I'm done being a Baptist, thanks to the Westboro Baptist Church.

I was raised Baptist.

I went to Sunday School and church nearly every Sunday from age two to 20.

But over the past 15 years, my attendance at church has occurred about as many times as the Mayan calendar has promised the world will end. (Which is what, 50 times?)

My original departure from the Baptist church occurred after a pastor lambasted women one Sunday during a sermon. He was angry at women who divorced their first husbands—my mother was one of those women. She divorced the deadbeat sperm donor that I can't even bring myself to call a father and remarried the only father I've ever known.

The pastor then informed the congregation that every day a woman was married to somebody other than her first husband, that woman was living in sin. That murder was a sin and second marriages were equal to killing another individual. (I love that murder and loving family relationships are equal sins. Gives me warm fuzzies!)

This was the beginning of my realization that the Baptist church could be a vengeful, angry and depressing organization. That family values, acceptance and being considerate of your members was in fact not their concern. That hey, if a woman is beaten by her first husband and cheated on, it was her fault and not that of the man. Add this to the Baptist church's views on homosexuality, dancing, abortion and numerous other issues and over time, it has forced me to pull away from the Baptist church almost completely.

George Carlin may have said it best when he said, "I was Catholic until I reached the age of reason." Sadly, this is how I've felt more and more over the years. While I'm not renouncing a higher power, I am renouncing my membership in the Baptist church after the latest antics from the Westboro Baptist Church.

As we mourn the school shooting in Newtown, Connecticut the Westboro Baptist Church has finally made me too embarrassed to call myself a member of the Baptist church.

I awoke this morning to read that the Westboro Baptist Church has decided to picket the funerals and the vigil for the innocent children and victims of the Connecticut school shooting.

What the hell?
What is wrong with these people?

I understand the Westboro Baptist Church wants to push their backwards, insane asylum beliefs. This country was founded on crazy views and beliefs—in fact we might do crazy better than any other nation in the world. But how can the Westboro Baptist Church justify this being the right venue for a picketing? How morally bankrupt do you have to be to justify the idea of protesting an innocent child's funeral as an okay idea?

I realize that the Westboro Baptist Church is comprised of weirdo fundamentalists in the eyes of most Baptist church congregations. But the sheer fact that some governing Baptist body hasn't stepped out more against the Westboro Baptist Church, especially in light of these shenanigans, concerns me and has ultimately lead me to renouncing my membership in the Baptist church.

The Westboro Baptist Church is single handedly ruining an entire religion for millions of Americans. They are rebelling against society, an established semi-governing body of churches and acts of common human decency. I remember another group of fundamentalists who did this same thing. They rejected the Treaty of Versailles, told Germany what it could do with itself and then ended up massacring millions of innocent people.

I don't want to slight genocide and the horrors of Hilter. World War II was the worst event in the history of man. But during, and especially after the war, there was no such thing as a good, "Good Nazi". Every Nazi got lumped into the group of anti-semitic hate mongers, because that's what they were.

This same thing is now happening to Baptists. We are getting lumped into this evil, corrupt, backwards interpretation of religion that the Westboro Baptist church has created.

The Westboro Baptist Church has now caused America at-large to hate Baptists.

I can't say I belong to this religion any longer.

It's a shame that innocent people have to die and nutbags like these Ku Klux Klan wannabes get to live. Oh wait, that wasn't very Baptist of me, that was very Westboro Baptist of me. Ugh, that's it, I'm no longer Baptist.