Update, January 12: The religious nuts have been prevented from protesting at the funeral.
‘Angels’ are planning to shield mourners at the the funeral of a 9-year-old girl from the hategroup that calls itself the “Westboro Baptist Church,” CNN reports.
The girl is one of six people who died Saturday during the attempted assassination of U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords.
The Westboro group — a hate group that masquerades as a Christian church — has made its name picketing the funerals of people who died of AIDS, gay people, soldiers and anyone else they wish to condemn.
When the religious cult announced its intention to picket the funeral, a number of people in Tucson, Colorado, planned an “angel action” — with 8-by-10-foot “angel wings” worn by participants and used to shield mourners from pickets.
The actions were created by Coloradan Romaine Patterson, who was shocked to find the Topeka church and its neon signs outside the 1999 funeral of Matthew Shepherd, a young gay man beaten and left on a fence to die in Laramie, Wyoming.
• More about the Westboro ‘Baptist Church’ hategroup
Outtake from The Most Hated Family in America, by British report Louis Theroux