Westboro Church Won't Protest 9-Year-Old's Funeral, But...

Don’t look now, but the Westboro Baptist Church is displaying one tiny, itty-bitty modicum of decency! The church has announced that, in a saintly show of restraint, it will abandon plans to picket the funeral of 9-year-old Christina Taylor Green, who was killed in Saturday’s Tucson massacre. Of course, they’re only doing so because local radio stations offered them air time if they left the girl’s service alone, and they still intend to picket the funeral of Judge John Roll, but hey, baby steps.

“There’s not any power—no law, no human—in this country that’s going to be able to shut us up,” Shirley Phelps-Roper told the Topeka Capital-Journal. She said she and other protesters would comply with emergency legislation by staying about 1,000 feet away. They'll also protest near the supermarket where the shooting took place, and outside a local high school—because “that’s where they teach children rebellion.” (More Westboro Baptist Church stories.)