Hate group to picket Averett University graduation

Averett University's student-led Gay/Straight Alliance sponsored a gay pride week last month at the Danville school that has drawn the attention of one of the nation’s most outspoken hate groups.

No, it’s not the Klan or the Neo-Nazis. It’s a group of extreme religious fundamentalists who openly proclaim “God Hates Fags,” “God Hates America,” and “God destroyed the [World Trade Center] to punish America!”

The Rev. Fred Phelps, pastor of Westboro Baptist Church of Topeka, Kan., has made national headlines over the past several years with his loud protests outside the funerals of homosexuals across America, shouting to the families and friends of the recently deceased that he or she is suffering the afterlife in Hell.

Now Fred Phelps is going to bring his picketers to Averett's graduation ceremonies on April 30, and Danville could have a potentially explosive event on its hands.

Regardless of how you feel about the homosexual lifestyle, rational people know that this type of angry, unforgiving extremism is outside the bounds of proper Christianity.

In a press release this week, Westboro Baptist Church announced, "God hates fags and fag enablers. Ergo, God hates [Averett University] and the Pied Pipers-from-Hell there leading kids into lives of sin, shame, disease, misery, death and Hell – via [the Gay/Straight Alliance] clubs and Gay Pride Weeks."

According to The Roanoke Times, Averett President Richard Pfau said the gay pride week events were not endorsed by the university – a historically Baptist school. Yet every student graduating that day – straight or gay – and his or her family, will have to see Phelps’ signs and hear his follower’s acidic shouts.

God may punish those who go against His will, but I don’t know of any Christian denomination that teaches God “hates” anyone. We are taught He hates the sin and not the sinner. (I am not making a judgment that homosexuals are sinners, I am stating that even those Christians who consider them sinners must love their neighbors, including their enemies, as Jesus taught.) Of course, the Bible shows Jesus reaching out to sinners throughout his ministry.

Phelps’ group doesn’t reach out to anyone. At their protests, his followers scream, “Fags go to Hell!” Small children – several look as young as six years old – hold signs at rallies stating “God Hates Fags.” Phelps doesn’t invite people to come to know God.

WBC also states that its hatred is directed to all of America, as well, with the following excerpt from its website www.godhatesamerica.com: “God destroyed the [World Trade Center] to punish America! Bloody butcher Bush thinks he can distract from these facts by taking over Babylon (modern-day Iraq) with his fag army. As a result of his foolishness, body bags are coming home by the truckload. [1,500 American soldiers] have entered hell as result of this bloody takeover of Babylon.”

Even the Rev. Billy Graham and Dr. James Dobson of Focus on the Family are not immune to Phelps’ hatred. Phelps calls Graham an “old Hell-bound false prophet” and has said that “God hates fags and fag enablers. Ergo, God hates Graham, his 483 employees and associates, and donors giving him $85 million a year.” Phelps also plans on picketing Graham’s funeral someday.

WBC claims it has conducted more than 22,000 pickets across America and in foreign countries during the past 12 years “aimed at showing Americans their transgressions and causing America to know her abominations.”

I’m not sure if Southwest Virginia is prepared for the kind of hate-filled clamor that Phelps and WBC will bring here.

But no matter how vile or ignorant he and his followers are, in America – the country they despise so much – they have the right to say what they will say (as long as they don’t intimate violence). The quickest way to silence them is if no one bothers to listen.

To paraphrase an old philosophical riddle, “If an idiot shouts in the woods, and there is no one there to hear him, does he make a sound?”