Air Time Instead of
Funeral Protest
By JACQUES STEINBERG,
NYTimes on the Web, October 6, 2006
Mike Gallagher, a nationally
syndicated talk-radio host, turned over 55 minutes of his program yesterday
morning to representatives from a fringe Christian group in exchange for a
written promise that its members would not picket the funerals of the five Amish
girls killed on Monday by a gunman inside their Pennsylvania schoolhouse.
Some representatives of the group, the Westboro Baptist Church of Topeka, Kan.,
led by the Rev. Fred Phelps, have contended that the Amish community bears some
responsibility for the girls’ deaths as a consequence of its religious
practices.
The group said it was also seeking to draw attention to its dispute with Gov.
Edward G. Rendell of Pennsylvania, who signed legislation this year barring
pickets near funerals, a response to the church’s efforts to protest near the
funerals of American soldiers killed in Iraq. The group said the military
deaths were a result of God’s disappointment with “the sins of America.”
“The Lord your God is ramping up the issues, is smiting this nation,” Shirley
Phelps-Roper, a church representative and a daughter of Mr. Phelps, told
listeners of “The Mike Gallagher Show,” in reference to the shootings in
Lancaster County. “What he did with one stroke on that day, sending a
pervert in — because America is a nation of perverts — it’s appropriate he sent
a pervert in to shoot those children. The Amish people were laid to an
open shame because they are a false religion.”
In a telephone interview after the broadcast, Mr. Gallagher, whose program is
syndicated by the Salem Radio Network to nearly 200 stations and who is also an
on-camera contributor to Fox News, said that while he strongly disagreed with
the group, “I’ve never been prouder of this radio show being able to do some
good.”
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