The Westboro Baptist Church has tweeted that its members plan to picket the funerals of Mayci Breaux and Jillian Johnson. Both women were shot dead inside the Grand 16 movie theater in Lafayette, Louisiana, during a screening of Trainwreck on July 23 by crazed gunman John Russell Houser. The shooter took his own life after wounding several other people.
As news of the tragedy broke, the hateful church posted the video below on its Twitter account. A following message, which retweeted an Associated Press tweet, added the hashtag “#MustPicket.” Similar hashtags appeared as more and more developments came out in the shooting.
In a sick twist, Lafayette shooter John Houser’s seldom-used Twitter account includes a tribute to Westboro: “The Westboro Baptist Church may be the last real church in America [members not brainwashed].”
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A week before the shooting in Lafayette, Westboro had planned to picket the funerals of the Chattanooga shooting victims. Despite plenty of social media rumor, it’s unclear if the group showed up.
The city of Lafayette is 760 miles south of Westboro’s home in Topeka, Kansas.
The “church,” which has made its name by protesting the funerals of fallen soldiers and victims of tragedies — claiming the deaths are God’s vengeance for America’s acceptance of homosexuality in society — has proven time and again that no tragedy is safe from the group’s vile opinions.