The Westboro Baptist Church delegation outside of Garfield High School this morning wasn't claiming moral purity. “I sin and have sinned,” said Jael Phelps, granddaughter of Westboro’s pastor Fred Phelps. So what sort of sins are they sinning? I asked Phelps to describe them: if she has had sex before marriage, or like, if she has slept with the hot guy behind her, and whether she gets drunk. “We would never whisper them to you,” she said. Could she yell them to me? “No.” How about write them on a sign? “No.”
They came to Garfield because the students are “little brats,” but, when asked what she hopes to teach them, Phelps said, “Our goal is not to get them to see or understand.”
Across the street, pride-flag-waving girls, African-American boys, respectably dressed older gentleman, and even-more-respectably dressed nuns (who were men) mobbed the sidewalk. It was 7:12 a.m., and every time a yellow bus would stop, the teens cheered; students got off the bus, and the ranks swelled. They were winning the volume contest.
The students turned out mostly in solidarity with gay students, but unlike Seattle’s lilywhite gay pride parades, the crowd was half nonwhite. “I ain’t got a problem with gay people,” said Jaevon Lozan, 14, an African American freshman. “What they are doing is discrimination.”
Alexa Lagazo, a junior, held a sign that said, “You’re Not in Kansas Anymore,” referring to Westboro’s base in Topeka. She resented the homophobic messages, but she was also befuddled by another central message: People will soon be “killing and eating babies.” Seriously, what’s with the baby eating? I crossed the street to engage with Phelps, who stood behind a steel barricade with several police shooing away people who were also trying to engage with her.
“Before all is said and done, you are going to be eating your own babies, you will be eating you own children.” (I’m a fag, Jael, I have no babies.)
“I didn’t have anything to say to them,” said Hanna King, 15, co-president of the Gay Straight Alliance and organizer of the Garfield protest. “They are crazy. They just gave us a reason to rally for diversity and our community.”
Photos of students by Kelly O; photo of Phelps, the hot guy, and their matching brimstone-and-fire signs by me.
