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Wed. Mar 09, 2005

Take Your Hatred Home

In the past, I’ve cynically wondered if certain boneheaded Democratic tactics meant that Karl Rove had placed a mole among them. So I guess it’s appropriate to wonder if Howard Dean has infiltrated Fred Phelp’s infamous group, then turned them loose deep in Red Country:

Two days after a small group of fundamentalist Christians from Kansas began a strident protest against a proposed gay student support group at a high school in the Georgia mountains, the townspeople said enough is enough.

On Monday morning, about 100 people showed up with picket signs in front of White County High School to counter the eight members of Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka who had flown in on Saturday and staged loud demonstrations against the gay club as well as seven local churches.

“Go back to Kansas!” the Georgians shouted.

The locals were especially livid at the out-of-towners for showing up at churches on Sunday morning before services and hurling at worshipers such insults as “Thank God for 9/11,” “God hates you” and “Your pastor is lying.” The fundamentalists said the churches were targeted because they had not condemned homosexuality strongly enough.

Judy Davidson, the mother of a high school junior, said she showed up because she was fed up.

“They’re a hate group,” she said. “How can anybody listen to people who thank God for 9/11?”

AJC: “Crowd counters anti-gay protesters”

This year in the world of partisan tactics and protests, there is very steep competition for the title of Most Self Defeating Act, but I think we have a new leader. If you show up at a rural Georgia church in a county that went 78% for Bush, and shout at them “God hates you” and “Your pastor is lying” just before the Sunday sermon, I don’t care if you’re selling a plan to make every White Countian a millionaire, they’re going to get their back up against you. Hard.

Perhaps most importantly, these rural religious Republican folks are going to look at “fundamentalism” with a new awareness. Not “over there,” but right here in River City. So the members of Westboro Baptist Church are indeed opening minds to new concepts, just not the way they’d intended. You just want to shout “You go, Fred!” but this is nothing new:

At the funeral of gay murder victim Matthew Shepard, they held up signs reading “No Fags in Heaven” and “God Hates Fags.” According to their Web site, they have staged “20,000” protests across the nation and around the world in the last decade. They believe that “God’s hatred is one of His holy attributes.” They are the congregants of the Westboro Baptist Church of Topeka, Kansas.

While WBC has picketed the gay community at hundreds of events nationwide, most of the individuals protested by the Church are not homosexual. In fact, WBC most often targets people it mistakenly claims are gay or those it believes to be encouraging homosexuality. Many WBC fliers emphasize the race or religion of these individuals, suggesting that the Church’s hate spreads beyond its abhorrence of homosexuality. What appears to be anti-gay rhetoric is often a vehicle for WBC’s anti-Semitism, hatred of other Christians, and even racism

“Fred Phelps and the Westboro Baptist Church: In Their Own Words”

I’m not a Bible quotin’ type. But I’ll be danged if I can find anything in the general code of behavior described by “judge not lest ye be judged,” or “let he who is without sin cast the first stone,” “or do unto others as you would have them do unto you,” or “forgive your neighbor’s trespasses,” or a host of other scripture that provides any foundation for … “God’s hatred is one of His holy attributes.”

But aside from that, I’ve always thought the greatest religious sin is to act as if you know the mind of God. Not strong faith. Not untrampled belief. Intellectual certainty. And Phelps and his group are just so deadly certain. They obviously have no worry about it, but I would dearly love to be a lowly worm at the feet of Saint Peter when Phelps arrives at the Pearly Gates and tries to sell his theory of God’s hatred.

But for now, at the Gates of Cleveland, Georgia, Phelps has been told to take his hatred home.