United by Default: The Very Diverse Counter-Protesters to the Westboro Haters

People across the United States have come together over the last 15 years to counter protests by the reviled Westboro Baptist Church (WBC). Their tactics vary, as do their reasons and their values, but they all stand against pastor Fred Phelps and his cult of haters. Most notorious for picketing the funerals of soldiers killed in combat, the WBC in effect celebrates such deaths as purported evidence of God’s judgment on the US for tolerating homosexuality.

Almost daily, members of the small congregation, made up entirely of Pastor Phelps’s own family, travel near and far to picket not only the funerals of LGBT people, soldiers, and public figures like Elizabeth Edwards, but also: the sites of tragedies like Hurricane Katrina, institutions like the Holocaust Memorial Museum, events like rock concerts or the Oscars, schools like Penn State or Harvey Milk High School, and even other churches. Whether seen by Pastor Phelps as defying God or representing God’s wrath, such targets now number in the thousands in over 800 cities. No wonder counter-protest across the US has become an equally recognizable force, though far more multifaceted considering the disparate groups and cultural arenas targeted by the WBC.

Pastor Phelps’s reach is diminishing, thankfully, with legislation safeguarding military funerals from protestors and the vigilante hacktivists Anonymous shutting down several of the WBC’s websites. As the Phelpses face their end, it seems the right time to take a closer look at how counter-protest has developed in the bizarre WBC era.

Back in 1998, loved-ones at Matthew Shepard’s funeral could not have anticipated WBC protestors, waving their “God Hates Fags” and “Matt in Hell” placards and spewing the same homophobic hate that compelled Shepard’s murderers. The widespread coverage of the funeral granted the Phelpses their greatest visibility to date, catapulting them from Kansas-bound kooks to internationally recognized extremists. When they protested the murder trial, however, Shepard’s friend Romaine Patterson devised a ‘human wall’ plan that would come to be called Angel Action. A group dressed in white robes with large, makeshift wings effectively blocked the WBC protestors from view—immortalized a few years later in the award-winning film, The Laramie Project.

Patterson’s block/surround mode of neutralizing the WBC has been utilized for years now, though not always warranting the term “Angel Action”, per se. The Patriot Guard Riders, a large group of bikers founded in 2005 to guard funerals of fallen soldiers, choose to block WBC protestors with large flags and to drown out their so-called preaching with roaring engines. WBC’s warped logic that dead soldiers are divine retribution for America’s tolerance of homosexuality links bikers (many of whom are veterans) and LGBT people in an unexpected way, aligning them—however tentatively—against the WBC and its rightwing extremes.

When funerals are the target of a WBC protest, a dignified counterdemonstration is required. Tensions rise, however, and occasional scuffles break out. In Harrison, Missouri in November 2010, one soldier’s funeral brought out over 1,500 counter-protestors. After peaceably lining the long street that led up to the church, about a hundred or so splintered off to confront the WBC protestors, out-screaming them and hounding them off their lawfully designated corner. Footage shot from a news helicopter shows the protestors fleeing the scene with counter-protestors swarming after them.

An even scarier scene took place in May of 2006 in Seaford, Delaware. Some of the 1,000 counter-protestors threw eggs, stones, and water bottles at the 11 police-protected WBC members. One man broke through the police barrier to physically assault two WBC members before being arrested. A large portion of the counter-protestors then chased the WBC members to their van, crowded the van as the driver tried to pull away, and broke a window. The YouTube video’s title is “Westboro Gets Their Ass Kicked”.

At funerals and other events as well, counter-protestors in gaining numbers (often 100-1,000 people) will from time to time succumb to a hostile brand of mob intimidation as they surround the much smaller number of WBC protestors (often fewer than 12, including children). WBC protested the Chicago LGBT Center on Halsted Street in December of 2008 and footage on YouTube shows a modest number of smiling counter-protestors waving rainbow flags, chanting pro-LGBT slogans, and using tarps to block view of the Phelpses. As the conflict escalates, smiles fade and the Chicagoans crowd around the Phelpses, menacing them with the relentless chant “Bigots go home!” However effective, the change in tone unnerves as it thrills.

Out-harassing one’s harassers, satisfying as it may be, risks sinking to the level of the homophobic haters. And these are a mild, even reasonable examples. For some who cross such lines in their behavior, their angry words become like scattershot, insulting more than the WBC alone.

