The great “fag-o’-lantern” harvest: The Westboro Baptist Church visits Madison

 

In the battle between hate and tolerance, Saturday morning’s protests outside Covenant Presbyterian Church amounted to an exchange of dirty looks over continental breakfast.

Across the road from the West Side church, about 10 members of Topeka’s Westboro Baptist Church wielded their infamous, brightly colored signs: “FAG CHURCH,” with two stick figures assuming the position; “FAG O LANTERN,” in honor of the season and all; “GOD LOVES A HUMBLE HEART,” which seemed out of place among a group so prone to loud colors and blunt block letters. The group, which members say is one of several the church can dispatch for gay-hating, funeral-picketing purposes, flew in Friday night to target the church for ordaining the Presbyterian Church’s first-ever openly gay minister in a same-sex relationship, Scott Anderson.

The group of counterprotesters standing in front of the church outnumbered the Westboro folk by at least 50, but they seemed to be taking things better.

“What are they singing?” one counterprotester asked.

“Something very offensive, actually,” another replied.

“They called me a whore,” beamed a kid in an Elmo T-shirt who’d just walked across Segoe Road to visit the opposition.

Perhaps the crowd was in a calm, constructive frame of mind, or perhaps Westboro just doesn’t inspire the same visceral disgust and fury when it isn’t feeding off the grief of a dead soldier’s family. Perhaps it was the fact that there was a yard sale going on at a house half a block away. A “FAG O LANTERN” sign and a waffle iron all in one place? That’s a damn successful weekend morning by any standard.

The counterprotesters didn’t scream or even seem all that outraged, but they did take up a food donation. Most of the folks on the LGBT-friendly side just provided benevolent mass, not bothering to bring signs or flags. Of those who did, most held up rainbow flags. This being a left-leaning demonstration, the gestures ranged from clever (“God hates poly-cotton blends!” read one sign) to clueless (dude in a “V” mask, you were out of place that day).

Westboro was also out-gunned on the singing front. Margie Phelps, capably boosting two signs in each hand, would occasionally belt her way into a lonesome “GAAWWD HATES A-MERICA!” Across the street, members of a local Unitarian congregation and the anti-hate group Standing On The Side Of Love sang a song of the same title. They had lyric sheets, and where Margie could only fumble toward a rude likeness of a key, some on the other side threw in actual harmony parts.

In person, the Westboro people didn’t project the pinched-faced sourness often expected from a group of angry fundamentalists. They project willing, giddy self-parody. Take this passage from GodHatesFags.com: “OBEY GOD! Otherwise, you will join your parents in the Stem Cell Feast—of Bitch Burgers, Obama Fries and Slut Shakes! YOU WILL EAT YOUR BABIES!” Say what you will, but at least these people have fun with the modern English language. It almost seems hard to believe that they are real.

There was nothing to keep either side from crossing the street for further engagement, just a cop car that would squawk at you if you stood on the median for too long. A few local TV-news crews moved in for the turkey shoot. A cameraman from the local ABC affiliate buttered up Margie: “That is talented, holding four signs at once!” We tried to press Margie on whether her group had been enjoying Madison, but all she would say is that they got here “through means of transportation.”

A counterprotester noticed that one Westboro protester had a rainbow flag hanging out of his pocket. This caused a good laugh, invoking Nathan Lane’s line from The Birdcage: “Well, one does want a hint of color.”

Speaking of clashing fashions, you couldn’t help but ask Lydia Phelps, WBC founder Fred Phelps’ teenage granddaughter, why she was wearing a Glee T-shirt.

“My sister picked it out for me,” she said, insisting that she knew nothing about the show. Either way, Lydia couldn’t really say how she reconciled this with Westboro’s hatred of gay people, though she tried, in an explanation heavy on Westboro members’ emphatic, ritualized, yet almost casual use of the word “fag.” At a certain point, you had to live in the world and could not escape the “fag” influence. So did that mean the hate was balanced with a certain degree of acceptance? “No, we don’t accept the fags, but,” and so on.

Lydia also said the church members print their signs in-house. The woman holding the “FAG O LANTERN” one boasted that they often do season-specific signs, including “Satan Claus,” because “there’s no scriptural support for Christmas.” Most of the signs are the same dimensions. This is so that they can be quickly zipped up into carry-bags with shoulder straps.

At about 10:19 a.m., the signs went into the bags, the Westboro folks began zipping up, and the phrase “feces-eating sodomites” drifted over as Margie did her song and dance for another station. A few minutes later, the Westboro group walked off down Mineral Point Road, and the counterprotesters gloated a little over their absence, sticking around to bask in a few more supportive horn-honks from passing cars.

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