Fred Phelps and his small band of followers would be an insignificant voice in the wilderness, worthy of no attention at all, if not for the vileness of their strategy for getting attention. They travel the country to picket the funerals of dead soldiers.
...snip...
March 6 is a day that people — straight, gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgendered; conservative, liberal or somewhere in between; religious, agnostic or atheist — should mark on their calendar.
That morning, Mr. Phelps' traveling show plans demonstrations at Albany High School and the State University of New York's headquarters on Broadway in Albany, to share their "truth" with students they describe as "little violent beasts." In the afternoon and evening, they plan to head up to Plattsburgh High School and SUNY Plattsburgh to protest the staging of "The Laramie Project," a play about bigotry and tolerance, based on the 1998 fatal beating of gay college student Matthew Shepard. Mr. Phelps is portrayed in the play protesting at the Shepard funeral. His real-life Web site condemns the play with unabashed anti-gay and anti-Semitic language.
...snip...
It would be tempting to prefer to ignore the Phelps group altogether. And perhaps much more comfortable, too, than having to see and hear their message firsthand.
But it is important not to be silent in the face of such hate, because it doesn't go away just because we ignore it. Westboro proudly claims to have been spreading this message since 1955. This is an opportunity for good people, who may have heard this from afar and wished they could respond, to look Mr. Phelps and his ilk straight in the eye and say: You are wrong.
http://timesunion.com/AspStories/story.asp?storyID=768261
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