In February 2010, when the WBC picketed the Alpert Jewish Community Center in Long Beach, a Jewish Defense League counter-protestor belligerently baited Pastor Phelps’s alpha-daughter Shirley. With bullhorn to mouth, he degraded her as a “redneck piece of shit” and suggested she’s a closeted lesbian. His cohort yelled excessively crude jokes about Shirley masturbating, one joke involved Jesus.

In an antagonistic crowd of counter-protestors at University of Wisconsin in April 2008, things went too far when one male student (filmed by his friends) screamed “You suck, bitch!” into the ear of a male WBC member and then mockingly flirted with him. He also called a female WBC member a “bitch” and “fucking cunt”. Such vitriol used to shut down free speech—versus counter it—is not activism, in these cases not even justified anger, but just axe-grinding.

Granted, if counter-protestors yell out “Shirley Phelps is a muff diver”, it could well be pretty damned funny, maybe even politically edgy. But if they scream “Shirley Phelps is a muff diver” and their angry or insulting tone suggests that a lesbian is a disgusting joke of a thing to be, then they’re doing more harm than good.

Same with degrading WBC members as rednecks from Kansas—when Kansas and most of its so-called “rednecks” would renounce the WBC. Same with degrading them as Christians—when it’s not necessarily Christianity but an egomaniacal distortion of Christian doctrine that should be addressed. So foul language and shock value in and of themselves are not at fault here, really; it’s the hateful tone of this bully-mode of counterdemonstration revealing its hypocrisy, an ugly little pattern that, however minor in the scheme of all the goodwill, should not go unaddressed. Furthermore, as London-based reporter Louis Theroux points out in his two-part documentary The Most Hated Family in America, hating the Phelpses in this manner only fuels their apocalyptic fire.

God Hates Figs

Angel Action troupes and Patriot Guard Riders aspire to dignified counter-protest, which means blocking the WBC picketers from view and trying to avoid interaction with them altogether. While a few counter-protestors simply turn the tables, responding to hate with hate. For events other than funerals, what’s proven most successful is in-your-face cleverness or raw absurdity. Michael Moore is a good role model for this approach and perhaps the first to get a nationwide laugh at the expense of tyrant Fred Phelps.

Early in the 2000 season of his Bravo series The Awful Truth, Moore admires those who counter-protested the WBC a year prior at the trial of Matthew Shepard’s murderers. He then aims his own counter-protest—a large pink “Sodomobile” that he describes as a “sleek chariot of freedom-loving buggery”—straight for Topeka, home to the WBC. Moore manages first to interview Phelps alone on the street and, in his typically unruffled manner, both engages and undermines the pastor’s extremism before confronting him with the rocking pink bus. Moore’s “gay ambassadors of love” kiss each other cutely and invite the pastor on board. Phelps beats a quick retreat. So Moore encourages our laughter at Phelps while, more importantly, he proves Phelps to be laughable.

Stunts need not be so elaborate to be effective. Many a clever or absurd sign has done its duty to counter the offensive power of WBC signs. “God Hates Fags” used to

prompt a visceral response from me. Now I may well laugh seeing it, thinking of recurring counter-signs like “God Hates Figs”, “God Hates Kittens”, and “God Hates Signs”. In February 2009, when the WBC protested the Heartland Men’s Chorus in Columbia, Missouri, the jovial locals showed up with signs like “God Hates Shrimp”, “People Before Prophets”, “Wigs Are Fun”, and “I’m an Atheist, Buy Me a Beer”.

And in response to the WBC protesting the so-called liberal agenda of an Oklahoma high school in March 2009, over 2,000 gathered with counter-signs ranging from “Hate Sucks” to “Tongue Kiss a Guy for Jesus”.

These sign brigades at their best are a healthy mix of sincerity and mockery. For Comic Con 2010, where the WBC accused attendees of worshipping false idols otherwise known as superheroes, counter-signs were so numerous that drivers passing by may not have been able to tell WBC signs from the parodies. A party atmosphere prevailed.

Other counterdemonstrations of note involve zombies, a phenomenon known as rickrolling, and cultural icons like Lisa Lampanelli and Radiohead.

The zombie counter-protest took place in July 2012, outside a military base in DuPont, Washington where WBC picketers trampled US flags and Shirley Phelps herself waved a “Fag Troops” sign. Deciding that the most positive way to counter the WBC was with a zombie apocalypse, event co-organizer Melissa Neace posted an invitation on Facebook.

