BUFFALO, — The Westboro Baptist Church, known less for its preaching of the Gospel than for its anti gay demonstrations at military funerals and other venues, has announced plans to picket a February 22 10:00 a.m. community memorial service planned in Clarence Center. Later that day the church has announced plans to picket a memorial services for Dr. Alison Des Forges, who was a passenger on crash of Continental Flight 3407.
Members of Westboro Baptist Church have also announced that they will be picketing The Academy Awards in Los Angeles and events in Melbourne, Australia on the same day. The church has also announced that they intend to picket the memorial service for Continental Flight 3407 pilot Marvin Renslow in Florida on February 20. The groups website further announced pickets against high school productions of Laramie Project both Plattsburgh, New York and Albany, New York within the next few weeks. The Laramie Project is a play about Matthew Shepard, tortured and murdered for his sexual preference in 1998,
The Westboro Baptist Church consist almost exclusively of Fred Phelps and his extended family. The group is based in Topeka, Kansas. It is monitored by the Anti Defamation League and is classified as a hate group for its virulent anti Gay stance by the Southern Policy Law Center. The Westboro Baptist Church is not affiliated with any Baptist association though the Church claims to hold Baptist and Calvinist views.
While members of the Westboro Baptist Church have protested around venues in Topeka, Kansas for years, it first gain notoriety when it protested the funeral of Matthew Shepard in 1998, claiming that the young man was "going to Hell" for having been gay. More recently the Westboro Baptist Church has staged protests at various events including the Inauguration of President Barack Obama. Phelps and his church drew the ire of many due to their picketing of the funerals of soldiers and Marines killed in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The attention seeking Phelps and his followers claim that the targets of their pickets are God's judgment for America's tolerance of gays and lesbians, regardless of actual the actual points of view and facts of any given situation.
There is no real way to confirm if Phelps and his family will actually show up in Buffalo on February 22. In recent years most communities have successfully ignored Phelps protests in the aim that public attention to his presence is the ultimate goal of Phelps and his church.
—staff
