Combine religion, social fanaticism and crazy lawyering, and you get more news out of Topeka's infamous Westboro Baptist Church.

The latest legal chapter has the Kansas Court of Appeals ruling last month that the church must pay taxes on a pickup it uses to travel to protests.

Church members rail against homosexuality and frequently picket military funerals, making a bizarre connection between the deaths of U.S. troops and God's wrath for the nation's tolerance of homosexuality.

So-called church groups often stretch the limits of tax exemptions on religious institutions. And Westboro likely enjoys tax-free status on other assets and activities even though most people don't view its hateful existence as anything resembling a church.

But the Kansas court rightly drew the line on a pickup used for picketing travels it recognized as more political and secular in nature.

While the church held up Bible verses used on picket signs to claim its picketing was religiously based, the court found that 40 percent of its signs contained no religious content. The court also noted that the issue of homosexuality is not strictly a religious one, finding that attacking someone the church claims to be homosexual or supporting homosexuality is not, on its face, religious speech. The court also noted that the church also targets politicians.

"In essence, WBC is advocating a reform of government whenever it pickets a public or elected official," the ruling said.

Cloaking its activities in religion does not make the Fred Phelps-led Westboro's activities legitimate in any way. Indeed, it makes the group's hate speech especially more nauseating.

We suppose all this has to do with how we define religion. Nearly everyone outside the Phelps clan would say not just that we don't like their religion but argue that it isn't religion at all. At least not in the context we know it.

Somewhere the greater society must draw the boundaries. Just because someone says their crusade is religious does not make it so.

Our Constitution generally allows extremists such as the Phelpses to say what they want. But we sure don't have to give them a religious tax exemption to do it.

Editorial by the Hutchinson News