Thorson Jensen received the news that his younger brother Erik had died on a Monday. Erik died in Afghanistan by an improvised explosive device on the road side in an area of the country that looked like Mars. Thor had been working on a 1947 Indian Motorcycle back in Nowhere, Minnesota when he received the call from his father.
The news hit Thor rather hard. Erik had been Thor’s younger brother who had been uncommonly handsome, wholesome and talented. Erik had been on the student council, a wrestler and a singer in the school choir as well as musicals. The only odd thing about Erik was that he always seemed indifferent to women.
During boot camp, Erik had met a young man from Northern California by the name of Timothy who had been a high school football player and an outstanding student. The two hit it off and became a couple. Erik and Timothy together came to grips with their sexuality and found that they were each other’s best friend and lover. Both of them believed that being discrete was important and to act like men was expected and so it was not known to anyone in either of their lives for quite a while.
It was during Christmas while Erik was on leave that he broke the news to his family. It was like a bomb had been dropped on their ice hut on one of 10,000 lakes in Minnesota. There was Thor, Erik and their father Lars, ice fishing in a hut when Erik told his brother and father the news. Thor and Lars were in disbelief but after giving it some thought, they later realized that there were signs that they just never picked up on such as Erik’s love for musicals, gardening and color coordination of clothes. Erik was just too handsome and too perfect of a man for an area of Minnesota that was just not that refined.
Thor had been the black sheep and renegade of the family. He looked like Hulk Hogan and had been a modern day pirate that pillaged. After doing half his adult life in prison, Thor went clean and started his own motorcycle repair shop that also fixed snowmobiles and lawnmowers. It was by no means lucrative but it was steady and that is what Thor wanted. Thor found a woman to settle down with that was covered in tattoos and had three children by three different fathers and was a recovering heroin addict. They were a typical biker family.
It was quiet for a good minute or so after Erik broke the news to his brother and father that he was not only gay but had found his life partner. Thor broke the ice with a little joke.
“We wouldn’t mind meeting him I suppose… Hope he won’t take offense to the fact that I think all Oakland Raider fans are queers.”
Timothy showed up at Easter with Erik. Timothy was equally good looking, masculine and well mannered. Thor and Lars didn’t know what to discuss with Erik and Timothy at first but after awhile, it was like talking to any other men. The fact that they were not demonstrative in front of them or effeminate in anyway, made the whole thing harder to believe. Mom, dad and brother shrugged it off and decided that maybe it wasn’t so bad after all.
Nobody ever thinks that they would out live their children and to stand at a grave site service and subliminally listen to a priest preach the merits of a young man he did not know, was like back ground music to the parent’s deeper thoughts and memories of their son’s life from the cradle to the grave.
A stone’s throw away was a group from Kansas that carried placards that read things like, “thank god for dead soldiers” and “god hates fags”. They yelled over the priest who was saying pleasant things about a young man who was good and had selflessly served his country. The extremist, anti-homosexual, anti-flag, anti-American group claimed to be primitive Baptists. Primitive as in preliterate with physical similarities to humans. Uncivilized, savage, simple and wholly unsophisticated splintered synod of Baptists. Their hateful message was so profound that even other Baptists couldn’t recognize them as being like them.
Thor and his band of biker buddies stood by silently upon Thor’s orders. Thor’s emotions changed from sadness to anger.
The obnoxiously hateful group spewed such vitriol at a moment when as big and strong as he was, Thor was about to break down and cry. Instead, Thor and his band of friends dressed in leather and boots just glared at the idiocy of the moment. Women with high pitched voices yelling over men reciting bible verses who claimed to understand what god hated.
“Most god loving people would agree that the men of Sodom were wicked and sought to break the order of things and destroy the differences between right and wrong. This faggot was punished by god for being a sodomite. He was a faggot and god hates faggots. Genesis 13:13… In the beginning god discussed his disgust with faggots, sodomites, homosexuals.”
Lars balled up his fist and was about to attack the group when Thor stopped his father. Lars was mystified by his older son’s restraint. Thor had always been prone to fisticuffs. If ever a time called for violence, the desecration of a soldier’s funeral called for action. Thor simply whispered calmly in his father’s ear.
“God has a plan for those motherfuckers.”
One of the biker brotherhood was instructed to follow the troop away from the funeral to a motel where they were all registered. It was at about midnight when most people are in their deep REM sleep that Thor and his gang of friends kicked open the doors to their motel rooms and rounded them up. Thor lit a large cigar and took swigs from a bottle of Jack Daniels as he kicked back in a chair with his feet up on the bed. The group of protesters sat cowered together on a double bed while an infomercial on the television loudly made a pitch for a fat hiding girdle like device. Fat people could look thin by wearing what was akin to a girdle without having to exercise. It was nothing new except to those who knew nothing about the Victorian Era. One of the bikers turned off the television so that Thor could be heard clearly.
Thor opened up a dictionary and began to read calmly to all of them the definition of empathy.
“Empathy… If you’re psychotic this means nothing to you and I suspect that to be without of empathy leaves you probably in the psycho camp. You bunch of fucking misfits picked the wrong fucking funeral to show up at… Well then, let’s see… Empathy- is the capacity to recognize and, to some extent, share feelings such as sadness or happiness by another being… Those unable to recognize this cornerstone in human emotion are devoid of empathy. Meaning that they do not give a fuck about other’s emotions. You motherfuckers are going to learn something about empathy tonight. After tonight, I suspect you will be able to put suffering into the proper perspective.”
Thor and his friends drove through the night from southern Minnesota through Iowa into Kansas so that all those attending the Westboro Baptist Church could see the fruit of god’s labor. Hanging off of every peak around the church was a protestor who was bound by the hands and ankles together with a tennis ball stuffed into their mouths with a duct tape to secure the balls in their mouths. Sticking out of their exposed anuses were rubber chickens. The heads of the rubber chickens were hidden with in the anal cavities. All that was visible of the rubber chickens was a neck and body. A dozen members hung from every peak of the church with their asses exposed with dangling rubber chickens. The, “godhatesamerica.com” banner was removed. In its place was spray paint on the building that read, “God hates haters more than faggots.” It was a sight to behold on the Lord’s day.
