Westboro Baptist Church: Hey, We Burned a Quran First!
It's almost like a headline out of The Onion: the well-known hate group run by the Reverend Fred Phelps and now his daughter Shirley are upset with the Quran-burning stunt that is grabbing headlines across the world.
They feel like Dove World Outreach is stealing their gimmicks, since they already burned a Quran years ago, and no one really cared.
Via McClatchy News:
The two churches serve as an excellent example of how a publicity stunt can work, but eventually wear off over time as a group gets more known as a bigoted pseudo-church and their antics get ignored.
In the 90's, when Westboro Church began launching their now infamous anti-gay pickets, pushing their "God Hates Fags" website and anti-homosexual views, they were able to get easy media access due to the novelty of the events. But as the media began to ignore them, the church had to escalate their actions, leading to pickets of military events, allegedly pro-gay schools and art events, and even the funerals of the Minnesota bridge collapse victims.
Even then, few media would cover their schemes, leaving them mostly to themselves.
But Dove World Outreach Center has also had its share of publicity stunts before this proposed Quran burning event. They have been putting out anti-Muslim lawn signs and creating anti-Islamic t-shirts for well over a year now, with very little attention. And likely, this event would have gone unnoticed as well if not for the heightened sensitivity to the issue that started due to the Park51 debate and other related events.
But it's become a much more hostile environment these days, with both racial and religious intolerance escalating -- an environment that plays perfectly for the agenda of thinly disguised hate groups.
Even those who try to mask themselves as churches.
They feel like Dove World Outreach is stealing their gimmicks, since they already burned a Quran years ago, and no one really cared.
Via McClatchy News:
[Shirley Phelps Roper's] irritation Wednesday was not that the Rev. Terry Jones and his Dove World Outreach Center's planned bonfire would offend Muslims worldwide and probably increase the danger to American soldiers in Afghanistan and Iraq.
It's that in 2008 she and her father's Topeka flock set fire to a Quran in plain view on a Washington, D.C., street and nobody seemed to care.
"We did it a long time before this guy," Phelps-Roper said by telephone from a street corner in downtown Chicago, scene of the latest Westboro picket — against Jews this time, not gays.
The difference could be that in 2008 many news media outlets had decided to ignore the group's routine of spewing hatred at funerals of fallen American soldiers.
So when Fred Phelps, calling Muhammad a "pedophilic gigolo," went online and invited people to attend the burning, most stayed away.
The two churches serve as an excellent example of how a publicity stunt can work, but eventually wear off over time as a group gets more known as a bigoted pseudo-church and their antics get ignored.
In the 90's, when Westboro Church began launching their now infamous anti-gay pickets, pushing their "God Hates Fags" website and anti-homosexual views, they were able to get easy media access due to the novelty of the events. But as the media began to ignore them, the church had to escalate their actions, leading to pickets of military events, allegedly pro-gay schools and art events, and even the funerals of the Minnesota bridge collapse victims.
Even then, few media would cover their schemes, leaving them mostly to themselves.
But Dove World Outreach Center has also had its share of publicity stunts before this proposed Quran burning event. They have been putting out anti-Muslim lawn signs and creating anti-Islamic t-shirts for well over a year now, with very little attention. And likely, this event would have gone unnoticed as well if not for the heightened sensitivity to the issue that started due to the Park51 debate and other related events.
But it's become a much more hostile environment these days, with both racial and religious intolerance escalating -- an environment that plays perfectly for the agenda of thinly disguised hate groups.
Even those who try to mask themselves as churches.
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