Last Friday, more than 5,000 Wilson High and Cal State Long Beach students swarmed Wilson Classical High School — Bruin territory — to fight for a cause so personal to the Long Beach community: gay rights.
The members of the Westboro Baptist Church, more commonly known as the WBC, traveled on their broomsticks all the way from Kansas to bombard Long Beach with their hate-mongering message: “God Hates Fags.”
God doesn’t stop his hate at those darn “fags,” either. God also hates Jews, military soldiers, America, and basically anything or anyone else that do not fall under the WBC’s neo-Calvinistic beliefs.
Beyond a dick-move, right?
This organization, led by delusional pastor and WBC founder Fred Phelps, and even more notably his daughter Shirley Phelps-Roper, has the audacity to travel throughout the United States using God as a fear tactic to capture more pawns in their game of bigotry.
Look, I know I’m not Billy Graham. I’m not a frequenter of any sort of ceremony pertaining to organized religion. However, it would be safe for me to bet that God loves everything He creates. God created “fags.” Therefore, there is no way God hates fags.
Regardless of whether or not you’re a Christian, even if you may or may not think God exists, it seems we can all reach the mutual agreement that God would never hate anything he created.
So what makes a belief morally wrong or right? Should we take the utilitarian approach, rendering the rightness of an action as a function of what creates the greatest amount of good for the largest number of people? Or perhaps look at the scripture of various religions and determine its morality on the basis of what God or someone of the like might say? Maybe the morality of an action or belief cannot be assessed using either of these principles.
Maybe it’s just a feeling in our gut.
One thing is for certain, even Shirley Phelps-Roper, also known as the Wicked Witch of the West, and the rest of her flying monkeys couldn’t sway the minds of the citizens of Long Beach. The WBC’s truly pitiful attempt at slandering the minority groups of Long Beach had Phelps-Roper “melting” into the pavement across Wilson High School.
The God Hates Fags organization expected to face the Cowardly Lion and instead they were confronted with 5,000 or so pissed-off Wizard of Ozzes — not to mention that creepy guy who opens the door for Dorothy.
The best part about this protest was that despite the fact the people of Long Beach were angry, offended and upset in general. according to what I saw, not once were they disrespectful, negative or downright mean like the members of the WBC.
With our peaceful, yet powerful demeanor, we were able to deflect the WBC’s message and not come off as nut jobs in the process, regardless of what people’s personal beliefs are on the matter.
In order to make progress on this civil rights issue, we must be tactful and go about our ways in a positive, uplifting matter. Taking the hate route is not the answer.
Come to think of it, it is possible that God may hate something. I would think he hates it when people put words in to his mouth.
Jessica Wood is a junior biology major and a columnist for the Daily 49er. She also protested the Westboro Baptist Church’s presence in Long Beach.
