Canada To Phelps: Stay Out!

Citing laws against hateful acts, Canadian border officials turned back members of the Westboro Baptist Church yesterday, saying that they may not enter the country to make their planned protest at the funeral of the man murdered on a Greyhound bus last week.

Members of an anti-gay group which describes itself as a church have been barred from entering Canada, according to published reports. The Canadian Press and the Canwest News Service both report that the group, from Rev. Fred Phelps’ Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka, Kansas, were turned back when they attempted to enter Canada at a border crossing south of Winnipeg on Thursday.

The Canadian government has not commented on the reports, but Pat Martin, a New Democratic Party member of Parliament from Winnipeg, says he asked Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day to send an alert to the border patrol to look out “for people with signs and pamphlets that fit the hateful messages that the church promotes and to keep them out of the country.”

Canadian hate laws give the government the power to deny entry to people likely to violate the law. The so-called church was listed as a hate group under the law following previous protests.
Phelps, who runs the “God Hates Fags” website, had threatened to picket the Winnipeg funeral of a man decapitated on a Greyhound bus. Another passenger is charged with the sensational killing.

Phelps had threatened to protest the funeral of Tim McLean to show Canadians the murder was God’s response to liberal Canadian policies toward homosexuality.

Shirley Phelps-Roper, Phelps’ daughter and a frequent spokesperson for the “church” confirmed to both Canwest and CP that a small group of protesters was stopped at the Canada-U. S. border Thursday afternoon.

They won’t let us in, but we have a group that will cross in another spot,” she told the Canwest Winnipeg Free Press. “They’ll have to strip search everyone who crosses that border or they won’t know who we are. They’ll have to see the WBC [Westboro Baptist Church] tattoo on our butts.”

Because a random straight man decapitated on a Greyhound bus by a mentally ill person is a CLEAR indication of God's wrath at Canada's acceptance of homosexuals. However, this story does serve to highlight to difference between free speech allowances in the United States and Canada, as we have discussed here on JMG several times recently.