Amber Roof deserves some sympathy, for sure. Her brother destroyed her wedding day, and she took the step of calling authorities when she recognized his face on the surveillance video.
Amber Roof is not a villain in the story of the Charleston shootings. She is, however, a bit out of touch with how far anyone's sympathy for her will stretch when she asks for online donations to help fund her new wedding and the "perfect honeymoon."
She is asking the public for donations to fund a new wedding. According to Amber, “We know money cannot replace the wedding we lost and our perfect day, however it will help us to create new memories and a new start with our new family.”
The money will pay not only for a rescheduled wedding but also “to send us on our dream honeymoon.”
Roof did promise to donate 10 percent of the donations to Emanuel AME, but that isn't quelling the negative response to her request. Think Progress caught this screen capture of one donor who donated simply so her comment would remain on the page:
I sympathize with her sadness and anger over having her wedding blown up because her brother executed nine black people in a church days before her wedding, through no fault of her own. But asking for money to help fund a wedding and honeymoon with no thought to how the families of her brother's victims might feel about their permanently lost wedding days, Christmases, Thanksgivings, 4th of July picnics with friends and family? That's just painfully selfish and unempathetic.
No one is entitled to a big wedding with a "dream honeymoon," but we all ought to be entitled to live our lives without worrying about a racist with a gun. Amber would be better off taking down this stupid request, having a quiet wedding somewhere, and doing a big celebration for her first or fifth wedding anniversary when she has the means to do it herself.
It's not the ceremony that matters, anyway. Or the party. It's making a commitment to spend the rest of your life with someone, and that's a commitment at least one of Dylann Roof's victims will never be able to make.
