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A creative response to bigotry

Huntsville, AL, people of faith offer creative witness against Fred Phelps’ bigotry

[11-25-06]

You have probably read of the accident this past Monday in Huntsville, Ala., when a school bus carrying more than 30 students from Lee High School was forced off of an elevated portion of Interstate 565 downtown.

Two teenage girls were killed at the scene, and two others died later in the hospital. A number of other were listed in critical condition.

For reasons not at all clear, the Rev. Fred Phelps, pastor of Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka, Kansas, decided that the funerals of the students needed to be attended by his group, which is most notorious recently for protesting the funerals of US servicepeople with loud jeers and posters reading "God Hates Fags" and so on.

Here is the text of WBC’s "News Release" on the matter, published on Tuesday, Nov. 21:

WBC to picket the funerals of schoolchildren killed in Huntsville, Alabama when their school bus from Lee High School plunged 30 feet off a highway overpass—in religious protest and warning: "God is not mocked!" Gal. 6:7. God Hates Fags! & Fag-Enablers! Ergo, God hates Alabama and America because they have gone the way of Sodom and have become The Land of the Sodomite Damned.

[several disjointed passages of scripture follow]

God has cursed Alabama and America: "There is no peace, saith the Lord, unto the wicked." Isa. 48:22

Responding in a creative way that has been used in a number of other such situation, Tom Moss, of the Social Justice Committee of the Unitarian Universalist Church in Huntsville, circulated this email appeal:

Pledge Your contribution @ 1.00 per minute for Phelps' "Time:"

Here's something that has been done successfully in other cities: collect pledges for a good cause for each minute that Phelps and his group demonstrate. The longer Phelps is there, the more money gets donated. We will display a large sign that is visible to Phelps, and will update it every 10 minutes with the current total. After much thought: all money will then be donated to the families of the deceased students. Would you be willing to donate? I suggest $1.00 for every 10 minutes that Phelps and his group demonstrates in Huntsville. More or less is OK, of course, depending upon your circumstances.

There will be one funeral on Friday, and two on Saturday. The fourth has not been scheduled.

Please send me your pledge by Friday morning, and also let me know if you would like to help in other ways. Followup emails will be made to collect pledges.

Tom Moss, Mr.Carlson@knology.net
Social Justice Committee
Unitarian Universalist Church

Yesterday afternoon, after the first of the funerals, Tom Moss followed up with this report and note of thanks:

Hi all, First off, I'd like to thank everyone for your generous support, and am sorry that there is not time to reply to all of you individually. There has been a wonderful response! We have received $1160.00 in straight contributions, and pledges of $935.00 per hour. More support is still rolling in. After the funeral today, an amount of $2406.72 has been raised. As some of you may have heard, the Huntsville police gave Fred Phelps a permit only for 45 minutes, from 11:15 until noon, at which time the funeral was scheduled to begin. When I arrived about 10:30, there was a big police presence, and I love what they set up for a demonstration space for Phelps! They parked two city buses in front of the small space reserved for them, completely hiding them from public view. We were allowed to stand on the other side of the street.

A good number of counter-protestors showed up (see picture below). Most of them carried positive signs, like "Respect the Funeral", "Respect Grief", and "God is Love". Rebecca Smith and I stood with two signs. One stated "Huntsville Cares", and the other said (at the end of the protest) "$2100 for Lee High Families and AAC" Here you see the demonstration space (behind the two buses). We could hear the Westboro people shouting and singing over there, but the only time we could see them was when they left, shortly after noon.

I doubt that the Westboro demonstrators even saw our signs, but the people going to the funeral were appreciative of everyone's support for the families. However, just to make sure that Fred Phelps knows, I will send a letter to the Westboro "Baptist Church" telling how their time was redirected for positive purposes. That is probably it -- I understand now that the Phelps crowd is scheduled to be in Orlando tomorrow, so hopefully, no more funerals will be disrupted. For those who missed previous updates, they are included below. We're working out details about payment so that donations will be tax-deductible, and will send out information on where to send your money later on this weekend. There will undoubtedly be more coming in, but for the moment, we have raised $1600.00 for the families of the kids in the bus crash, and $800 for Aids Action Coalition. Thanks for caring, and for helping convert hatred into an awesome act of community!

Warm Regards, T.

Phelps and friends are behind those buses.

Witnesses for a loving God

 

 

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BECOMING NEIGHBORS:
An Invitation
to Global Discipleship

A Witherspoon conference
on global mission and justice

September 16 - 19, 2007
Louisville, Kentucky

 

Check out our report from the Conference
on
Terror, Torture,
and Security

 

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