Sunday slice: Westboro's weirdness

A Politics Daily writer argues protests by Westboro Baptist Church are  like a vaccine, slowly undermining the Phelps' own cause:

What I've yet to find is anything more than a few isolated voices raised in support of the Phelpsists. They gain no converts to their cause, no support for their hatreds. Even those churches where members agree with some of the theology are so repulsed by the way the Phelpsists make their case that they distance themselves.

So Westboro provokes a beneficial response, while causing little or no lasting harm. Just like the vaccine. 

For my theory to hold water, though, I needed to find some long-term effect. Did the introduction of the Phelpsists into a community create a reaction that hangs on after they move along? I decided to contact several people in the cities where Westboro had been over the past few months.

Kathy Kniep is the executive director of the YWCA in Clark County, Wash. In early June, she was part of a counter-protest organized when the Phelpsists came to town. The Westboro folks chose to picket a school. While the educators asked that there be no public reaction at their school, several organizations decided to hold an event at another location.

"We made a conscious decision to hold a rally as a positive event to promote what we think is good as opposed to reacting against what we think is bad," Kniep said. 

Their event pulled together elected officials, activists and religious leaders from across a spectrum of beliefs and politics, she said. And that could have a long-term effect as they work together on other causes.

"It was not just the lefty liberal social service staff and volunteers," she said.

Isaac Bailey is a columnist for the Sun News in Myrtle Beach, S.C. Back in May, he wrote about the reaction to a visit there from the Phelpsists. I asked him whether there were residual effects.

"A lot of folks who are usually on opposite sides of the aisle actually protested together against all those things you mentioned -- anti-gay sentiments, religious intolerance, etc.," he said. "I also got word from a few non-profits who received several $100 checks -- including one which is solely designed to help HIV patients and families -- in the name of Westboro Baptist Church -- money they desperately needed and would not have otherwise gotten if Westboro didn't show up."

...To push my metaphor a little more, I admit that Westboro is not harmless. Just as that attenuated virus vaccine sometimes makes people sick, some of Westboro's protests are, no doubt, horribly painful for their targets. And the protests do offer some reinforcement for people who hate in silence or in ways less obvious than horrible signs and slogans. Is the risk worth the benefit?

The folks I contacted disagree.

"I don't wish that group on anybody," Kniep said of the Clark County visit. "There was television coverage of the event here. The quotes from the people from Westboro Baptist Church were just heinous. No good came come of that."

Weintraub took the other side. Was the Westboro visit to Charleston, on balance, a good thing?

"As weird as it sounds," she said, "I would say yes."

Worth it or not? Similar sentiments can be found in other theologies, and I know the danger of getting into a proof-text war, but I'm reminded of a passage that I don't see cited on the Westboro website from the King James translation of the New Testament. Romans 8:28:

"And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God . . ."