Weekend Plans

San Diego likes tourists. They share our sunshine and bring in money. The Village in La Jolla is always filled with Europeans, and Sea World attracts families from all over the country.

But I wish the Westboro Baptist Church would stay away this weekend.

I first had the pleasure of meeting Fred Phelps and his band of hatemongers in 2002, when his group protested the University of Maryland's performance of "The Laramie Project". (Which I recently blogged about.) The campus was treated to a mob screaming hate and wielding equally hateful signs, like pitchforks. These are the same people who disrupt the funerals of gay people who've died of AIDS, screaming and yelling at the deceased family members that their relative is in hell. The depths of their hate is completely unfathomable.

My lesbian co-worker at UMD filled me in on all about this Church's "work." She'd grown up in West Virginia--a place not exactly known for its open-mindedness--and yet the presence of this hate group (you can't honestly call them a "Church") on our campus made made her completely distraught.