Stunned that protesters were flashing hateful anti-gay messages to traffic along a busy street Saturday morning, Chris Lucas had to pull over to join a counter-protest.
Then, just as spontaneously, Lucas found a way to stun the protesters. The 31 year-old massage therapist and a man he just met locked in a passionate kiss just feet from the protesters. "I know the protesters were shouting things at me, but I couldn't hear what they were saying," said Lucas, who is gay. "I had my eyes closed. It was actually kind of liberating to do this."
The kiss was one of several creative responses to a demonstration by 20 members of the Westboro Baptist Church of Topeka, Kansas. The group travels the country to rally against homosexuality. "These young adults need to know there is a hell and there is a judgment day on which they will be judged for their sins," said church member Deborah Hockenbarger, 51. "We are trying to warn them about their filthiness. It is not OK to be a fag. God almighty says so." Hockenbarger waved a sign that read: "Fags are worthy of death." Other church members took shots at Catholicism with signs that read: "Pope in Hell" and "Your pastor is a whore." They view the church as a pro-gay institution....
Wait.
Stop right there.
Westboro Baptist and the Phelps followers view the Roman Catholic Church as pro-gay. My.
You know, I knew the Phelps followers were odd ... but you kind of wonder what planet they live on, that the Roman Catholic church -- the one in which the new pope just said that Spain's prospective legalization of gay marriage was a Very Bad Thing, with said new pope having once described homosexuality as "objectively disordered and an intrinsic moral evil" ... that church is pro-gay.
...Well, all-righty, then! Glad to have that cleared up! And here I thought that "pro-gay" meant being in favor of allowing people to live their lives, to have the normal human rights that the nongay have come to take for granted. Apparently not.
Posted by iain at April 25, 2005 11:11 AM
