Westboro Baptist Church is famous for picketing soldiers' funerals, Jewish institutions, schools that are tolerant of gays and just about anything else in America that they don't like; but when they came to Gunn High School in Palo Alto, CA on April 1, they got a big surprise. They were greeted with song.When the faculty and students at Gunn heard that WBC was coming with their "GOD HATES FAGS" and "GOD HATES AMERICA" signs, they decided to respond to hate with love. Students sang and led others in songs that celebrated diversity and acceptance. Hundreds responded, not just kids from the school but also the other counter-demonstrators. It's part of a change in how these counter-demonstrations are being done. WBC picketers, who've done over 40,000 demonstrations (they call it a "ministry") since 1991, are used to having their hate met with anger but now they have to get used to having their protests used to promote community and the very thing they are attempting to villify; tolerance of people regardless of their differences. Some groups are even using WBC demonstrations sucessfully for charitable fundraising.
Here's a video of the counter-demonstration at Gunn High School:
One has to wonder if those lonely WBC picketers were "feeling the love" before they moved on to picket the Hillel Jewish center at Stanford that afternoon.
Photo Credit:
1) Gunn High School billboard
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Comments
It is funny- originally they may have gotten their point across now they are just an example of extremism and bigotry that is being used for positive!
This is Wonderful! Truly outstanding. Way to go, Gunn-ers!
This might surprise you, coming from me. But if any group deserved to be turned away from a high school, it's the group calling itself Westboro Baptist Church. They're no church--they're a fraud.
what next, this is incredible
They claim Jesus Christ as their savior, have tax-exempt status and they base their practices on faith and the Bible, Terry. As far as I can tell, that makes them a church.
What differentiates one church from another often comes down to which parts of the Bible they emphasize. WBC emphasizes different parts of the Bible from your denomination the same way your denomination does from, say, Greek Orthodox. That doesn't mean Greek Orthodox isn't a church. It just belongs to a different part of the Christian spectrum than yours... as does Westboro Baptist.
It serves WBC right that the organizations it targets can turn the events into a fund raiser.
Incidently Terry, while Fred Phelps and the Westboro Baptist Church may be off the main stream of American Christianity, they aren't all that far off. Here's a couple of quotes from a couple of other tributaries:
"The long term goal of Christians in politics should be to gain exclusive control over the franchise. Those who refuse to submit publicly to the eternal sanctions of God by submitting to his Church's public marks of the covenant -baptism and holy communion - must be denied citizenship, just as they were in ancient Israel."
-GARY NORTH (Christian Reconstructionist)
"There will never be world peace until God's house and God's people are given their rightful place of leadership at the top of the world."
-PAT ROBERTSON
I have to agree.. they are a fraud. Those people should have the same judgments put on them that they put on people who they don't approve of. I cannot even call them Christian.. because they are NOT Christ-Like!
Hugh,
Christian Reconstructionism is not a prevalent Christian position. If you asked most Christians what "Reconstructionism" is they'd answer with a "what??".
Hello Dave. I didn't say Reconstructionism was a prevalent position. I used it as an example of another tributary to the Christian stream which, along with Millenarianism, Dominionism and whatever Fred Phelps calls his beliefs, it is.
To be a little more accurate though, I shouldn't have called Gary North a Christian Reconstructionist. He's more like the darling of Christian Reconstructionists. He himself is actually a Presbyterian.
A great story!
Terry, you are right! ...Having read your posts and articles for months... you're right that it DOES surprise me to hear you come out against this group of deluded Christian bigots.
Meanwhile, about your comment "They're no church--they're a fraud." Very funny. Churches by definition are frauds. They generally promise an afterlife that does not exist, and take people's money, and when folks die and they have no afterlife then they can't exactly come back for a refund, now can they? It is a great scam scheme.
So everyone who thinks these folks are scum, put your money where your mouth is - the father of dead Marine is on the hook for $16,000 to pay Westboro's legal fees for suing them.
www.cnn.com/2010/CRIME/03/30/westboro.baptist.snyder/?hpt=T2
That includes you, Hurlbut.
I don't understand why atheists want to shut these people up. First off, remember free speech? And seriously, the Westboro folk are saying what southern evangelicals and neocons think but don't say openly.
As a southerner, I can Testi-fy to that.
Sure, they have the right to say it. But do they have the right to disrupt people's funerals with it? I'd see that as an invasion of privacy.
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