Westboro Baptist Church on 20/20

November 2, 2007

So the Westboro Baptist Church has been on 20/20 tonight. I’ve seen these Westboro church members in a few documentaries, most notably a Louis Theroux British show earlier this year (probably filmed in 2006).

This ‘church’ - mostly a small extended family - have web sites like ‘godhatesfags.com’ and picket military funerals with signs like “Thank God for 9/11″. They are certifiable nuts. What’s funny to me is that “regular” Christians get all hateful at them, and counter-protest, shouting back about how “God” loves people anyway, etc. It immediately devolves in to just childish yelling back and forth, with each side claiming some sort of moral high ground and knowledge of what “God” *really* thinks.

It’s truly insane, and points out the lunacy of religion, period. Somehow when groups of people talk about and hold some mutual beliefs in the supernatural, it’s OK, but when small groups take some teachings from the common holy book to their logical conclusion, they’re ‘wrong’.

John Stossel really nailed one of the young kids who kept going on about “god hates fags” and such.

Stossel: “What’s a fag?”
Kid: “umm… that’s not something I can really explain”

I’m paraphrasing, as I’m in a hotel, and I’m tivo-less right now. I do truly feel sorry for those kids - these were *young* kids, probably 7 or 8 years old or so. Even *saying* the word ‘fag’ would have got my backside slapped when I was their age, and here they are being trotted around on TV for PR purposes (ABC by increasing ad sales, and the WBC by spreading their message) chanting messages they truly don’t even begin to understand. 5 year olds singing about ‘fags’ going to ‘hell’ is sad, but the reaction of hopefully normal people is just as sad.

What I did think was interesting, though, is that the godhatesfags.com website is currently offline. The domain name is registered, but I went there during the 20/20 show, and the name server information now points to:

Name Server: INVALID-DNS.AUPTERMINATION.COM
Name Server: NOT-HOSTED.AUPTERMINATION.COM

So, did they violate their host’s Acceptable Usage Policy (AUP)? Flooded with viewers during the 20/20 show?

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Tags: religion, church, 20/20, 2020