Fred Phelps to be greeted in Iowa by message of love

When Fred Phelps and members of the Westboro Baptist Church (WBC) of Kansas, a fundamentalist group described by the Anti-Defamation League as “virulently homophobic,” bring their messages of hate to Des Moines Saturday, they will run into a wall of love at their first stop at the Drake University campus.

More than 700 protesters showed up in Cedar Rapids in January to counter the message of the Westboro Bapitist Church, which never showed up (photo courtesy of Joe Stuler).

The WBC’s “God hates Fags!” signs will come face-to-face with a group of peaceful counter-protesters donning t-shirts that read “There is no hate in Iowa” and “Whatever hate can do, love can do better.”

The group organizing the counter-protest plans on selling these t-shirts to raise money they will donate to One Iowa, the state’s largest LGBT-right groups, an organization that deals with HIV/AIDS, and to the family of a Marine killed in Iraq who sued Phelp’s church for picketing the funeral and was ordered to pay the protesters’ court costs. Protesters will also be encouraged to donate a dollar every time church members “use hate speech, and/or for every sign they have using hate-speech.”

The WBC targeted Drake because the university’s Law School is hosting a symposium, “The Same-Sex Marriage Divide,” with an inter-disciplinary group of experts will debate various issues, such as whether same-sex marriage should be legalized, the appropriate role for courts, the constitutionality of the Federal Defense of Marriage Act and the economics of same-sex marriage.

“I wanted to get involved and organize a counter-protest to show that Drake won’t tolerate or adhere to the WBC’s hate,” said Kelsey Wells, a member of the Drake Rainbow Union and one of the protest organizers. “We wanted to overpower their hate with our love. The idea for donations came when some students realized that simply counter-protesting would do no good, and just give the WBC the attention they want. We decided to use this visit to raise money and change their negativity into a positive thing for the LGBT community and Drake.”

In anticipation of WBC’s pending arrival, Drake University President David Maxwell sent out a memorandum to faculty and students on the how to handle the group while simultaneously practicing and respecting freedom of speech. “Our response as a university community to the WBC’s presence on Saturday morning must be consistent with our core values—it is likely that the WBC’s hateful words will be one of the most powerful tests of our commitment to freedom of speech and civil debate in your time at Drake University,” Maxwell said in the memo.

“Freedom of speech is ultimately one of our messiest freedoms—it means that on occasion we will be subjected to words and ideas that we find morally repugnant, offensive and disheartening,” he said. “The way in which we react to those words and ideas ultimately defines who we are. We cannot—when confronted by them—give in to emotion and allow ourselves to abandon our values, allow ourselves to become like those whom we find offensive.”

Maxwell said he respects the counter-protesters’ grassroots efforts and also respects those who choose to do nothing and ignore the groups presence on campus, which is precisely what other targeted groups plan on doing, including the Tifereth Israel Synagogue in Des Moines. After their picket at Drake, the WBC plans on taking their anti-Semitic messages of hate to the synagogue, telling the congregation, according to the group’s Web site that “God Hates You for killing Jesus Christ, your Messiah.”

Rabbi Steven Edelman-Blank told The Iowa Independent that they’re not planning any response to the Westboro visit and plan on going through their usual program and service Saturday.

The WBC also plans on picket another Des Moines synagogue, the Temple B’nai Jeshurun.

WBC takes aim at fallen soldiers

The WBC recently garnered national attention when their organization, comprised of 71 confirmed members, 60 of whom are related to Phelps, won an appeal against the family of a Marine, Lance Cpl. Matthew Snyder, killed in Iraq. The WBC picketed the dead Marine’s funeral in 2006 in Westminster, Md., carrying signs reading “God hates you” and “Thank God for Dead Soldiers.” Snyder’s family filed the initial suit against the church for invasion of privacy in 2007 and was awarded $10.9 million in damages. The ruling was overturned last month and the judge order Snyder family to also pay the $16,500 in court costs to WBC, which Snyder’s father, Albert, called “a slap in the face.” Since then, conservative Fox News host Bill O’Reilly has offered to pick up the entire legal tab and several others have vowed to donate money to appeal the case.

In light of the recent ruling, news of the WBC’s return did not bode well with P.J. Sesker-Green, whose nephew’s, Iowa National Guardsman Sgt. Daniel Sesker, 22, was killed in Iraq and whose funeral was picketed by the group in April 2006.

“I know what it feels like to have these slugs there when you bury a loved one,” Sesker-Green told The Iowa Independent in an e-mail. “These parasites were there with their signs and fortunately Gov. [Tom] Vilsack signed a bill the day before that kept these belly-sliders in the ditch where they belong.”

News of the planned picket of Sekser’s funeral prompted Iowa lawmakers to quickly pass a bill that would keep the protesters at least 500 feet from away from any funeral or ceremony at a cemetery. Coincidentally, then-Gov. Vilsack was visiting Iraq and had to sign the bill and fax it back to Iowa the day before the funeral.

“These protesters don’t reflect Iowa values, and their actions have no place in our state,” Vilsack said at the time.

Sesker-Green’s anger turned to pity before she was able to transform her negative feelings towards Fred Phelps and WBC into something positive.

“I don’t hate them; I pity them,” she said. “Phelps followers are being led around by the nose. Hitler did the same thing with his followers. I would not allow them to stir up hate in me,” Sesker-Green added. “I took my anger and pain and turned into positive energy and now use it to help our wounded soldiers when they return home. Phelps and his followers are sick tickets that don’t deserve any attention, but our wounded heroes do.”

Will they show up or won’t they?

Whether the WBC shows up Saturday morning still remains to be seen, for they have a history of promoting a picket and then never following through. Such was the case at Theatre Cedar Rapid’s first run of the “Laramie Project” in January. The play chronicles and dramatizes the real-life events surrounding the brutal murder of Matthew Shepard, a 21-year old student at the University of Wyoming who was tortured and murdered near Laramie, Wyo, in October 1998.

Despite the no-show, an estimated 700 people turned out for the counter-protest. “What I found surprising was the diversity of the people who showed up,” Joe Stutler of Cedar Rapids recalled while recounting the event during a phone interview. “There were Atheists, several church and LGBT groups, and veterans. It was a really wide selection of people there, who basically showed up to stand up against hate.”

Stutler, an ordained minister, not only takes issue with the message the WBC is trying to convey but how they’re exploiting God to preach hate.

“The message Phelps is sending is not from the God I know; this is merely to feed his homophobic agenda and attempt to usurp God’s power and message to promote their own particular message and cause.”

Moreover, Stutler, who is also a veteran of the Cold War and Operation Desert Storm, also takes issue with how the WBC is using soldiers to spread their messages of hate.

“I find it absolutely disgusting personally that they’re calling for the death of soldiers in the name of God,” he said. “But I am sure they would probably find my message disgusting at times, but that’s the right I helped fight for.”

“The problem that I see itself is not that he’s anti-military, rather how Phelps chooses to use soldiers’ death and their funerals to help spread his message,” Stuler said. “They at least need to be respectful and maintain an appropriate distance from a funeral, because it is a religious ceremony and his interference with somebody else’s right to exercise their religious freedoms, free speech and grief is the problem that I see here, rather than the message itself.”

Asked what she will say to Fred Phelps Saturday morning at Drake, Kelsey Wells said she would simply tell him that no matter how much he supports hatred, there will ultimately be more love.

“I realize that nothing I saw will change his, or his followers’ mind(s), and I wouldn’t waste my breath or time trying,” she said.” I would simply inform him that, no matter what he does, there will be more people there to over-power the WBC hate with love.”

That is, if Fred Phelps even bothers to show up.