Westboro Baptist Church’s propaganda is all over the internet. Not in a sinister way, but the news that they plan to picket Heath Ledger’s funeral has been posted on facebook and myspace walls everywhere and emailed to death.
They are all too easy to dismiss as a bunch of loons. Because they are a bunch of loons. The fact that they’re so interested in other adults’ sex lives is more than a little bit pervy, and I think all this gay-bashing is more of an excuse to hold signs with rude pictures on them (see madman below) and bond with their peers than anything else.
Really, if you were going to make a serious point would you use a wee picture of two people shagging? I think no.
But as fun as laughing at half-wit bigots is, it’s actually all a bit worrying. Quite aside from the horrible distress they cause by picketing funerals (at random as far as I can see: they picket the funerals of soldiers because they defended a country that allows gays… what the eff?) there are gay people who have to grow up in their malevolent shadow.
According to The Rough Guide to the USA:
“In the heartland [of America] life can look more like the Fifties – away from large cities, homosexuals are oppressed and commonly reviled. Gay travellers need to watch their step to avoid hassles and possible aggression.”
I know Rough Guides aren’t a piece of political literature, but a “sadly” wouldn’t have gone amiss. It just seems a bit flippant. “Oi gays. You’re reviled, okay? Watch your step.”
What’s more it shows the Westboro bigots are not a mental minority, in the deep south their views are the norm. And that’s making me lose my faith in democracy. Something needs to be done to protect the gay people in these areas. But as homophobia is so widely accepted, any state intervention would be suicide for whichever party put it in place.
Anyone got any good ideas? Obama?
2 responses so far ↓
Kateameliah // January 25, 2008 at 5:17 pm |
I saw these chiefs on Louis Theroux- what a bunch of loons they are. They make their kids come to the pickets, holding up signs that they clearly cannot comprehend. Not because they’re too young but because a child’s logic is simple and Westboro’s practice of picketing defies all logic and common decency. One of the kids got smacked in the head with a missle from a passing car.
I think I’m right in saying they’re also a bit inbred.
queeniefox // January 25, 2008 at 6:09 pm |
The Westboro nutters are unique in the way they apply their raving homophobia – I would think that few other people manage to come to the absurd conclusion that US soldiers dying is the punishment of God on a “faggot nation” – but as Top Gear showed last year, they are not alone in their bigotry. Even motormouth Clarkson realised that the team were actually in a real and significant amount of danger after painting their cars with gay slogans.
I wish Obama (who I am very keen on generally) would speak out strongly on these kind of issues, but it is simply not going to happen: as you say, it would be political suicide. Which means there’s a bit of a Catch 22.