Whitman Sounds Ready for Hate Group

Walt Whitman High School in Bethesda is bracing for a visit by the USA's premier hate group, the Westboro Baptist Church. The Reverend Fred Phelps is scheduled to bring his congregation, which has the website GodHatesFags.com, to our county on April 24th to protest the fact that a high school was named after somebody who may have been gay.

The school paper, Black and White Online, has a good story on the preparations.

Most students don't think twice about the namesake of our school, Walt Whitman. However, one Kansas-based protest group, the Westboro Baptist Church, is taking a vocal stand against our school's name. Church members, who take offense to a school adopting the name of an allegedly homosexual person, plan to protest at Whitman April 24 from 2 to 2:40 p.m.

As news of the protest spread, students quickly reacted and began planning their own demonstration. Sophomore Ryan Hauck created a Facebook group for students to organize and discuss plans for the counter-protest. Within a few days of the group's creation, over 400 people RSVP'd to the event and wrote comments on the wall.

"Really the counter-protest is both to show that Whitman students won't stand for the intolerent attitude that the church represents, and also to give students a chance to point out the logical flaws in the church's ideology," Hauck said.

So far, principal Alan Goodwin supports the counter-protest and will allow students to leave class ten minutes early on April 24 to participate, although MCPS has yet to approve it. Goodwin also met with counter-protestors March 27 to discuss the legal aspects of the event.

Although the police will ultimately determine what students can or cannot do, Goodwin wants to bar students from other schools from attending.

"I don't want to worry about students from other schools coming," Goodwin said. "I trust Whitman students and it's about us, not other schools."

Responding to the protest might help the church gain more media coverage, but an effective counter-protest will cast a negative light on the WBC, sophomore and counter-protest organizer Amar Mukunda said.

"I truly believe that if we conduct the protest in a peaceful and effective manner, our message will be stronger than theirs, and they will not gain any positive attention or support," he said. Counter-protestors prepare for Westboro Baptist appearence

Kids seem more mature these days than when I was in school. Can you imagine being fifteen, sixteen, and your school is singled out because it was named after a poet, perhaps America's greatest poet, and he might have been bisexual or gay? My school was called North High, we didn't get this kind of attention.

Personally I don't read Whitman's poetry as having a homosexual aspect to it. He seems to me like someone who loves life and all living things, his "body electric" gets a charge out of being around people, male and female, he loves to look at people and talk to them and he loves the feeling of friendship and the intimacy of the soul. But you can read him as being bisexual, I suppose you could conclude he was gay. The feeling is that his sexuality is so integrated with his joy in being alive that it doesn't matter, he loves people without consideration for their gender and it may be sexual love, you just can't tell. That's part of what is so cool about Walt Whitman.

Although the protest won't change the WBC's ideology, counter-protesters plan to use a variety of peaceful methods to project their message, including reading Whitman's poetry, presenting speeches or protesting silently in the vicinity of the WBC.

"The only worries I have are that either the church won't show up or a counter-protester will do some stupid high school thing like throwing eggs at the protesters," Hauck said.

Members of the WBC often gain media attention through passionate public response to their protests, Goodwin said.

"The group thrives on riling up counter-protestors enough that they do something and the group can sue and get money," he said.

The church's founder, Fred Phelps, was a civil rights lawyer for 23 years, and gained attention for his work on the behalf of discriminated African American clients, but was disbarred in 1985 for falsely accusing judges. His background in civil rights gives him broad knowledge of protestor's first amendment rights, which he uses to his advantage, Mukunda said.

"What happens is that the counter-protestors harass and act violently or inappropriately towards the protestors and get sued," he said. "This money goes to the church so they can set up more protests and make more money."

If the WBC receives a permit to assemble, they will protest on the limited space on Whittier Blvd. in front of Whitman, but they cannot impede traffic, Goodwin said.

Oh, that's interesting, I wondered how they pay for all this.

Students received a letter from Goodwin March 26, in which he criticized the WBC's protest and assured students and parents that there will be a police presence determined by the size of the crowd that day.

Westboro also demonstrated at George Mason University and Towson High School on March 30, as well as Fairfax High School, in protest to a relatively large homosexual population at the university and the Gay-Straight Alliance and Diversity Club at Towson. A small group from the WBC showed up at the demonstrations and was largely outnumbered by students. A WBC spokeswoman confirmed the planned protest at Whitman in an e-mail to a Washington Post reporter, saying, "The children that attend that high school are taught 'Rebellion Against God 101' every day in every way."

The Westboro Baptist Church, based in Topeka, KS, leads daily peaceful sidewalk demonstrations across the country to protest the "modern militant homosexual movement", which they say poses a threat to the U.S., according to their web site.

Several teachers intend to use the protest as a real-life example of classroom teachings. One teacher will use the opportunity to read Whitman's poetry in class, while another plans on teaching about civil rights protests in-depth in his NSL class.

This really isn't a big deal, this group of nutty Baptists goes around trying to upset people and occasionally they succeed at it. It looks like the students at Whitman have the right idea, they can turn out and counterdemonstrate, let the press and the Westboro people know that our community does not support this kind of hatred.