The ‘Real Story’ on Last Week’s Westboro Protest

By • Nov 2nd, 2009 • Category: Blog

Forget what we reported about the Kansas-based fringe church’s protest outside Dickinson High School last week, or what you might have read in the Jersey Journal.

Megan Marie, who was apparently one of the five Westboro members to protest, has the “real story” in a blog post that calls out some students for being “clueless bimbos and wanna-be thugs” — with the lovely aside “Seriously, guys: pull your pants up and speak English — preferably not words of rage against your Maker!” — and manages to get one shot across the bow against Jersey City, with its insistence that the group’s “bright signs” — which proclaimed that “God Hates You,” “You’re Going to Hell,” “God Hates Jews” and “You Will Eat Your Babies” — were “the only light in that sad, dreary place” known to us “criminals raised by filthy New Jersey” as Palisade Avenue.

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is the founding editor of the Jersey City Independent; he now works for a public-policy nonprofit in Trenton.
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  • Joi Kelley

    What tiny little town in Kansas did these crazies come from! I hope there next journey is to see the wizard.

  • Joi Kelley

    I was so upset by this person’s blog, that I couldn’t write straight. What I meant to write was: What tiny town in Kansas did these crazies come from? I hope their next next journey is to see the wizard!

  • Alb

    I think the answer here is that, sure, there are some reasonably mentally healthy people in Kansas who are offensively conservative by Jersey City standards, but the pastor of the Westboro Baptist Church is delusional even by the standards of very conservative Kansas churches. A very conservative Kansas minister might fulminate against the sin of Onanism, or whatever, but he’s not going to bring his family across the country to yell at the students in an ordinary public high school.

    So, it seems as if Phelps is just plain off his rocker. He’s not just conservative; he’s got a seriously messed up brain, along with enough charisma to get his family to buy into his delusions.

    It would be fun to yell at the guy, or throw tomatoes at him, but I think it would be kinder and more useful to donate to charities that try to help find ways to prevent, diagnose and treat conditions that wreck people’s brains.

  • http://www.jerseycityindependent.com Jon Whiten

    Alb-

    You are absolutely right re: Phelps’ mental illness. That is an overlooked part of the Westboro phenomenon — this POZ story from nearly 15 years ago also goes into the abuse that Phelps has allegedly inflicted on his children and family, to the point where they will do what he wants them to. An interesting theory is posed by a Kansas journalist: “that the family finds protesting so much fun because they have transformed their anger at Fred into a general rage at any target he puts in front of them.”

    http://www.poz.com/articles/2106_13378.shtml