slammerkinbabe (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
slammerkinbabe) wrote2014-03-17 03:04 pm
slammerkinbabe) wrote2014-03-17 03:04 pm
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Fred Phelps, founder of the Westboro Baptist Church, is dying. Please please please don't picket his funeral.
Let's remember why all the funeral pickets were awful: because they made the funerals hell for those who were grieving. Picketing a funeral does nothing to the dead. But the people who grieve for Phelps are not all terrible. Many of his children have left the church,* but that doesn't mean that in some complicated way they may not still love their father, and whether they do or not, they deserve closure. A funeral can provide that. But not if it takes place with hatred being shouted in the background.
And above all: Phelps's protests were based in hate. LGBTQ activism is based in love, not hate.
Please don't picket Phelps's funeral.
_______________________
*Incidentally, VERY weird detail in that article: Phelps himself was excommunicated from the church in the middle of last year. No one outside the WBC knows the reason. Some are theorizing he had a change of heart, but that seems improbable to me, after a lifetime of fiercely determined hatred. Very interesting though.
Let's remember why all the funeral pickets were awful: because they made the funerals hell for those who were grieving. Picketing a funeral does nothing to the dead. But the people who grieve for Phelps are not all terrible. Many of his children have left the church,* but that doesn't mean that in some complicated way they may not still love their father, and whether they do or not, they deserve closure. A funeral can provide that. But not if it takes place with hatred being shouted in the background.
And above all: Phelps's protests were based in hate. LGBTQ activism is based in love, not hate.
Please don't picket Phelps's funeral.
*Incidentally, VERY weird detail in that article: Phelps himself was excommunicated from the church in the middle of last year. No one outside the WBC knows the reason. Some are theorizing he had a change of heart, but that seems improbable to me, after a lifetime of fiercely determined hatred. Very interesting though.
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