The Westboro Baptist Church

Oh dear the Westboro Baptist Church…  I am an outspoken atheist myself.  However, I don’t try to preach.  I hate fundamentalism, but if you find solace in a religion – any religion – and you do good with that, then good on you.  If you don’t try to convert me to your religion, I won’t try to change your mind either.  But the Westboro Baptist Church is a whole different story.  If you are a member of that particular cult (let’s not call it a religion or a church, please), then you really have something wrong with you and I will do everything I can to change your mind and make you see the err of your ways.

What Is the Westboro Baptist Church?

I’m not going to actually link to their website but it’s easy enough to find of course.  You can Google their names, or you can simply go to “god hates fags”.  That’s right, god hates fags.  That is their first message.  Nothing to do with do good, the ten commandments, love, compassion, god is great.  No, simply, that god hates fags.  Fags, not gay people, homosexuals or anything else slightly more respectful.  Fags.  Wonderful…

They have other beliefs as well, all equally disturbing.  Let’s take a look.

Westboro Baptist Church Beliefs

One of the things that really annoys me is that these people are seriously in your face.  They picket!  They picket funerals of soldiers (god killed them in the war because they were evil) on street corners, bringing their children with them.  They have statistics on their page about how many people have died due to god’s will since you browsed to their website.  Basically, anybody that dies does so because god deemed them not worthy.  They will all be going straight to hell.  And just in case you didn’t know that, they will make sure that they picket your funeral with their bizarre messages.

They proclaim violence and hatred.  They look at hateful messages in the bible and use these to show that god hates everybody.  Except them of course.  They are pretty much the only ones who will be going to heaven.  Now, there are some seriously freaky things in the bible.  Like if one person is a sinner in a village, that whole village should be exterminated.  And they preach this!

Their basic quote is “obey or perish”.  Oh and, if you think you can change their mind, don’t bother.  They proclaim that they will spend exactly 0 nanoseconds worrying about your “feelllinngss”.

What is really scary is not so much that this cult exists.  Cults promoting hatred have always been around.  It is the enormous amount of publicity that they have gotten (and I suppose I am guilty of this now too).  Is it necessary to publically announce that these people are evil?  Probably yes, but then you also run the risk of some brain dead idiot looking at this stuff and thinking they’ve got a good point.  Let me make one thing very clear: they do not have a good point.  They have no point AT ALL.  They are full of contradictions, picking and choosing what they like and ignoring the bits that prove them wrong.  Sure, this is what every religion does, but these guys are particularly evil.

So why am I writing this?  If you see anything on Facebook or other social media promoting the Westboro Baptist Church, report them.  If you hear they are coming to a place near you, picket against them.  Speak to their children (they bring the kids to their pickets).  Hopefully, you will be able to save at least one of their kids.  Just do something to show the world that this sort of hatred is not ok.