Phelps Counter-Rallies and Tolerance Fads

Back from some time away due to sickness and a conference. Now I'm on the long, slow climb back to being caught up. Part of the catching up process involves re-establishing my habit of regular postings. Thus--

It seems none other than the Rev. Fred "God Hates Fags" Phelps will be protesting here in my own town soon. A local high school is doing The Laramie Project, Tectonic Theatre's documentary play about the aftermath of Matthew Shepard's murder. The play itself features an extended scene that references Phelps's protest of Shepard's funeral and of the trial of his killers. One of the characters (based, of course, on a real person) responds to Phelps's protest by staging a counter-protest of people dressed as angels. As Phelps and his crew yell anti-gay invectives, the angels stand in front of him and raise their wings, blocking him from the funeral (or from the cameras).

Since then, Phelps and his Westboro Baptist church regularly choose to protest various productions of the play, which in turn inspires large counter-protests along the lines of those represented. Given that Laramie Project has become something of a high school staple (low tech requirements, large cast, easy-to-prove liberal credentials), Phelps is rarely at a loss for some site to protest, and communities are rarely at a loss for occasions to prove how liberal they are in response.

Don't get me wrong. I think it can be admirable to organize and stage a counter-protest. I've participated in some counter-protests against him myself. Certainly Phelps's message merits a counter-statement...

...or does it? Something about the formula of "Phelps comes/counter-protest staged" makes my alarms go off.

His ministry depends upon people at least seeing his bright neon signs. As I've written before, he's not so interested in creating converts; his hyper-Calvinism leads him to see most everyone else as hopelessly non-predestined anyway. Phelps's demonstrations function more as God's pointing finger of judgment, a conduit of divine disapproval for the nation's refusal to impose the death penalty on homosexuals. (One wonders if they believe in positive reinforcement, traveling to Uganda, perhaps, to praise legislators there for considering a death penalty measure for homosexual acts).

But, as just about anyone who's seen Phelps in person knows, the Westboro presence is generally anticlimactic. There's generally a handful of protesters, like a smallish family on vacation, waving their admittedly eye-catching signs. It's sort of pathetic, really--so pathetic that I wonder honestly whether they would continue at all were it not for the fact that their well-publicized presence guarantees a massive counter-reaction from the community.

More disturbingly, and with all due respect for the good intentions of the organizers: what is the point of the communal counter-reaction? It certainly won't convince Phelps et al. that their cause is hopeless or wrong-headed. Quite the contrary--the more resistance they inspire, the more the Phelps crew become convinced of the meaningfulness of their action. Doesn't the counter-reaction itself give Phelps just what he wants, i.e., proof that his righteous condemnation is making waves with the heathen? Could it be that the automatic counter-reactions by communities that Phelps visits have the unintended side-effect of encouraging Phelps to continue?

The stronger argument for counter-protests, of course, is that they aren't for Phelps's benefit but for the community's. A strong counter-rally against Phelps demonstrates to that community that his level of intolerance is, well, intolerable. I suppose that community audience has a number of sub-divisions. There's the GLBT sub-community, for whom their community's gesture of support could be a meaningful counter-message to Phelps's "God Hates Fags" rhetoric. I can see, also, how a communal counter-rally could encourage connection and mutual awareness within the left-liberal-activist sections of that community. I could even see how the occasion of a rally in contrast to Phelp's message might push some otherwise stand-offish (or apathetic) "moderate" folk to make an active choice. The rally re-casts Phelps's visit into an either-or melodrama, forcing the audience of the community to take sides.

But if I might play devil's advocate: speaking as a GLBT member of my community, it's nice that my city wants to rally to say that, at the end of the day, gay people shouldn't be called fags and given the death penalty. But I would hope that my community thinks that in any case. More directly, there's lots of ways I can think of for my community to express support for me that I'd rather see happen than a one-time counter-rally against a fire-and-brimstone caricature like Phelps. How about a non-discrimination policy? How about domestic partner benefits? How about health care for GLBT couples? (how about health care for everybody, come to think of it)?

I'm sorry, but I'm incredulous toward the notion that my civic community has my back, as demonstrated by a one-off reaction to the cartoon-level intolerance of Phelps, when that same community fails consistently to enact the day-today recognitions of equality that would make a material difference in my life and in the lives of other GLBT people.

That, I think, is the danger of Phelps and Westboro--not that they will actually inspire people to adopt their wacko beliefs but that they give people who otherwise do little or nothing for GLBT people a chance to acquire pro-tolerance credentials simply by standing up and saying, "You know, it's wrong to call those people fags and say they should all die and burn in hell." Phelps makes tolerance easy, a matter of standing up against him. If tolerance within a pluralized democracy means anything beyond beautiful phrases, surely it means an ongoing work of standing up for the rights and equality of people unlike you.

Now, if a counter-Phelps rally represents for some people a first step toward a broader perspective on what tolerance means--then super. But the danger I fear is that Phelps can just as easily be an occasion to participate in a facile fad of tolerance chic.

More soon,

JF