I was reading today about Heath's Ledger's death at age 28. It seems he died of what is hopefully, an accidental overdose. He was the guy who was the troubled man in Brokeback Mountain. In the article that I read, it was clear that his funeral is going to be a hot ticket item for this extreme right-wing church. Apparently they are going to protest outside the funeral home and cemetery. Loudly. This is the same group that my family encountered several years ago while eating at McDonald's in Versailles, Indiana.

We were there with all three of our boys, three nephews, one niece, and Jon's sister and brother-in-law. Versailles is tiny. I think we were at the one and only intersection. There is a gas station right across from McDonald's and this group had huge signs that said things like "God Hates Fags". They had ginormous pictures of dismembered babies from abortions and were going up to people's faces totally screaming. They were fierce. They were hateful. They hated everyone except those in their group. People at the gas station were basically powerless to get them to leave. People would argue, the police would come and go, and this group would stay. It was troubling to say the least. It made me sick to my stomach to see people use God's name like that, with such hate and vengeance. To use it so selfishly. This is the same group who protests outside of slain American soldier's funerals. They say things about one soldier down, more to go and stuff like that. They say that God wants them to do things like kill gay men and bomb abortion clinics. Like I said, it's all so troubling.

When I read the Heath Ledger article, I immediately thought, 'what kind of person does this?' I mean, what kind of person wakes up in the morning and is actually brainwashed into believing that by showing such hate, such disregard for humans, that they are actually pleasing God? And then I remembered a story from the book Blue Like Jazz.

During Sorority pledge week, right in the middle of the full festivities, a group of christians set up a confession booth. People would enter and think they were going to confess their sins. And I'm betting that away at college, in the middle of the rush, people felt pretty relieved to be doing some confession. But this booth actually was a tent for christians to confess to non-christians that they had been the hypocrites. That they had looked down on the non-christians, that they had browbeaten them, preached to them, shirked them. That in reality, the one thing christians were told to do...love others...they had failed to do.

And in remembering this story, I realized that although I am not showing dismembered babies at Heath Ledger's funeral, that I have, in fact, done some pretty good misleading in my day also. There have been times that I was oh so quick to tell others of their errors instead of leading by example. So, in effect, I have held up the God hates fags sign too.

Maybe I should make a confession booth...hmmm...