Brooklyn Tech HS Students Rally to Oppose Westboro Baptist

On the same day a federal appeals court overturned a $5 million judgment against the hateful Westboro Baptist Church and ruled even "distasteful and repugnant" speech is protected by the First Amendment: Five anti-gay hatemongers from the Kansas-based "church" were outnumbered by nearly 200 Brooklyn Technical High School students who used Twitter and Facebook to organize a huge counter-demonstration to WBC's anti-gay and anti-Semitic Brooklyn protest.

The Westboro five held signs reading "Fags are beasts" and "danced and shouted anti-gay slogans", reports the New York Times Fort Greene blog. The outnumbered Westboro protesters were escorted by police officers as they left the corner of Fort Greene Place and Fulton Street earlier than scheduled.

WBC promised "a three-day assault on Brooklyn" and adds: "WBC will teach the rebels of Brooklyn what good looks like, and you had better behave."

"They wanna teach us how to behave?" mocks one Tech student at the Times blog. "Well we taught them we're NOT brutes but we stand up for what we believe in. Brooklyn Tech may be a huge and diverse school but we ALL come together when it counts."

On a personal note, let me add that I'm extremely proud of Brooklyn Tech and Fort Greene for pushing back against WBC's thuggery. When I first moved to New York City, I lived on the corner of Fort Greene Place and DeKalb, right across the street from the school. Several (noisy) students used to hang out on the stoop. I once overheard two boys criticize one of their friends for calling a classmate a "fag." "How do you know he's gay?" one teen demanded. "And man...why do you care? That's ill." Their hanging out never bothered me after that.

Students Turn Out, Westboro Leaves [NYT]
Hate-mongering Kansans Begin Their Assault [BP]
Feds Overturn Westboro Judgment [JMG]

Comments

[nathans]

Thats a beautiful story... wonderful way o end the week

[Face and Waist]

I am so glad to see these students of all colors and sexuality fighting back. This is beautiful!~

[Isis]

BRAVO to those students! The Westboro Church hatemongers are Domestic Terrorist IMO.

[Doug Cooper Spencer]

Thanks Rod. We need to hear stories like this. I heard similar conversation last week here at University of Cincinnati in which some black students were meeting & they told one of the members of the group that they would no longer permit him to say anything bad about another because he assumed the guy was gay. They told him he 'was wrong & they no longer wanted to hear homophobic talk.'

[CJL]

YES!!! Go Technites! Class of 03'. This put a big smile on my face :)

[Rigga]

Go Techies!! Class of '97! In. Your. Face! Church of Satan (Westboro Baptist)

But on the real, I'm surprised Technites came out for this one.

[worst_1_yet]

I grew in Kansas with these freaks protesting against homosexuals and demonstrating in front of funerals of AIDS victims and fallen soldiers. Interesting that they are all basically from the same family, the Phelps family. More telling is the fact that they never appear without their sunglasses on, like they are so ashamed of their own behavior they can't look you in the eye.

[libhomo]

It's good to see people standing up to the militant, Christian fundamentalists.

[Procrastination_Xtravaganza]

Word Rigga? Tech '98 here!

I'd like to think my class would have come out as well, we were pretty progressive and lots of kids in my year and the year after started coming out of the closet,..kudos to these kids!