I hope this wasn't arson as well.

Let's get this straight:  Arson is really bad.  Political arson is about as dangerously uncivil as you can get. 

Yes....even if they are stirring up hate and encouraging, inciting and celebrating murder.

Even if they insult honorable millitary service, and publicly abuse the bereaved families of service members.

Even if they preach hate and intolerance.  Even if they abuse children by brainwashing them into a cultish mentality that makes it impossible for them to function in a modern society

You might argue that they deserve to ge their compound burned down.  And that may be, I don't feel qualified to decide what people deserve (although I will occasionally use the word in a case of hyperbole).

But if someone DID set fire to the Phelps compound in the dead of night, they should ask themselves these questions:

1) What lack of self-respect do you have that you have to go to your enemies in the dark of night and set fire to their property while they sleep?  Don't you have the courage of your convicitons?  For God's sake stand up and be counted.  Don't act like a worm.

2)What will it accomplish?  Do you think it will change what the Bible says?  Do you think it will change their belief that it is the word of God?  Do you think that somehow this will deter them from demanding that the government kill homosexuals? Do you think it will frighten them?  They're religious zelots.  Their religious beliefs are more important than their own lives, the lives of their children, their well being, and their mental health.  They've already sacrificed everything they are including their own sense of their own self-worth to their religion.  All you will do is further entrench them.  They have a mission from God to make the country comply with Biblical law.  Do you think a scorched garage is going to deter them?  No.  It will only harden their resolve, and encourage them into thinking they have hit a nerve.  It will rally them to more viggerous action.

Their religious beliefs have wired them to be REWARDED by "persecution".  That's why they seek it out, happily recount every instance, real or imagined, that they can find.  They invite it because it validates them and tells them they are on the right track.  They celebrate it because it makes them feel special, and they recount ever instance of it they can find because it binds them together in a community of the "special persecuted rightous" brotherhood of the Godly.

In other words, if this was arson, you are helping them.  Stop it.

3)  What so you think this does to our country and the current state of discourse?  You know...all you're going to do is make them objects of sympathy to their religious bretheren.  People who currently sympathize with them, but were on the side-lines are likely to finally throw in and come to their defense.  You would be making the problem worse.

4) If you are a Christian "defending" your religious beliefs...God help you.  You just became the other side of the same coin.

(Hat Tip: Pharyngula)