Vicious Kansas Gay-Bashers Finally Find a Friend
, a Kansas-based group notorious for turning tragedies into gay-bashing opportunities, is pretty much universally reviled. Even an Arizona-based Ku Klux Klan group forcefully (if ungrammatically) rejected the group in a âdisclaimerâ published on its website. âThe Ku Klux Klan, LLC, has not or EVER will have ANY connection with The âWestboro Baptist Church,ââ it said. âWe absolutely repudiate their activities.â
Not the Dove World Outreach Center, a Gainesville, Fla., church that has used similar tactics to attack both and . âWe support Westboro who [sic] came to Gainesville because of its âGayâ reputation,â the church states on its website.
In fact, Dove became virtually the only group in the history of Westboroâs anti-gay and anti-Jewish campaigning to join forces with the Topeka, Kan., church. Dove enthusiastically took part in Westboroâs Sunday protest against Gainesvilleâs tolerance of homosexuality. About 30 members of Dove World Outreach Center joined fewer than 10 Westboro representatives outside Trinity United Methodist Church in Gainesville, . Many of the Dove protesters wore their signature âIslam is of the Devilâ T-shirts â a message theyâve also promoted on signs outside the church.
The Independent Florida Alligator, the University of Floridaâs student newspaper, that Dove and Westboro members sang variations of âThis Land is Your Landâ (âThis Land is Going Straight to Hellâ), âIâm Proud to Be an Americanâ (âIâm Ashamed to Be an Americanâ) and âGod Bless Americaâ (âGod Hates Americaâ), among other tunes. âI think their church is willing to stand up for what the whole Bible says,â Dove pastor Wayne Sapp said in a shot by the Alligator. âMost churches like to preach part of the Bible. Westboro Baptist Church talks about these are things we need to turn away from: accepting homosexuality, accepting perversion, accepting adultery, accepting that thatâs just how people are. Thatâs not the truth.â
But Dove, like Westboro, goes beyond asserting that the Bible condemns homosexuality. In March, it erected a sign outside the church that proclaimed âNo Homo Mayorâ â a reference to Gainesville City Commissioner Craig Lowe, who was running for mayor. (Lowe, now mayor-elect, spoke to dozens of people at a counter-protest in downtown Gainesville on Sunday.) The church later changed the sign to âNo Homoâ after Americans United for the Separation of Church and State, a Washington D.C.-based advocacy organization, complained to the Internal Revenue Service that Dove was violating the ban on political campaigning for tax-exempt groups.
For its part, Westboro â which has pilloried soldiers killed in Iraq, schoolchildren killed in bus crashes, Nobel Peace Prize laureates and others for supposedly tolerating homosexuality â is heading to Colorado tomorrow to continue its picketing. This time, presumably, it wonât have any help.