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    Wednesday, March 26, 2008

    Because Really, What This Story Needed Was More Bat-Shit Crazy People

    I haven't written about this because it really hit me hard. The fact that one of the kids was Andrew's age and named Ethan is what got to me. So those of you who aren't from here haven't heard about it. But this, about the fine Rev. Phelps and the plans for the WBC to come protest at the funeral, made me break my silence.

    See, you out-of-staters might not know it, but God apparently hates Iowa. First, there was the court that allowed gay couples to get married. Then, there was the state law prohibiting protests within 500 yards of a funeral. Finally, there is the fact that Iowa City is among the gay-friendliest cities in America.

    (Really, we are. City law states that if a gay person asks us to perform a sex act with them, we have to do it. That's how gay-friendly we are!)

    So God hates Iowa, and to demonstrate that hate, God - and I'm quoting here - "sent the shooter" as punishment for Iowa's sins. (Note: As anyone who can read could tell you, there was no shooter, no shots, and no shooting victims. Facts are funny things.)

    Now, I don't want to get into the strangeness of someone professing to be a Christian apparently never having heard of the New Testament God (aka the friendly God). Nor do I want to get into the strangeness of God sending a hitman to kill innocent children as young as three. I mean, if God really was trying to send a message, especially a message about the evils of homosexuality, you'd think he send a hitman to take out some gay people. And not take them out in the way that Iowa City city law requires us to take out gay people - no, in the killing way of taking out people.

    To me, if you want to use the logic that God targets the innocent to drive home how sinful we Iowans are to the ultimate extreme, you realize that God shouldn't just be targeting the innocent - God should be targeting those who actively protest against homosexuality. That would really drive home how angry God was at us. So, until someone takes out the entire Phelps family (again, not the good way of taking out), I'm going to assume that God isn't sending hitmen to kill Iowa's innocents.

    Of course, the notion that Steve Sueppel was a hitman for God makes as much sense as any other theory people have put forward for why he did what he did. Let me reiterate what I said about the Virginia Tech shootings - as much as we want to see a reason, we won't. To quote the Rats of Boomtown, we can see no reasons because there are no reasons. The silicon chip inside his head got switched to overload and Sueppel went totally bat-shit crazy. It wasn't because of his legal problems, it wasn't because he didn't want his family to deal with the shame, it wasn't because of the harshness of the legal system - it's because he went crazy. We'll never know why - he made sure of that himself - but it doesn't matter why. All that matters is that he went nuts, two adults and four children are dead, and the Desperate Attention Whores from Kansas are coming to town.

    In other words, no happy endings here.

    1 comment:

    Matt said...

    I can't believe people would actually protest at the funeral of children. How they could be so callous to the feelings of the family? Blows my mind.

    The whole thing is just impossible to understand. As you say, the man lost his mind. What's particularly scary to me is how so many people have said he was perfectly normal and a loving father. Makes you wonder if that could happen to anyone.