A Small Victory for Religious Tolerance

Fellow CPF member Kerron Cross recently published a piece on religious tolerance on his blog. With his permission it is republished in full below:

It is fairly well known that I am something of a liberal Christian. (Not liberal in my Christianity, but rather my views are fairly liberal in comparison to some of the issues that the "Christian lobby" choose to bang on about in this country.)For me the Bible teaches of love, acceptance, inclusivity and caring for our most vulnerable.I know that all sounds fairly nicey-nicey, but it still shocks me somewhat the views that some perpetuate in the name of "God".Take Westboro Baptist Church in the US.
They make the rest of the Christian lobby in this country look like sandal wearing hippies in comparison.The Westboro Baptist church runs the websites GodHatesFags.com, GodHatesAmerica.com and others expressing condemnation of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender people, Roman Catholics, Muslims and Jews, as well as populations it considers to support the forementioned groups, including Swedes, Canadians, Irish and Americans.Yes, who could possibly bring themselves to hate Sweden? It's madness is summed up right there really, isn't it?
In fact it seems there are very few people this group do not hate. They achieved particularly notoriety (if that is the right phrase) for taking it upon themselves to picket and heckle at the funerals of aids victims and soldiers coming back from Iraq. They even take their children along to help peddle this message of hate.Nice people they are not.I have to say that when they came to my attention a couple of years ago, I thought they were a spoof - their position was so ridiculous and their message of bile so outlandish, I was foolish enough to believe that this sort of barefaced intolerance couldn't truly exist. It was only from watching subsequent documentaries (including a very good one by Louis Theroux) that I realised these people are deadly serious in their perverse message of hate.
But news comes through today that this particular church has been fined $10.9 million (£5.2 million) in damages. Let us hope that this puts them out of business for good.It is not just a victory for the family of the soldier who took the action, but also a victory for good taste, and for those that believe in genuine religious tolerance.-