The strange blessing of Westboro Baptist Church
There are few situations so terrible that they can’t be made worse by a visit from the Westboro Baptist Church.
On Saturday, one of the leaders of the group dedicated to threatening to show up at funerals with unpleasant signs sent out some tweets implying they were coming to Connecticut to picket the funerals of those slain in Newtown on Friday. The story prompted the hacktivist group Anonymous to release what they said was a list of Westboro members’ names and contact information. No doubt the group, known for its commitment to genuine awfulness, frenzied pursuit of publicity and stubborn insistence that everything awful that happens in this world is because we have disappointed God by supporting gay marriage, is getting a lot of irate phone calls.
What to do with the Westboro Baptist Church? If only we knew.
Ignoring it is not an option. Too many people agree on its terribleness for us to ever stop talking about it. I cannot vouch for this, but I am pretty sure that on days when the Crips and Bloods call things off and have group picnics, they spend all their time discussing how distasteful they find Westboro Baptist. Besides, if we ever ignored the church, its members might actually follow through on the threats to show up!
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And that is the strange blessing of the Westboro Baptist Church: It brings people together. Remember when the KKK denounced it? When do you have large swaths of Americans nodding to themselves and saying, “I have to agree with the KKK on this one.” That’s certainly why we keep writing about the church. Since He-Who-Shall-Not-Be-Invoked-In-Comparisons-In-Arguments-On-The-Internet, it’s hard to find anyone that we so readily agree is just, well, irredeemably awful.
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They prove that just because you are being yelled at from both sides does not mean that you are right. Sometimes it means that you are simply, irredeemably wrong.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/compost/wp/2012/12/17/the-strange-blessing-of-westboro-baptist-church/?hpid=z3
Ha!
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