On a cold October evening in 1998, Aaron Kreifels was cycling along a rural road outside of Laramie Wyoming when he spotted something he at first took to be a scarecrow attached to a fence. As he drew nearer, it became apparent that it wasn't a scarecrow at all, but the body of a young man severely battered and in a coma. The nearly lifeless person Kreifels had come upon was Matthew Shepard. He had been there eighteen hours.
Thus began one of the most high profile murder cases in LGBT history. As details emerged of the viciousness of the crime, many people in our nation began to have an awakening that the brutal murder of a young man just because he happened to be gay was despicable beyond measure.
Matt died of his terrible injuries four days later on October 12 at Poudre Valley Hospital in Fort Collins, Colorado. Massive media attention surrounded his beating, death and his planned funeral. Amid the media clamor, an ugly group of fundamentalists who were basically unknown outside of Kansas got a bright idea. They would travel to Matthew Shepard's funeral with picket signs reading "No Tears for Queers" and "Fag Matt in Hell'. An already shocked and disgusted nation could not comprehend the pure evil of this act. Fred Phelps and his Westboro Baptist Church got exactly what they wanted, a national spotlight shining brightly on their cruel message of hate.
Of course, Topeka Kansas had known of these people for a long time. After breaking off from East Side Baptist Church, Phelps established his church in 1956 and it became incorporated in 1967 as a not-for-profit organization. "Church "is too broad a description, really. It consists primarily of the leader, Fred Phelps and his extended family. They more closely resemble a cult. These people had been making a complete nuisance of themselves in Topeka and the surrounding area for years. They picketed Kansas City Chief's football games, concerts and other events where large numbers of people would be subjected to their crazy messages of hate. In the 1990s, they won a series of lawsuits against the City of Topeka for their efforts to thwart WBC's antagonistic and disruptive protests. They soon realized that they could make the protections found under the First Amendment their bread and butter. Their antics became increasingly over the top in their attempts to provoke people into physical altercations or to file lawsuits against them.
By the time they picketed Matthew Shepard's funeral, they had their schtick down to an art. With the nation's eyes focused on that terrible night in October of 1998, it was a golden moment for them to go big. And go big they did. They began appearing all over the country, picketing gay pride parades, churches that expressed any kind of support for our dignity, and most notoriously, funerals of prominent gay people. And everywhere they went, the fascinated media followed.
Their God Hates Fags campaign drew a lot of attention. It also drew a lot of disgust. Many things were happening simultaneously after the Matthew Shepard murder that began to sink the ship of anti-gay bigotry. Will and Grace first aired the same year as Shepard's murder. All over the media, in fact, gay people started to appear in a positive light. In 2000, Vermont became the first state to recognize civil unions. In 2003, the US Supreme Court took on Lawrence v. Texas and ruled that sodomy laws in the U.S. were unconstitutional. Massachusetts legalized marriage equality in 2004. And in 2009, President Barack Obama signed into law the Matthew Shepard Act, expanding the 1969 Federal Hate Crimes law to include sexual orientation. Most importantly, gay people began coming out of the closet in record numbers. In a recently released Pew Research poll 32% of respondents said they changed their mind on marriage equality due to knowing someone who is gay.
All the while, the Westboro Baptist Church was right there, holding up a mirror forcing people to examine and question their own bigotry. For a time, WBC's attention remained focused on actual gay people and our events. For most folks, this was an abstract act. Distasteful, nasty, backwards and contemptible, but still removed. All that changed in early July of 2005.
On June 5, in Kirkuk Iraq, ammunition specialist Carrie French was killed when an improvised explosive hit a convoy vehicle in which she was riding. In the diseased minds of Fred and the gang, a light bulb went off. Suddenly they realized they had been squandering their talent for hatred. Here was a golden opportunity to really show the world how ugly they could be. Why hadn't they thought of expanding their hideous protests to include funerals of our fallen soldiers. Fred Phelps released the statement that "Our attitude toward what's happening with the war is the Lord is punishing this evil nation for abandoning all moral imperatives that are worth a dime." No longer was the population at large insulated from their vile tactics. What had once been abstract had now become concrete. The lives of straight people were now directly affected by WBC's inhumanity.
Sympathy became empathy as people could now feel the hurt and anger for themselves. They had shared in it. Empathy is a powerful and connecting emotion. Westboro's intention may have been to spread hatred and garner as much attention and lawsuit cash as they could, but it has all backfired spectacularly on the entire movement to keep us from our rightful place at the table. Westboro Baptist Church and their message that God Hates Fags has done a great deal to accelerate understanding and acceptance among people, people who may have never really stopped to ponder exactly what God actually thought about gay people.
As we sit on the eve of two Supreme Court arguments concerning our equal rights, the historical importance of this moment overwhelms me. There is a possibility we will walk away from this empty handed. It would be a huge disappointment, of course, but there is no doubt that our fight for our equality will go on and justice will eventually prevail. In the meantime, I feel a need to thank you Westboro Baptist Church for the role you have inadvertently played in changing hearts and minds leading up to this moment.
Others have joined in the battle: The National Organization for Marriage, the ever odious Family Research Council, and many other bigoted organizations to be found on the Southern Poverty Law Center's list of hate groups. But no group has been quite so over-the-top and overtly reprehensible as the Westboro Baptist Church. No single organization has done more to outright make us collectively cringe as the WBC. So, thank you Fred Phelps and your loony band of bigots. I am quite sure it wasn't your intent to garner the appreciation of a gay man in the San Francisco Bay Area, but I give it to you sincerely and with the complete blessing of the First Amendment.