Saturday, August 6, 2011

Ramblings of a Normal Guy: Why do I even bother with the WBC?




Welcome to another addition of ramblings of a normal guy. This is my special column, where I go off on wild rants complaining about the things that happen and effect my (and ours) every day life. Because of the excessive amounts of stupidity that will be featured, a large amount of inappropriate language will most likely be used. Also expect a large helping of calling out and "I don't give a crap". Rated M for mature, and read at  your own risk. 

Hello, my name is Hank.

With my recent dedication to rebuking the lies and slander of the Westboro Baptist cult, I thought I take a post to explain why I was actually doing it. But who are the WBC? They are a group of inbreed twats that are nothing more than egotistical hot heads bent on destroying peoples lives for the sole purpose of attention. Utilizing a twisted version of the Christian Bible to look down  nearly everyone but themselves, they see themselves as supreem god fearing people, aka just better than everyone else. So as a act of defiance against them and their god, I’ve taken up the cause to rebuking and disproving their horridly offensive “God H8’s” videos.  In these videos, they once again try to use the words of the bible to state as fact everyone is going to hell. By various bible verse, teaching of Christ, and proper translation, what I do is show them just how wrong they are. And yes I enjoy every minute of it. But why do I bother devoting so much time and energy to a group that neither cares for it, nor can I successfully bring down on my own?




My first indirect contact with the cult was about two years ago while killing times at work. Seeking any type of laughs to prevent my work from causing 1d8 insanity damage to me, I was randomly searching Encyclopedia Dramatica. ED is a (while horridly offensive) humor site that reports various events in a sometimes twisted and not proper way. After a few random clicks, I found myself in the religion tab and presented with an article about one Fred Phelps. God hates gays, god hates your mom, gods even hates the lunch you had this afternoon, honestly I thought it was all a bunch of made up fooy. How could anyone in their right mind contain such stupid amounts of misdirected hate? Hell, even that idiot who sleeps with kids while saying he’s the second coming doesn’t pull this crap. The more and more I read about Fred and his off the rocker cult, the more I was disgusted with these people. But this couldn’t be true right? The people at ED where just poking fun at crazy people right? Being the geek that I am, I turned to Google for some answers. Mmmmmmm Google. Ten seconds later, you can imagine my utter joy when I found out these crack pots existed. So not only did religious nuts (who claimed to be Christian) praised themselves about spreading hate and stupid, but they where actually allowed to do it?!?! You may even say “u mad bro” would apply.

So like any other average American geek on the net, I spent of bit of time trolling the crap out of the idiots. Even trolling has its uses. As time progressed however, it became more than just some silly pass time. Something clicked you know? Silly trolling became more thought out questions and responses, things like “lol ur an idiot” became question about how and why they thought certain actions where acceptable. 140 characters became whole emails and more. Then, of course, they came to my neck of the woods.

When the WBC came to my neck of the woods, there was a lot of hoopla and media fan faire. Producing pages of poorly edited “information” on the sins of my old high school, they claimed to protesting the school because we cared more about our feeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeelings (no really they wrote it just like that) then their bi-polar god. Four members of the WBC came to challenge us, one of which was Shirley Phelps herself. Why she would be there to preach the word of their god is beyond me, Ms “I said there shouldn’t be female preachers” and Ms “I had a child out of wedlock but I’m still going to condemn other people who do this". But I digress. For little over an hour, the WBC tiny group of four tried to disrupt and shatter the surrounding area. Thankfully they where blocked, laughed at and defeated by a counter protest of at least seventy five people. Go Us!

While all this tomfoolery was going on, students of Archbishop Ryan where just getting off public transportation or being dropped off. This was once again a calculated move by the WBC, they wanted to be seen by as many people as possible; the perfect time to do this being just before school hours began. Most responses from the students where expected, various used of the middle finger, what the WBC could do with their signs, even a few spit balls here and there. However, there one student that stood out from the rest, and even to this day I can still remember his face. You could tell just by the look he had that this gross display of senseless hate bothered him. Not only bothered him, but deeply troubled him. What part of the message it was, I will never know, but the hurt was there none the less. After the successful counter protest, when we where invited in for coffee and donuts, I saw the kid again in the spiritual guidance center still very much distraught by what happened.

Here was a kid in his teenage years; a kid who should only worry about doing stupid school work, video games and maybe getting a date. Why should this kid, who probably never even heard of the WBC be traumatized by them? Such emotional scars will not convert him, and may in fact even push him away from Christianity. So now because of ego, this kid now needs to be…. To suffer from this bullshit? Where the frack in the bible does it say that’s ok?

This is why I continue on.

I, the author of the terribly put together book of stories, do this for the people who can’t. In such I do not hope to change the WBC, nor do I do it for attention or spite. I do in fact not hate them, more like feel sorry for the brainwashed bunch. I do this so people like this previous mentioned student, know that the message of the WBC will not go unchallenged, and there are people who will not be silent while bad people pull this crap.




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