church airtime on their radio shows in exchange for canceling the proposed protests outside the funeral of nine year old Christina Taylor Green.  Thank you from the bottom of my heart for taking action and helping give the parents of this girl the peace they deserve during their horrible ordeal.  I must also applaud the state government of Arizona.  To see a ruling body step up and enact legislation, in record time I might add, that serves the will of the people is truly refreshing to see.  I pray that this trend continues, and it is truly my hope that when you arrive to protest during the funeral of US District Court Chief Judge for the State of Arizona John Roll, that every man woman and child in the state of Arizona shows up to stop you.

I have always taken tremendous pride in having had a childhood in which I grew up exposed to people of every race, creed, sex and religion that humanity has to offer.  I consider myself blessed in that regard, and to the Westboro Baptist Church and anyone who would use the pain and suffering of others to promote their selfish agendas and their hate, I would say simply this: Fuck you.

Fuck you for wanting to deny others the childhood I was lucky enough to have.  Fuck your hate, bigotry and insensitivity.  Fuck your espousal of ignorance in the name of a God you clearly know absolutely nothing about.  Fuck your narrow-mindedness.  Fuck you for instilling in me the desire to create exceptions to the rule of “Freedom of Speech.”  Fuck you for having the gall to even consider trampling on the terrible tragedy that is the loss of an innocent child.  Fuck you for the fact that right now I want nothing more than to pick up a picket sign, fly to anywhere a member of your “church” can be found, and tell you exactly what I think of your beliefs.  In fact, fuck you for being a detriment to the human condition.

I will end this letter with the words of Jon Stewart who, while he was referring to Fox News when this clip was filmed, perfectly says what I (and hopefully every rational, logical, open minded human being on the planet) would like to say to you more than anything:

Sincerely,

Mike Montgomery