October 7, 2010 in City

Clark: Hate-mongers’ primary victims all in the family

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The Westboro Baptist Church has put the area on notice that they will soon grace us with another hate-soaked visit.

This is like cockroaches tipping off a homeowner about an upcoming infestation.

Sorry. That analogy is entirely unfair …

To cockroaches.

Nothing in the vast insect world (bedbugs included) is foul enough to compare to these vermin from Topeka, Kan. I should have gone with flesh-eating bacteria or maybe E. coli for my metaphor, but you get the idea.

The Westboro Baptists are known for taking that age-old “God is love” sentiment and flipping it upside down into a pile of manure.

This should tell you all you need to know about WBC mentality:

They sometimes picket the funerals of our military fallen, brandishing placards that say “Thank God for Dead Soldiers” or “Soldiers Die, God Laughs.”

The WBC knows no boundaries when it comes to being crass.

According to a flier, Westboro zealots will be in the Spokane area Oct. 21 where they will, and I quote, “picket these fag-infested, pervert-run Washington state schools.”

By that they mean Gonzaga University, Moody Bible Institute, Whitworth University, Rogers High School and my alma mater, Eastern Washington University.

A day later, the WBC goons will journey east, where they will reprise their antics at Coeur d’Alene high schools and North Idaho College.

I hope the WBC’s time here is unpleasant, presuming they show up.

Human rights leaders and educators in Coeur d’Alene are advocating a nonconfrontational approach. They are reported to be planning a 9 a.m. rally on Oct. 22 at the Human Rights Education Institute next to City Park. I wish them well and hope the turnout is huge.

As for me, well, I favor a more direct approach.

I don’t mean violence or a screaming match. But I don’t think there is anything wrong at all with an orderly counterprotest, either.

I’ll never forget my one and only brush with the WBC.

It took place outside the Spokane Arena on a cold January night in 2007.

Shirley L. Phelps-Roper, daughter of WBC founder Fred Phelps, had come with her sister-in-law, Paulette, to protest the U.S. Figure Skating Championships because – get this – some of the skaters might be gay.

These WBC homophobes never use the word “gay,” of course. They prefer that aforementioned three-letter F-word.

“Meeting Phelps-Roper made me think of an F-word with six letters,” I wrote at the time.

“Freaks.”

But the tragic part of the evening wasn’t listening to Shirley. I went home to take a shower totally convinced that this nutter actually believed every idiotic word that rattled out of her mouth.

No, the saddest part for me was that she had brought along her 9-year-old son, Jonah.

He seemed like a bright lad, too. And it made me sick at heart to think about any child growing up in a lifestyle where disgusting behavior was considered not only the norm but the highway to heaven.

That’s the real crime with a cult like the WBC.

They do their dirty deeds hiding behind the First Amendment. In fact, the U.S. Supreme Court is currently musing over whether the father of a Marine who was killed in Iraq should win a lawsuit against the WBC nuts who picketed the funeral. And given the wide free-speech latitudes we enjoy in this country, the Westboro Baptists just might win their case.

But the damage they do to young innocents like Jonah?

That’s just child abuse, as far as I’m concerned.

Doug Clark is a columnist for The Spokesman-Review. He can be reached at (509) 459-5432 or by e-mail at dougc@spokesman.com.

10 comments on this story so far. Add yours!

• 

  Albert on October 07 at 6:39 a.m.

  Good morning Doug. Unfortunately this “fellow” who leads up a “family” church of 70 members is endeavoring to make himself infamous. I read up on Westboro Baptist Church and they are affiliated with nothing…they have been “disowned” by virtually every Baptist association and now the 80 year old “senile - hate filled” pastor labels their affiliation as “Primitive Baptist”, for whatever reason and obscure definition that may be. It was reported that the 70 members of his hate-group are all extended members of his immediate family, thus this “church” is nothing more than that of a hate-generational family who elects to call themselves a “church”.

