The ‘Church’ That Cried Wolf

Posted by Sarahbear on May 22, 2011

I’m sitting on my living room couch right now, feeling more than a little bit guilty for not being able to make it to the counter-protests against the Westboro Baptist Church in Savannah, GA this morning. I’m originally from Hinesville, GA and spent many, many weekends visiting that wonderful city. It is a beautiful community. I hate to see it mucked up with such a hateful group of attention whores.

"Occupational Hazards," by David Fitzsimmons.

I had only seen bits and pieces of information about the hate-spreading-money-grubbing-group before. They’ve been protesting for several years. Their website claims they’ve had nearly 46,000 pickets and visited 815 cities. When my mother called me on Friday morning and told me that they were planning on coming to Savannah, I was surprised. I asked ‘Why Savannah?’ I wondered if there was a military funeral, since it’s so close to Fort Stewart and Hunter Army Airfield. I wondered if there was some other political issue they were addressing.

I started doing research. I was riled up and ready to attend a counter-protest. The first time I would have attended any sort of protest in my life. Someone on my Facebook page let me know that the Phelps’ are all that the WBC consists of. It’s more of a family cult. They’re also all lawyers.

They go around the country, with outrageous and purposefully controversial picket signs, spending about 30 minutes at each of their protest locations. They want someone to violate their First Amendment rights or assault them so that they can press charges, file a law suit and sue the pants off of everyone involved. They’ve done it so much in their home state of Kansas, that the natives have stopped caring. They no longer show up at protests and give them attention. This has caused the to branch out and start doing more and more outrageous things, like protesting at the funerals of soldiers, homosexuals and HIV/AIDS victims.

Here is my dilemma. I wanted to go counter-protest. I wanted to buy posters and write clever things on them and let the local soldiers and LGBT groups know that the city of Savannah supports them. I had to make a choice on whether or not it was worth spending the money Chad needs for gas to get back and forth to work before we get paid again, on making a 2 and a half hour drive, two ways, and buying supplies to make picket signs. Then I saw some mention that WBC has posted schedules of protests and then not shown up in the past. I couldn’t justify spending that money for the possibility that they were not going to show up and I’d have wasted my money and time going down there.

I still keep weighing my opinion about whether or not it’s worth it to show up at all. The WBC cult doesn’t care. Their goal is to goad people into breaking the law so they can sue them. There is no way anyone can reason with them about anything. If people stop caring about them, they’ll eventually move on the way they did when Kansas stopped giving them the time of day. I mean, they’re spending over $200,000 a year on these protests. It’s a money making scheme. In order to keep it up, they’ve got to keep making money. The way they make money is to file lawsuits while the family members do all the legal work, representing themselves ‘pro-bono’. If no one shows up to their protests, no one can violate their rights and they won’t have anyone to sue. The cycle will eventually snuff itself out.

On the other hand, I thought really hard about all of the people who aren’t aware of what the WBC does. The ones who will be walking out of church into the protests this morning. The tourists going out for a nice Sunday breakfast, visiting the beautiful historic district and taking a stroll down River Street. The natives who are just going about their usual business. The soldiers, the LGBT community and their families. All of these people who may have only heard about the hate group or may be exposed to them for the first time and who don’t know that they’re just a money-making scheme. What about them? Shouldn’t we offer the citizens and tourists in Savannah a buffer, as the bikers who have created a human barrier between the WBC and the funerals they protest?

People are torn down the middle about it. I’m going to see how the protest and counter-protests go this morning. I’ll have to spend the week weighing the pros and cons of attending the other protests that are scheduled for next Saturday.