Colleen Cason: Insult follows local injuries in Ventura County
What’s next? Conejo Valley residents could reasonably ask after November’s tragedies.
A proverbial plague of locusts? As a matter of actual fact, yes. The pestilence blew in — hissing and spewing — from Kansas just after daybreak last Monday.
Five pickets from the Westboro Baptist Church of Topeka paraded on a few lengths of sidewalk in front of Thousand Oaks High School. One carried a sign reading “God sent the shooter” to a community mourning 12 souls gunned down at the Borderline Bar & Grill only 100 days before. Sheriff’s deputies, who lost one of their own in the massacre, were assigned security for this demonstration.
Another of their placards depicted “God’s Fury” as a house ablaze to people who lost or nearly lost everything to the Woolsey Fire.
The Westboro faction traveled all the way to the Left Coast because someone in the sect discovered Thousand Oaks High had — gasp — a Pride Alliance along with mental health and Catholic clubs.
I didn’t know exactly what to expect when the haters came to our little town. I’d seen news footage of Westboro in action. Among other unwelcome undertakings, they picket funerals of military personnel killed in the line of duty, holding up signs proclaiming “Thank God for dead soldiers.” Their warped thinking is that these tragedies are the Lord’s way of telling us to repent our tolerance of gay people and every religious belief that is not theirs.
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But the good folks of Ventura County weren’t letting this perversion of free speech go unanswered. About 100 counter-protesters showed up for the showdown with the sect described by the Southern Poverty Law Center as “arguably the most obnoxious and rabid hate group in America.”
Mostly made up of teens, the counter crowd bore signs of their own. One declared: “God is like glitter. He never goes away.”
“I keep getting tears, I am so proud of them,” said school parent Karen Stevens of the students’ peaceful protest.
And I admit to breaking into a grin when a fresh-faced journalism student asked a Westboro picketer for an interview and listened politely as he was told, “Your generation needs to repent its wicked ways.”
Another young man sought to ease any discomfort by dispensing the ultimate comfort food — doughnuts. Someone wearing a fuzzy animal costume stood poised to offer hugs at the slightest provocation.
The chauvinist carpetbaggers from Topeka don’t get us, I thought. We know what courage is. Some of those who died in the Borderline did so saving others. That is truly being on the side of the angels.
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Did they think their inflammatory speech could scare folks who, armed with mere garden hoses, battled to save their homes from one of California’s most devastating wildfires? Guess again.
It’s tough to know what is the best tactic to counter tactic these zealots who are hard of head and even harder of heart.
We could starve them of the attention they crave. What if they alerted the media and not a single satellite truck pulled up? As it turns out, more than a few of the counter-protesters at Thousand Oaks High were unaware they did, in fact, show up. Westboro is notorious for sending out news releases announcing plans to picket and then flaking.
Denying them space in the public square might seem like a good strategy. But Westboro’s late founder long ago lawyered up by putting family members through law school. The group, said Business Insider, has mastered litigation against those who would violate their constitutional right to free speech and assembly.
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Or Westboro’s targets could make sure the grounds crew drowns them out with leaf blowers. That would have saved those on hand at T.O. High from having our ears assaulted by their so-called songs.
And what about making sport of them in a way that could prevent them from suing? When I told The Husby what I saw at the demonstration, he reminded me of one of Mad magazine’s finer moments — its “Guaranteed Effective All-Occasion Non-Slanderous Political Smear Speech.”
As the Mad author might say, Westboro members are obsessed by sects, practice hortatory activities in public, and some of them probably are sexagenarians who quite likely possess phonographic materials.
Try one of those on your picket sign, should we ever be unfortunate enough to again attract their unwanted attention.
Email Colleen Cason at casonpoint101@gmail.com.