As thousands of Michigan, Louisville, Witchita State and Syracuse college basketball fans made their way into the Georgia Dome on Saturday, they were confronted by the unmistakable anti-gay picket signs frequently paraded outside of LGBT events and U.S. military funerals by Westboro Baptist Church.
Around eight members of the Westboro Baptist Church protested in Atlanta over the weekend outside of the Georgia Dome during the NCAA Basketball Final Four tournament. Shirley Phelps-Roper is the matriarch of Westboro Baptist Church and daughter of church founder Fred Phelps.
“You need to have a case study. His name is Magic Johnson,” Phelps-Roper said. “Just use him as the beginning point. Remember, he did some Final Fours. The end of that matter is a fag son, he's got AIDS, and they're all headed to hell.”
Fred Phelps’ Westboro Baptist Church is coming to town, and I couldn’t be happier.
The “God Hates Fags” clan from Topeka, Kan., has announced plans to be in Atlanta for two days in April to protest targets ranging from the NCAA Basketball “Final Four” at the Georgia Dome on April 6 to three congregations — Creflo Dollar’s World Changers Church International in Atlanta, Beulah Missionary Baptist Church in Decatur, and Basilica of The Sacred Heart of Jesus in Atlanta — April 7.
“You won’t go into the Final Four Atlanta orgy-of-gross-drunken-nasty-reveling without being warned by the faithful servants of WBC, with this core message, timely and topical at this hour: Fag marriage dooms nations,” the pseudo-church warns on its website.
Westboro Baptist Church coming to Atlanta to protest churches, basketball
Westboro Baptist Church, infamous for its “God Hates Fags” protests, will return to Atlanta in April for a series of protests, including plans to picket outside of the Georgia Dome for the NCAA's “Final Four” college basketball championship.
The NCAA basketball championship tournament protest is slated for April 6. WBC will also protest outside of World Changers Church International in Atlanta, Beulah Missionary Baptist Church in Decatur, and Basilica of The Sacred Heart of Jesus in Atlanta on April 7, according to its website.
Check out the protest schedule (and the church's usual convoluted reasoning) from the WBC website:
Megan Phelps-Roper, the granddaughter of Westboro Baptist Church's Fred Phelps, and her sister Grace have split from the anti-gay church known for picketing the funerals of deceased U.S. servicemembers and other events with signs that read “God Hates Fags” and “Fags Doom Nations.”
The announcement came via Medium.com, where Megan offered an explanation of how she came to disagree with her family's ministry and apologized for her past anti-gay statements and actions.
The gay-haters at Westboro Baptist Church are continuing their mission of pissing off everyone in America by announcing their intention to picket Sandy Hook Elementary School following the mass shooting in Newtown, Ct. that killed 26 people, including 20 students.
Westboro has regularly protested the funerals of slain American soldiers and has picketed concerts, churches, synagogues and even Atlanta’s Grady High School in “demonstrations opposing the fag lifestyle of soul-damning, nation-destroying filth,” according to the group's website.
In a video titled “God Sent the Shooter” released on one of its websites over the weekend, Westboro celebrates the shooting and cites God's hatred of homosexuality as one of the (many) reasons for the tragedy.
A new mockumentary video from writer/director Chris McGuire pokes fun at the notoriously anti-gay Westboro Baptist Church by profiling its offshoot, the even more anti-gay (if that were possible) Eastboro Baptist Church.
Led by Westboro founder Fred Phelps' brother Frank, the Eastboro Baptist Church aims to seriously bring the hate, in a not-at-all-gay kind of way.
From the video's YouTube description:
Dissenters of the Westboro Baptist Church have broken away and formed a new, more radical hate group. Led by Reverend Frank Phelps, their guerrilla tactics pose the most serious threat to the survival of the LGBT community!