There is no shortage of stories like this one here from Huffpo: (Link)
[QUOTE=Huffpo]
Responding to a notice from the Westboro Baptist Church that it intends to protest on the Vassar College campus, the school community has pledged to raise $100 for every minute the group plans to protest, according to a fundraising page set up by Vassar students. The effort has, however, exceeded expectations, as students have raised more than 482 percent of that total with weeks before the protest’s scheduled date.
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That coupled with the fact that anytime you see these guys on the news they are portrayed negatively. (Even by Fox News. heh)
I dare say an unbintended by product of all this is that it gives the impression to people (who might not have given it much thought before) that if you hate gays, you’re an asshole and this is what you look like to the rest of the world.
So God help me for saying this, but I think Westboro may be doing the gay community some good. Albeit a hefty price to pay for having to put up with their bull shit.
I think if people are looking to them as a representation of what “homophobes” look and act like, then it becomes more shameful to be seen as one, and discourages homophobic behavior.
Observing someone else’s extremely unacceptable behaviour can prompt us to examine our own behaviour for subtler traces of the same, and find them also unacceptable, and abandon them. Yes.
It’s possible. I was listening to the Mike Huckabee talk show one afternoon, because I think it’s important to try to listen to people and opinions that I don’t like. It was on the Roe v Wade anniversary, and I got so pissed off that I stopped by a Planned Parenthood clinic and made a donation in Mike’s name. I want to send him a copy of the receipt and check, but if I do that, then he’ll have my name and address and phone number, which I don’t want him to have.
At any rate, Planned Parenthood got a donation because of old Mike. The Westboro church might be inspiring people to be a little more considerate of homosexuals.
I understand the gist of the OP and feel a lot happier just saying they aren’t doing homophobia any favors. To the extent that this church stirs up anti gay anger, and contributes to a threatening atmosphere, and convinces some small audience, I think they’re still doing net harm to gay people and their allies, and contributing much more harm than inadvertent good to society at large.
Fringe nutcases on any issue tend to move many people more towards the center.
I think the Republicans learned this in the last election with idiots talking about “legitimate rape” - didn’t turn out well, even in their own party election results. I wonder if Mitt regrets actively supporting one of those candidates after the fact?
For that matter, I think the Tea Party has started to piss off many middle-of-the-road Republicans and there could be a backlash in the upcoming mid-term election, but that remains to be seen.
When the Susan G. Komen Cancer Foundation leader suggested dropping funding for Planned Parenthood, the uproar was swift and loud. Didn’t take long for that leader to step down and the PR people work overtime to try to fix that debacle. I think Planned Parenthood had record donations during that period of time.
So yes - you could make a case that the Westboro “Church” has shown the dark underbelly of hate that has made even staunchly religious people say, “I am against homosexuality, but even I am not that rabidly homophobic!” And for those who were on the fence about the issue - no real feeling one way or another and perhaps out of their realm of friends/experience - Phelps did push them off the fence into the fold of more acceptance and tolerance.
Westboro Baptist isn’t about homosexuality at all. Is that the mental image or thoughts you get when you see them protesting at a vet’s funeral - ‘They’re so wrong about homosexuality.’?
It’s true that Westboro probably makes some people re-examine their beliefs and the harm they could do. But some people could also compare themselves to Westboro and think that their own behavior is good. “I’m not a bad person, I’ve never protested a funeral or told people they’ll burn in hell. I just want to prevent gay people from marrying and working in the military because I care about them and think that the gay lifestyle is harmful.”
You do realize they do more than just protest funerals, right?
Their claim to fame, what got them put on the map, was their vile hatred towards homosexuals. The protesting of funerals didn’t come til after the fact.
The “protesting” at funerals is all about fag hating anyway. They thank God for dead soldiers BECAUSE America is a fag enabling country and God is killing Americans as punishment, and they are thanking him for it. It’s their entire bent. Their whole church and everything they do and talk about has to do with hating homosexuality. They aren’t really “protesting” at the funerals, they are just shouting how thankful they are for dead soldiers that God has killed because America is doomed because we are all fags or fag enablers. (their words not mine, I don’t like the word fag at all and never use it, even as a gay man myself)
Photocopy both (unless for some reason you don’t mind damaging the originals), attack the copies with a magic marker sufficiently to obliterate enough to prevent tracing, photocopy that, and send him those copies (double-photocopying is necessary when censoring with a magic marker becase you can often see what is underneath if you hold it up to the light just right, and the longer you keep the censored item the easier it is to read through the magic marker)
Well, not quite. Their original claim to fame was protesting at the funerals of prominent gay celebrities, gay rights leaders, or victims of anti-gay violence. It wasn’t until they branched out to military funerals that people (outside the gay community) suddenly started caring about them, but funeral protesting has pretty much always been their MO.
I understand what the OP is saying, and there’s an element of truth to it. But I’ve attended way too many AIDS-related funerals and heard their insanity within earshot to consider them having a positive effect. They used to be very close to the mourners, and it was heartbreaking to see the deceased’s grief-stricken family having to listen to that crap . . . especially if they themselves were grappling with their own (milder) homophobia. For so many years, when they were only picketing gay people, they were allowed to get as close and loud as they wanted. It was only when they started picketing the military the laws were passed.
And again, they are only picketing the military to get attention. They aren’t protesting the wars or the government or the military. They are literally saying “God is punishing us as a nation because we enable fags.”
Phelps believes honestly that God tricked George W Bush into going into war so that Americans would be killed as punishment for us allowing homosexuality to go unpunished. God doomed America and they are THANKING Him for killing us.