  The best thing that we in Spokane can do, including all the media, is to completely ignore these “Primitives” when they touch down in our city. What good would it do to give them any additional attention? That’s what they thrive on! Let the SPD do “their thing” and I can assure you that when the members are out of the hospital and jail, they can return home licking their wounds.

  In any event, we need to realize that this family is not our kind of folk and is referred to as a “church” to the shame and embarrassment of all Baptists.

• 

  Spokane_Citizen on October 07 at 6:56 a.m.

  Doug, I always enjoy your column, but when the Spokesman-Review provides these scum with the attention they crave, it constitutes encouragement. Why spend time publicizing these idiots? It’s not a new development, won’t alter their deviant behavior, and is unworthy of your very considerable talents.

• 

  hawken on October 07 at 7:25 a.m.

  Albert nailed it… nothing more I can add.

• 

  drywitt99 on October 07 at 10:20 a.m.

  We cannot sit idly by and hope this scum will simply go away.

  We must protest……we must ridicule……we must do everything possible to insure that EVERYONE is aware that this despicable form of hatred is attempting to take root in our community.

  But I am curious? I wonder if local teabaggers will do the right thing and join this effort…..or are they awaiting marching orders from FOX News??

• 

  Orphan on October 07 at 12:36 p.m.

  Drywitt99

  Can you do anything except for hurl insults at the Tea Party people, you are a sad case. You kinda remind me of the Wetsboro Baptists they are also full of hate and perposterious statements about others. Who knew the family connection extended to Spokane!!! Albert is correct in everything he said.

• 

  MrNatural on October 07 at 1:04 p.m.

  Interesting debate…to ignore or illustrate. I think both are right for their own reasons. On one hand to give this group notoriety runs the chance that it energizes these kooks for more theatrics and it runs the risk of enlisting more kooks, something we seem to be rife with these days. To ignore them does not confront the malignancy or refute it causing an implied acceptance and the risk of enlisting more kooks. They say that this was how the Nazi movement was allowed to snowball. Hard to say what the best strategy would be to quell these malicious vermin.
  Personally I wish we could hurl handfuls of wet feces at them…that would be fun, symbolic and satisfying

• 

  Spokane_Citizen on October 07 at 4:35 p.m.

  Giving it coverage it doesn’t deserve attracts the same sort of kooks….much in the same way intensive media coverage of North Idaho as a haven for neo-nazis once helped provide a beacon to a potential spawning bed for such activity. Everybody in the world has already heard of the Westboro Baptist scum, and there’s literally nothing new to report.

  In reality, these sorts of stories are nothing more than an attempt to increase readership through outrage….outrage they much desire. Our continuous condemnation does nothing more than strengthen their demented resolve. I guess it’s a win-win situation for journalists and the Westboro Baptist Church.

• 

  Peaches624 on October 07 at 7:22 p.m.

  What if everyone met them with a dozen eggs? If we threw them one at a time would that be considered assault? Maybe they would be hungry and we were just trying to help them out without embarrassing them? Everyone get a water gun? Something …. I will HATE having them here in OUR town.

• 

  drywitt99 on October 08 at 6:22 a.m.

  Peaches: Rotten….or hard boiled???

• 

  drywitt99 on October 09 at 12:29 a.m.

  NO-BS {That’s a joke, right??}

  Do I HATE the teabaggers?

  No.

  But I DO have contempt for them.

  They wallow in ignorance as if it were a virtue, and tell lies with the misguided conviction or a true believer.

  They lie about the nationality of the President of the United States. They lie about his religion. They lie about his plans to impose Islamic law on the United States They dismiss him as an elitist because he was a graduate of, and a professor at colleges without the word community in their names.

  They LIE, and they HATE with a frightening intensity.
  Which is why rather than protesting the arrival of the Westboro Baptist Chuch, many teabaggers will embrace it.

  They have very much in common.