It has often been said that no parent should ever have to bury a child.

Yet Vice President Joe Biden had to do just that today, as he attended the funeral of his son Beau Biden, who died last week at the age of 46 from brain cancer. This was not the first time Biden has endured the grief of losing a child; in 1972 he lost his 1-year-old daughter and his wife in an automobile crash.

No matter your political stance, you cannot help but be moved by this photo of a father in the depths of grief.

Father mourns the death of his son. #BeauBiden pic.twitter.com/r8FqLQh61M

— Manik Sethisuwan (@Sethisuwan) June 6, 2015

There were those, however, who relished the event of the funeral. Three members of the loathsome Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka, Kansas, were on hand at St. Anthony of Padua Church in Wilmington, Delaware, to picket the event with their anti-gay signs and songs. WBC announced their plans to picket the Biden funeral on Friday, saying, “As for Beau Biden, his life was cut short by the will of God to whom all glory is given and he has an eternity of answering to the Lord for his own words, thoughts, actions and sins.”

One man was arrested for throwing coffee at the protestors. That action may not end with a slap on the wrist; the WBC is well-known for slapping lawsuits on people and communities.

I live in Kansas, and Kansans consider the Westboro Baptist Church to be a boil on the derriere of our sensible Midwestern state. But there is one thing the WBC can accomplish, and that’s to unite Americans both left and right into mutual abhorrence of them. They bring out a patriotic fervor which brings people together to counter protest in magnificent ways.

My husband and I had the privilege of standing united with other Americans at the funeral of Navy SEAL Matt Mason in August of 2011. Mason was killed in a helicopter attack in Afghanistan, and his funeral was held at a large church in  Leawood, Kansas. Word got around that WBC members were planning to picket, and Patriot Guard riders and other counter protestors — including my husband and me — showed up to obliterate the sight of the WBC with a crowd chanting “USA! USA!”

Here is a picture I took of the Westboro members shortly after they arrived. Despite the fact that they came from Topeka, at the most a one-hour drive from Leawood, there were only a few of them.

Here is a picture I took of fellow Americans as we took to the streets with flags to shelter the Mason family and mourners from having to view the WBC.

Earlier that year, the Supreme Court ruled in Snyder v. Phelps that the First Amendment shielded the Westboro Baptist Church from liability for picketing a funeral. They do not lose First Amendment protections no matter how outrageous their speech may be (and it is indeed some of the most execrable speech to be found in the Public Square).

I am heartened by the thought that the Westboro Church will eventually fade away. Patriarch Fred Phelps died in 2014, and the tiny cult will die out from attrition, and from younger family members rejecting their hate. But everyday patriotic Americans? We’ll be there to care for those who mourn, like Vice President Joe Biden, even if we may disagree with them.