By SCOTT CANON
The Kansas City Star
SOUTH HAVEN, Kan. — The Phelps family hoisted the same old laminated gay-bashing placards.
They made their same tired chants taking glee in a soldier’s death.
Another funeral, another round of pickets from the minichurch fixated on homosexuality.
Yet now that the Rev. Fred Phelps Sr. has moved on to flinging epithets at military martyrs, a few politicians have begun trying to silence him. Their success will depend on how carefully they mind free speech as they write their laws.
In the meantime, noise is met with noise.
Whenever the few protesters from Topeka’s Westboro Baptist Church shouted or sang Wednesday in South Haven, the earth trembled.
Any time they spoke up, the wrists of biker veterans twisted on dozens of throttles to strike the thundering chords of Honda and Harley-Davidson.More than 200 bikers had made themselves into a chrome-and-black leather barrier. The
10 anti-gay picketers stood on one side, drowned out by the noise. Mourners arriving for the funeral of Army Sgt. Evan Parker passed on the other side.
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