A spokeswoman for Texas Governor Rick Perry offered praise Friday for members of the Texas A&M community who organized this week to shield a soldier's funeral from anti-gay protesters.
"Texas A&M has a long history with our nation's armed forces, so it's no surprise Aggies would rally behind a fallen service member and his family," Lucy Nashed, a spokeswoman for the a conservative Republican governor, told BuzzFeed. Perry is also a Texas A&M graduate.
Some 650 members of the Texas A&M community turned out last week to make a human wall around the funeral of Lt. Col. Roy Tisdale, a Texas A&M alum, from pickets by the Westboro Baptist Church, which is known for protesting soldiers' funerals with unrelated anti-gay messages.
