The ever so delightfully demonic Westboro Baptist Church announced plans to protest next week’s Reason Rally at the National Mall in Washington D.C. as part of their “holy war” against atheism, agnosticism, dead soldiers, victims of shooting sprees (re: 2011 Tucson shooting), homosexuality, humanity, reason, logic, science, math, abortions, cancer research, basic human rights, secularism, and the whole shebang.
Of course, these Christians who are coming to protest will most likely be just repeating what happened at Comic Con in 2010: total failure and embarrassment on their part due to the diligence and witticism of those who went to the event for fun.
Pictured: Diligence
Imagine the same thing except these nutters are actually going to try to spread their garbage around at one of this year’s largest pro-secular gatherings welcoming prominent atheists, media figures and hundreds upon hundreds of interested people who are infinitely more intelligent than the “protesters”.
Most likely, the WBC will just be a side-entertainment; targets for the guest speakers’ witty remarks and scolding from the people who managed to escape the extreme Christian indoctrination.
It also doesn’t help that a few other Christian groups unaffiliated with the WBC is coming together for a rally dubbed “True Reason” simply because they believe the Reason Rally is trying to generalize the plethora of Christian denominations into one single entity that happens to be WBC.
Hint: They’re not.
But what’s interesting is that there are rumors swirling around that the WBC is not actually coming to protest the Reason Rally itself but to somehow sabotage one particular guest speaker.
Here’s the list of the awesome speakers who will be coming:
- Richard Dawkins (of course)
- Tim Minchin
- Eddie Izzard (seriously)
- PZ Myers
- Taslima Nasrin
- Paul Provenza
- James Randi
- Adam freaking Savage
- Jessica Ahlquist (a model to us all)
- The rock band: Bad Religion
- Dan Barker
- Jamila Bey
- Greta Christina
- Elisabeth Cornwell
- Fred Edwords
- Sean Faircloth
- Jesse Galef
- Annie Laurie Gaylor
- Greg Graffin
- Victor Harris
- Jamie Kilstein
- Lawrence Krauss
- Ron Lindsay
- Hemant Mehta
- Cristina Rad
- Michael Shermer
- Shellev Segal
- David Silverman (aka “Mr. President” [of the American Atheists])
- Roy Speckhardt
- U.S. Representative Pete Shark
- U.S. Senator Tom Harkin
- Todd Stiefel
- The Rational Warrior
- Indra Zuno
- Andy Shernoff
- Nate Phelps
Notice the last name?
Nate Phelps is an open atheist, an advocate for gay rights and a guy who absolutely hates child abuse.
The total opposite of his father..Fred Phelps, the founder of the Westboro Baptist Church!
The media often labels the Westboro Baptist Church as a small church of tightly related family members and a few friends which makes almost everyone think that all of the family are in on this disgusting display of hatred.
However, good guy Nate Phelps pretty much severed ties to his family & community courageously and publicly criticized the WBC as abusive and pretty much everything else the entire world has ever thought of it.
And now he’s going to speak at the Reason Rally.
Personally, I’d like to also think that the WBC is coming just because Christopher Hitchens & the somewhat intimidating George Carlin aren’t around to be invited to speak anymore.
But I digress: ignore the WBC, have fun at the event, meet new friends and go on with life. And yes, entry is free.
