We Shall Overcome...

For those of you uninformed of the emotional terrorism inflicted on Americans by the Westboro Baptist Church, you’re almost better off nescient. The so-called religious group based out of Kansas works actively to promote hatred among people, most often in the face of tragedy. Awful as they may be, I cannot ignore their sub-human levels of cruelty while spending time on a journal that advocates for human unity. If you are more curious about their mission as a group, you can check out their website—the URL of which is too offensive to even post in this blog. Just google the Westboro Baptist Church, and you will understand why. In speaking against everything and everyone, these people find themselves standing for absolutely nothing at all. Self-appointed prophets of God, they claim that he hates and punishes homosexuals, Jews, soldiers, America, and children, among other things and people.
In recent news, the group attempted to picket the funerals of those killed in the attempted assassination of Congresswoman Giffords, but were obstructed by citizens and students in Arizona, along with (believe it or not) the Hells Angels. In my last blog, I recounted the travesty of the recent suicides in Palo Alto, California. True to form, the distasteful, execrable members of the “church” brought their message to my community in a time of deep sadness and despair. Picket signs in hand, the hate group abused their first-amendment right across the street from Gunn High School. In an act of pacifism and maturity, the students protested peacefully across the street with signs promoting love and acceptance. Not in our schools, not in our town, the school’s message board read. Hoping to express discontent with the school’s acceptance of people of all races, creeds, and sexual orientations, the church made light of the recent suicides and claimed that God does not love the people of Palo Alto. In their eyes, it seems, God does not love anyone but them. Their arguments and prophecies are too asinine to even begin to dissect, but what’s harder is trying to understand how these people can be so callous and cruel. They find weakness or sadness in community and bring their distasteful, uneducated message across America, spreading hateful and benighted words to innocent citizens.
In the end, what are these people but lonely and sad? They hate their country and all of the people who inhabit it. Sure, some of them really do harbor such hate for the unfamiliar, but many of them are simply so desperate for something to believe in or somewhere to belong. They spend their days spreading animosity to their fellow citizens, their fellow humans, and you really have to feel worse for them than for the victims of their protests. There is nothing that anyone can do to shut them down, so let them haul their signs around and make so ugly something as beautiful as free speech, while the rest of us enjoy the beauty and love in our own lives. If they are able to bring about hate, even if it is a hatred for their actions or message, they have already won half their battle, and they do not deserve that privilege.

-Kelsey Laubscher