The resulting zombie-human alliance outnumbered the WBC by 300 to 8, according to local newspaper The News Tribune. “We wanted to turn something negative around into something people could laugh at and poke fun at,” Neace told the Tribune. “It was the easiest way to divert attention from something so hateful.”

As for rickrolling, it’s basically putting Rick Astley’s earworm classic “Never Gonna Give You Up” on the speakers and cranking them up, LOUD.

Who knows how many times WBC protestors have been rickrolled but, as with the zombie outbreak, it’s sure to spread. Again, the silliness of the stunt, how it renders the whole scenario absurd, matters most. So what if the stunt is apolitical and has no effect on the impervious WBC? It lightens the mood and creates a bond among counter-protestors.

Lisa Lampanelli’s move may have stung a bit, however, by transforming a WBC protest into a charitable donation. A whopping 40 protestors showed up at Lampanelli’s 2011 stand-up show in Topeka, the WBC’s hometown, and on behalf of each of them Lampanelli donated $1,000 to Gay Men’s Health Crisis—increasing the sum from $20,000 to $40,000 as heads were counted and then rounding up to $50,000.

She may have taken her cue from a University of Illinois student who organized a charity drive at the site of a WBC protest in 2010, raising money for queer rights groups, or the Manhattan Synagogue that, when picketed by the WBC in 2009, raised money to help fund a needed new building. During her show’s intermission, Lampanelli went outside the theater to inform “these assholes” exactly what their protest accomplished, her impudence made headlines and earned her even more fans.

Performances by bands like Radiohead, Foo Fighters, and Death Cab for Cutie have also been Protested by the Phelps klan, yet counter-protestors managed to turn it to their advantage. The picket schedule on WBC’s homepage deemed Radiohead a distraction from damnation, the Foo Fighters “hard-hearted, Hell-bound, and hedonistic to the max”, and the lead singer of Death Cab a “major fag-enabler” because he is supportive of his lesbian sister. Shortly before their September 2011 concert in Kansas City, the Foo Fighters set a much smaller stage just for the WBC picketers: serenading them from the bed of a moving truck and preaching their own brand of diversity politics.

Even if nothing charitable can be spun from it, the WBC’s protesting of stand-up comics or rock bands serves as a badge of honor. For the performers, it’s like having their very own sideshow. “It wasn’t just a concert,” fans may remember fondly, “it got picketed by those Westboro idiots! Remember them?” Indeed, Radiohead producer Nigel Godrich tweeted that the protest was the “highlight of the tour so far.”

There are quite a few online responses to the WBC, as well, that constitute a kind of counter-protest. Drag performer Ms. LaReina’s video for her song “Go to Hell, Fred!” is one example. A meme encouraging social networkers to “recycle your dog and cat poop” by mailing it to the WBC—including the church’s street address. Check out the Anti-Westboro blog, for example.

There’s also Pastor Phelps’s son Nathan, who defected from the WBC three decades ago at age 18. He is now a speaker on religion and child abuse with 30,000 Twitter followers, his own website, and online postings of his monologue Leaving Hate Behind. In the latter, Nathan explains why the WBC’s protests are more about doom rhetoric than conversion tactics. To proselytize would be pointless, he says, because Pastor Phelps has refined his belief in predestination to the degree that the only people on Earth who are predestined for an afterlife in Heaven are, of course, Phelps himself and his abiding family.

We’re Not Going to Hell We’re Going to Dance

The WBC congregation now consists of 83-year-old Pastor Phelps and his wife, nine remaining children and their spouses, and a passel of grandchildren who have no friends outside the church and have claimed they will never marry. There are approximately 40 in all, down from 60 in its prime, with little to no hope for new members. As of February 2013, two more members—young women—have defected. The Phelps clan continues to maintain a weekly protest agenda but, nevertheless, that a growing number of scheduled, high profile protests have gone unattended signifies a weakness in their iron-crazy determination.

In July 2012, on the website GodHatesFags.com and on Twitter, the WBC announced plans to “super-picket” a prayer vigil in Aurora, Colorado for victims of the theater shooting. The notorious hashtag “#ThankGodForTheShooter” became another example of Pastor Phelps spinning all tragedies into evidence of God’s wrath on a so-called immoral society. Though the WBC failed to show, threat alone drew 10,000 counter-protestors to lock arms and protect the community.

