Garden City, Kansas, stands up to bigotry

I'm a little late in posting this, but it's still relevant.

The Garden City Telegram had a terrific editorial about hate preacher Fred Phelps and his continued picketing of the funerals of soldiers killed in Iraq. Called You Failed Mr. Phelps, the newspaper in the town of only 27,312 talked about how Clint Upchurch, the soldier who was being buried was the opposite of Phelps. The editorial made a strong case for the privacy of families to grieve at funerals, but what really caught my eye were the other things the writer in this isolated Kansas town said about Phelps and his crusade.

One problem with your anti-gay crusade - and there are many - is that you continue to assail us with the same, tired message that's so predictable it's almost laughable.

Later, the editorial notes:

Even though we may want to look away, we can't overlook you or other corrupt members of society. You're like a festering wound that mustn't be ignored.

We need to know when evil is in our midst - to observe the wrongdoing, as disgusting as it may be, and be spurred to right that wrong.

Adolf Hitler was a hatemonger, too. Many people chose to ignore his early political rants, and we remember in painful detail what happened after that.

Thank you Editor/Publisher Dena Sattler. Well done.