Westboro comes to Albany
So, Westboro Baptist Church is coming to Albany to protest Albany High School's production of The Laramie Project. Even better, the kids at Albany High chose to do The Laramie Project specifically to annoy Westboro after Westboro came to Albany to protest something else 8 months ago.
For those who don't know, The Laramie Project is a play written about lives in Laramie, Wyoming surrounding the murder of Matthew Shepard in 1998. Shepard was targeted because he was gay.
Westboro is a bunch of freaking crazies, who are blaming the deaths of soldiers in the "War on Terror" on homosexuality and the "lapsed morality" of America.
This all made me think. I wonder what it costs for Westboro to come protest. The counter-protestors are already lining up, but they're going to be (primarily) local, so it's cheap for them. That seems like a financial disincentive for Westboro, but they are clearly driven by insanity rather than economics. That means they can be driven in to bankruptcy... :-)
I propose "Laramie Project Day". Much like the Vagina Monologues gets done all over the place for V-day (which they actually stretch in to a month to make it easier, but I'd rather avoid that) we need to do The Laramie Project in as many places as possible on or about October 12 to commemorate the day Matthew was murdered. The more places to try and get Westboro to protest, the better. There are more of us, and we therefore have more resources than they do. And even if that particular piece of my evil plot fails, it's still raising awareness of hate crimes and homophobia, which is a noble cause all to itself.
I'm still going to hope it would bankrupt Phelps & Co.
Edit: I'm behind the times, the folks who write The Laramie Project organized just such a thing on October 12, 2009.
For those who don't know, The Laramie Project is a play written about lives in Laramie, Wyoming surrounding the murder of Matthew Shepard in 1998. Shepard was targeted because he was gay.
Westboro is a bunch of freaking crazies, who are blaming the deaths of soldiers in the "War on Terror" on homosexuality and the "lapsed morality" of America.
This all made me think. I wonder what it costs for Westboro to come protest. The counter-protestors are already lining up, but they're going to be (primarily) local, so it's cheap for them. That seems like a financial disincentive for Westboro, but they are clearly driven by insanity rather than economics. That means they can be driven in to bankruptcy... :-)
I propose "Laramie Project Day". Much like the Vagina Monologues gets done all over the place for V-day (which they actually stretch in to a month to make it easier, but I'd rather avoid that) we need to do The Laramie Project in as many places as possible on or about October 12 to commemorate the day Matthew was murdered. The more places to try and get Westboro to protest, the better. There are more of us, and we therefore have more resources than they do. And even if that particular piece of my evil plot fails, it's still raising awareness of hate crimes and homophobia, which is a noble cause all to itself.
I'm still going to hope it would bankrupt Phelps & Co.
Edit: I'm behind the times, the folks who write The Laramie Project organized just such a thing on October 12, 2009.