Sorry I've been AWOL the last few weeks. For the 4 of you that keep up with my blog, I'm sure you've been devastated. Sometimes, as a writer and a human being, I don't feel I have anything interesting to say. If I got paid to blog, I'm sure I could scrape out some bon mots in a hurry, but as it were, life and stress and headaches like Sumo wrestlers resting on my head intervened, and I went silent.
I've been following with amused detachment the cuckoo-kachoo Westboro Baptist Church in the news recently. This is the group of people based in Kansas who have decided to picket dead soldiers' funerals, because the war and/or the soldiers have something to do with homosexuality or the general loss of godliness. I'm not clear on the details, because these people are certifiable. I have, in fact, tangled with them before.
Picture it: Columbus, Mississippi, early-2002. A young, winsome girl is a plucky copy editor at a local daily newspaper. Alright, I was a cranky copy editor at a newspaper that paid me just above the poverty line...oh, and the Dorothy Hamill haircut-having boss I had treated me like something that she scraped off her shoe. Among my many genuinely important duties, I had to periodically check the fax machine. Heaven forbid, an important Rotary meeting or mayoral appearance fell through the cracks. One particular day, I pulled a press release off the fax machine, and in the boldest, largest font, it read, " Matthew Shephard burning in hell since 1999," with a link listed "www.godhatesfags.org."
I was absolutely horrified, and I forget why we were even receiving the fax. It may have been the year they picketed the University of Southern Mississippi for something inane, but my liberal sensibilities were shaken. Who were these people? Who gave them the right to invoke God's name in the name of hate? So, I went to their horrid website, saw more of the same, and immediately fired off an e-mail to them, something to the effect of "I don't know to what God you're praying, but my God doesn't foster hate and judgment and would never lend his name to a group as horrible as yours. You should be ashamed of yourselves." And then, as I always did, signed Emily Gaither, Copy Editor, Commercial Dispatch. Not because I was speaking for the paper, but because I wanted them to know why I knew who they were, and a title lends a certain strength, I guess.
Maybe about 12 hours later, we got a fax that said "God hates Emily and the Commercial Dispatch," with a press release detailing how they were planning to visit our city, picket the newspaper and also several local churches...why, I have no idea. Let me explain another thing, the managing editor and two of our reporters were gay. However, Emily was taking up the indignant cause of the rainbow at this particular point. Turns out, the managing editor was in agreement with me until she related this latest development to the executive editor/OWNER of the newspaper.
In short: He e-mailed or contacted these people, and what I like to imagine is that he told them I was a renegade, a rebel, a liberal with no connections, and I did not speak for the newspaper. I have to believe he must've also told them that he supported their wacked-out views, or they would've come anyway, but, whatever...Also, I was suspended from work for a day because I had nearly brought the crazies to Main Street, and at the time I was A. Extremely grateful for not losing my job and B. Extremely grateful I wouldn't have to explain to several news stations how these people had come to be in Mississippi.
In retrospect, had I had the boss that hired me, he would've welcomed the controversy, and I might've ended up on the national news, who knows, but I find it ridiculously amusing that the conservative nation as a whole is outraged by these people, who began, as far as I can tell, out of hate for a dead, gay teenager who never harmed anyone, yet endured the most awful, brutal hate crime since segregation days. They wouldn't have identified with that, which is bad enough, but when it comes to the troops, that's when we start to care. Personally, I like to believe that everyone's death is tragic, and one doesn't weigh more than the other.
Also, Westboro Baptist Church is batshit crazy. They're all related, they're all attorneys, and they know everything imaginable about the First Amendment. Smart, insane people...like the Unabomber...gives me the chills.
No comments:
Post a Comment