The funeral service for Sgt. Corey Dan on Saturday will be widely attended by people supporting the Dan family.

Sadly, however, also expected to attend will be members of the “Reverend” Fred Phelps’ Westboro Baptist Church of Topeka, Kan. If you’re not familiar with Phelps and his church members, they are the group that picketed at the funeral in 1998 of Matthew Shepard, the college student brutally beaten and left to die outside of Laramie, Wyo.

According to news reports, Phelps has decided that his version of Christianity states that God is killing our troops to show displeasure with our country’s tolerance of homosexuality. Additionally, Phelps has decided that his church needs to attend funerals of service members killed in Iraq and Afghanistan in order to spew this misguided hate during a profoundly sad time for grieving survivors.

It’s hoped that a group of Mainers and a contingent from a terrific group called Patriot Guard Riders (headed locally by Maine State Rep. Michael Vaughan, R-Durham) will also be attending to shield Corey Dan’s family from the sight and sounds of Phelps’ venom.

Regardless of your feelings about the rightness or wrongness of the Iraq war, I would encourage the public to be there to show that Mainers won’t stand for the Phelps’ followers’ hateful, abusive rhetoric to be spewed during the funeral of a soldier who has given his or her life for our country.

Steve McKelvey, Minot