(no subject)
I just found out that Westboro Baptist Church is going to be protesting at my hometown high school while I'm there visiting. My dad is signing up to be part of the nonviolent shield around them. Training is the night I get to Mass. I really really really want to be a part of this, but I honestly don't know if I can handle that kind of toxic hatred right up in my face right now. Except, how can I turn my back and ignore it while they're in my *home town*? It's not an abstract thing; they'll be less than two miles away from my house, right outside the high school I attended for almost two years. My childhood Temple is helping to organize the response against them. My *father* will be there and I don't want him facing all of that repulsiveness alone.
So, hopefully I'll be unjetlagged enough by Tuesday night (despite coming in on Tuesday morning) and will be able to at least attend the training.
Boston people: they're doing a tour around Boston, hitting a bunch of places on Friday Mar 13 (how appropriate).
On Friday, March 13, the Westboro Baptist Church will picket at Lexington High School and Hanscom Air Force Base after visiting Cambridge Rindge and Latin School in the morning. Members will picket at Reading High School in the evening.
The group’s main focus will be the protest in Reading, where the high school will stage a performance of “The Laramie Project,” a play written about student Matthew Shepard. Shepard was a gay university student who was beaten and murdered in 1998 near Laramie, Wyo. by two men who tried to justify the beating and murder by using a so-called “gay panic defense.” The church regularly protests showing of the play, said Phelps-Roper.
Because church members regularly travel from Kansas, said Phelps-Roper, the church makes the most of its time in one place and pickets several targets. The purpose of the March 13 trip is the play in Reading, but Phelps-Roper said she pulled out her map and decided to target Cambridge and Lexington as well.
“We’re trying to go as far and fast as we can, because the time is short,” she said.
There's not much I can do to stop Elizabeth Bear, Will Shetterly, Kathryn Cramer, Patrick and Theresa Neilsen-Hayden and everybody else out there who've been competing to see who has the biggest ass of all waving out there in the wind. But I can do this.
So, hopefully I'll be unjetlagged enough by Tuesday night (despite coming in on Tuesday morning) and will be able to at least attend the training.
Boston people: they're doing a tour around Boston, hitting a bunch of places on Friday Mar 13 (how appropriate).
On Friday, March 13, the Westboro Baptist Church will picket at Lexington High School and Hanscom Air Force Base after visiting Cambridge Rindge and Latin School in the morning. Members will picket at Reading High School in the evening.
The group’s main focus will be the protest in Reading, where the high school will stage a performance of “The Laramie Project,” a play written about student Matthew Shepard. Shepard was a gay university student who was beaten and murdered in 1998 near Laramie, Wyo. by two men who tried to justify the beating and murder by using a so-called “gay panic defense.” The church regularly protests showing of the play, said Phelps-Roper.
Because church members regularly travel from Kansas, said Phelps-Roper, the church makes the most of its time in one place and pickets several targets. The purpose of the March 13 trip is the play in Reading, but Phelps-Roper said she pulled out her map and decided to target Cambridge and Lexington as well.
“We’re trying to go as far and fast as we can, because the time is short,” she said.
There's not much I can do to stop Elizabeth Bear, Will Shetterly, Kathryn Cramer, Patrick and Theresa Neilsen-Hayden and everybody else out there who've been competing to see who has the biggest ass of all waving out there in the wind. But I can do this.