During my high school and formative years, I was fortunate to live in a place where I was exposed to much social change and conflict. Going into my freshman year, I was involved with the 2008 Democratic National Convention in Denver, CO., where I was a part of the Goodnight Bush Singers (I'm sure you can still buy the book online). This was a benign and happy contrast to the coming encounter that I would find during my junior year.
Over the P.A. system during my fourth period class on Friday, our principal announced that the Westboro Baptist Church, a categorized Hate Group by the FBI, would be coming to our school the next Monday in order to protest a convention of Rabbis in Denver that week, in following with their rhetoric of anti-LGBTQ, anti-Jewish, anti-military, and basically anything fun and not Anglo-Protestant. They suck. As my brother and I left the campus for lunch, we ran into our principal and asked if we might stage a counter-protest. He applauded our enthusiasm and instead suggested a peace-rally in response to their hate and anger. He also made it very clear to us to be very careful in our endeavour and to know that the school and the district would be unable to defend and protect us if something went wrong, as their Right to Protest was defended under the U.S. Constitution's First Amendment and their most recent Supreme Court victory in Snyder v. Phelps.
We arrived home and discussed the opportunity with our parents and grandparents who posted their full-fledged support behind us with some suggestions of how to approach the situation. For the rest of the weekend, we worked on organizing students and developing uplifting messages of peace. The students, enraged by this coming event, put out messages and posts to friends and families around the area and all were involved in the activity.
As Monday arrived, we woke at 5:30 a.m. to mentally prepare for the psychological attack that was impeding our peaceable resistance. As we walked to school in the crisp spring air, we saw numerous other students walking down Colfax Avenue towards our high school dressed in their finest Pride Festival attire and adorning themselves with signs of love and inclusion or students supporting their faith or the military with JROTC uniforms.
The protest members arrived at the school in an unmarked van from Topeka, Kansas and proceeded to get out and rig themselves up with the darndest body harnesses I have ever seen. Imagine a pretty and colorful and happy peacock with its feather plume behind it. Now imagine this bird as a haggard 50-year-old, mid-western woman with, instead of pretty feathers, ugly and angry and mean signs sticking our of her back and in her hands. Signs such as "God Hates America," "Thank God for Dead Soldiers," "Muslims Ruin America," and "God Hates Fags." This was all in addition to their statement of intent that was posted to their website and released to the public:
Denver East High School in Denver, CO November 7, 2011 7:00 AM-7:30 AM
WBC will picket Denver High School East to warn this wicked generation that their sins will take them straight to Hell. We will give your children an opportunity to see what truth looks like, the face of what they were entitled to have from every adult that ever touched their lives! You brutish teachers and hateful parents have broken the moral compass of this generation, teaching rebellion with everything you say and do.
God hates you, Doomed america, for what you have done to your children! Here is the COMMANDMENT from your God:
"And these words, which I command thee this day, shall be in thine heart: And thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children, and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up. And thou shalt bind them for a sign upon thine hand, and they shall be as frontlets between thine eyes. And thou shalt write them upon the posts of thy house, and on thy gates." Deut. 6:6-9
You will not obey that simple commandment. Instead, you corrupt your children from the womb, so God has given you violent, freakish, worthless, brute-beast children. You hate your children, and as God continues cursing you, you will turn aside to eat your children. Read the words: Deut. 28:53-58 & Lev. 26:28-29.
Fear God, and give the glory to Him, for the hour of HIS judgment is come!
Along with the students that were in attendance, various faculty members showed their solidarity to our cause, along with students from every other high school in our district and students from several outside districts. For 45 minutes, we sang, cheered and clapped our words of peace, love, and equality while these fear-mongers spewed their bile of hate and excrement.
What I'm trying to say is that the current country and environment we, as Americans, are co-habitating is always going to be filled with degenerates and reprobates who seem to hate everything the ideals of our country hold sacred. And as many of you may well know, I LOVE AMERICA. Yes, even you, Westboro Baptist Church. I love you too. I love you because you teach me and all those I love and care for how to be bigger and better people than you people who seem to be mighty butt-hurt that others are happy with their lives and the sacrifices that they make for that love of faith; country; person; life. I love you because God loves you, too. And is that not the purpose of the Abrahamic faiths and all religion: to show love and kindness to our fellow man? I cannot imagine a better message in this world to live one's life by than to extend to my neighbor the same message of peace and love that my creator hath bestowed on me, regardless of what you call her: God, Master, Lord, Allah, Creator.
I will end this with some scripture, just as y'all do, but mine is going to be better... Happier... and from YOUR Holy Bible:
This is My commandment, that you love one another, just as I have loved you. -John 15:12Photo Credit courtesy of Emily Sinclair
