There’s a meme going around
which I will not re-post here. It says:
“REFUSE SERVICE TO THIS WOMAN
and those with her.
“This is Shirley Phelps-Roper. If
she comes into your store, sits in your restaurant, or tries to check into your
hotel, refuse her any service. She is one of the leaders of Westboro Baptist
Church and she is not welcome in Waco.
“Click ‘Share’ to get the word
out!”
In my work with PROMO -
Missouri's statewide LGBT civil rights organization - and in my work as a
pediatrician, I spend a lot of my time and energy trying to assure that no one
is refused food or shelter in the state of Missouri on the basis of who they
are. Granted, this woman's actions and professed attitudes are vile and
reprehensible. That makes our response to her and her companions a challenge.
I have seen Westboro Baptist in
action. In 2001, one month after 9/11, in fact, I was at the Gay and Lesbian
Medical Association Annual Conference in New Orleans. As you can imagine,
indeed, as you may remember, that was a time of deep sadness and roiling
emotion, and many of us who went to the conference were pretty apprehensive
about even getting on a plane to travel there. Well, that year Westboro decided
to target GLMA, and for three days they picketed outside the hotel, spewing
hate and bile. On top of the devastation I was still feeling for the thousands
lost that autumn, as someone who, at one point or another in my life, has been
called all the disgusting names a gay man can be called, it was hard to hear
that relentless chanting outside my window. It brought up a lot of old fear and
shame, and my first response, understandably, was anger. “This is freedom?” I
thought. “Americans are dead, for THIS?” I wanted nothing more than to go out
onto the street, scream right back in their faces, kick them in the gut, pummel
them with their own GOD HATES FAGS signs. Of course, all of us at the
conference had already been coached on what we could do and could not do,
legally, in response to them, no matter how we felt or what old psychic scabs
they had picked at. Finally, I went down to the street…
Now, I do consider myself a
Christian, and at times like that, it’s not easy. As I went took the elevator
down to the lobby, I recalled, almost against my will, what Jesus said in
Matthew 5:43-45, "You have heard that it has been said, You shall love
your neighbor, and hate your enemy. But I say to you, Love your enemies, bless
them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which
spitefully use you, and persecute you; That you may be the children of your
Father which is in heaven: for he makes his sun to rise on the evil and on the
good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust." Like it or not, I had
been given a grace experience, and I had to choose to accept it or not. As I
walked out of the hotel onto the sidewalk on Poydras Street, I saw them
standing in the median, their screaming faces focused now on me and contorted
by hate and fear. I made my choice, and for the first time, I saw them clearly:
sad, pathetic, and ultimately powerless. Finally, I pitied them, I prayed for
them, and I turned and went back into the conference.
So we all know that Shirley Phelps-Roper
and the members of Westboro Baptist Church have twisted and corrupted the core
tenet of Christianity – Love God, and love your neighbor as yourself – but if
we do the same to her and to them, if we hate and revile them, then we are no
better than they. We surrender to hopelessness. We yield to fear. We lose our
power. We are diminished.
As Dr. Martin Luther King said, “Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do
that.” It's easy to love those who love us. The
challenge we have been given is to love those who hate us. And perhaps, in
doing so, we can be the agent of grace for them, the one person who will reveal
the truth of God's love to these people so poor in spirit, and perhaps we may
crack open even these poor hearts shriveled by hate.
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