Last Friday (4/16), I wrote about the Topeka, KS Westboro Baptist Church's plans to protest the play about the effect on the people of Laramie, WY of Matthew Sheppard's brutal murder.
Today's Emory Wheel reports that the notorious family of the Rev. Fred Phelps did not show up. Some 150 counter-protesters did, however, ready for a showdown between love and hate. In the end, there was only the love -- and a sold-out, final performance of the play.
When contacted by the Wheel, Shirley Phelps-Roper, daughter of Fred and herself a lawyer who will argue their free speech claim before the Supreme Court, explained that they had altered their plans in order to picket in West Virginia. They saw this as a greater opportunity to spread their message that God is angry and punishing our country for tolerating homosexuals.
"It's not every week that the Lord smacks a coal mine. It is every week that some rebellious bunch of youngsters puts on The Laramie Project. . . . We had something time-sensitive to do. We had to go there and put the signs in the air. 'Thank God for dead coal miners.'"They began protesting at funerals of gay men who died of AIDS, and their signs read, "God hates fags." Now they include the Iraq war dead and the mine disaster as God's wrath smiting us down, trying to bring us to our senses. They are the prophets trying to warn us.
Upstaged this month, but Phelps-Roper promised to be in Atlanta May 4-6 for protests at Emory's Hillel Society and Druid Hills High School. Seems we here in Atlanta just continue to rebel against God and must be warned.
I was once in Topeka, and friends took me downtown to show me the street corner where they usually demonstrate and shout exhortations at passersby. The city finally had to invoke a noise ordinance to put some control on them. Then they went national -- and they do manage to get lots of attention with their outrageousness. I would estimate that it is 99.9% negative. But they persist.
Ralph
I once saw her [the daughter] interviewed. She was rational for a bit, then deteriorated into those things they say like "semper fi fag" etc. - things that made little sense. I had trouble following her point [I think she did too]...
ReplyDelete"they usually demonstrate and shout exhortations at passersby" but the passersby don't know what they're talking about. Meanings are loose there in Kansas. Topeka means "to dig good potatoes."
It's a strange place -- or was when the Minnengers were there. Lot's of educated people and high culture in a small town; but then there were the crazies too.
ReplyDeleteI can hear Dorothy as she walks past the Rev. Fred Phelps gang and exclaims,
ReplyDelete"You know Toto, this ain't Kansas anymore"
Alan