The same happened after the Sandy Hook shooting when WBC tweeted intentions to picket in Newtown, blaming the murder of 20 school children and six faculty members on Connecticut’s same-sex marriage legislation. Facebook and Reddit, plus Anonymous’s operation #OccupyNewtown and FDNY’s TheBravest.com, all played a role in swiftly assembling the volunteers needed to line the streets, arm in arm, outside the church where principal Dawn Hochsprung’s wake was being held on 19 December. Though rumored to be registered at a nearby hotel, WBC picketers failed to show yet again. It didn’t end there, however. For the WBC, Sandy Hook may well prove to be the last straw.

Members of Anonymous were so outraged by the WBC’s threat to picket in Newtown that within days they disabled several WBC websites like JewsKilledJesus.com and AmericaIsDoomed.com. The email addresses and phone numbers of WBC members were circulated online. This mini-coup was accompanied by gloating tweets about their attack protocol and an apocalyptic letter-video posted online declaring war on the WBC. In the video, against darkening clouds, a computer-processed voice refers to the WBC’s “one-dimensional thought protocol” that “will conform not to any modern logic”, and pledging to progressively dismantle the hate-driven institution. “We are coming. Everyone is equal. We are Anonymous. We are legion,” the voice insists. “We do not forgive. We do not forget. Expect us.”

Almost simultaneously, a 15-year-old hacktivist known as Cosmo the God usurped control of Shirley Phelps-Roper’s Twitter account, changing her feed’s background to say “Pray for Newtown.”

Such advanced counter-protest tactics, though illegal, earned a collective smile of satisfaction. Lending credibility to this showdown, several anti-WBC petitions have been submitted to the White House utilizing the new “We the People” system. One petition, quickly amassing over 260,000 signatures, is asking for the WBC to be recognized officially as a hate group, thus stripping it of its tax-exempt status as a church. The irony is that the granddaddy of all hate groups, the KKK, has already condemned the WBC’s picketing of soldiers’ funerals. Indeed, the KKK staged its own counter-protest when the WBC picketed Arlington National Cemetery on Memorial Day in 2011

Out of all the counter-protests I’ve watched online or read about, the most

poignant for me are at high schools. Perhaps I would find this to be so because my own high school experience, in the southern Midwest in the mid-‘80s, was extremely homophobic—persistent verbal and physical harassment largely ignored by administrators. When the WBC protests a high school, the school solidarity that is prompted now includes LGBT youth in their midst.

In April 2009, the WBC targeted the Walt Whitman High School in Bethesda, Maryland for being named after a homosexual poet. The school’s website makes no mention of Whitman’s role in LGBT history and the Washington Post speculated that the WBC protest may well be the first time that students paid much mind to their school’s namesake.

Nonetheless, Whitman High “spun the event into an interdisciplinary lesson”, with English teachers covering Whitman’s poetry, social studies teachers addressing tolerance, and math teachers counting the crowd: 500 students gathered to counter the seven WBC protestors. The counter-protest was turned into a fundraising event for the school’s Gay-Straight Alliance. Most stirring of all, students read Whitman’s poetry to the WBC picketers through a bullhorn.

A year later, two WBC-protested schools in the Bay Area, Gunn High and Lowell High, pushed pro-diversity values while relying on songs and dancing to counter the WBC protestors. One Lowell participant said, “I think very few of the students ever saw them. Because it wasn’t about them. It was really about someone challenging us to rise to the occasion.”

An event that combines many of the elements mentioned here is the WBC’s protest of Milwaukee’s Hamilton High School in October 2008. Condemning the school’s Gay-Straight Alliance as well as its stage production of The Laramie Project, a handful of WBC members waved placards at one corner as a large crowd of students chanted on the opposite corner. In between, a heavy police presence maintained order.

Blasphemous hecklers chimed in, and somebody initiated a rickrolling. Soon enough the WBC picketers, attentive to schedule as always, packed up to go. At this point, the mood shifted rather gloriously as students erupted into bright cheers. Following the WBC picketers to their van, the students in unison yelled not “Fuck off!” or even “Bigots go home!” but “GSA! GSA! GSA!”

And GSA, of course, stands for Gay-Straight Alliance.

For more on these and similar events, check out Not In Our Town.org, which helps to organize community responses to bigotry and intolerance.