Brilliant Strategy: Westboro To Appear At Florida Gay Marriage Debate

Wow. Somebody at Florida's Stonewall Legal Alliance is sharp. After the backers of Amendment 2 declined to appear at an FIU debate on the issue, the gay side invited the Westboro Baptist Church. And they are coming, over the objections of some marriage equality supporters.

A church known for spewing anti-gay rhetoric and picketing military funerals is slated to debate a state marriage amendment at a forum next week at Florida International University. The Topeka, Kan.-based Westboro Baptist Church accepted an invitation from the Stonewall Legal Alliance, a gay group at the FIU College of Law. The debate will focus on Amendment 2, the initiative on the Nov. 4 ballot that would add Florida's existing ban on same-sex marriage to the state constitution.

The visit has raised concerns from people on both sides of the marriage debate. Jose Gabilondo, an associate law professor at FIU, plans to argue against the amendment, while two daughters of Westboro Pastor Fred Phelps will speak for it. Westboro has gained national notoriety by picketing at gay pride events as well as funerals of soldiers killed in Iraq; it equates modern America with Sodom and Gomorrah. Westboro members agreed to pay their own expenses to Florida.

"The message of Westboro is the message of Amendment 2," Gabilondo said. Debate organizers said they invited members of a state coalition supporting the amendment, as well as several other groups, but they declined.

"That's the most heinous thing I've ever heard. They go to the most radical group," said Janet Folger, an Amendment 2 supporter who heads a more mainstream Fort Lauderdale-based group called Faith2Action. "It's a deliberate attempt to make the pro-marriage people appear to be something they're not."

The Southern Poverty Law Center in Montgomery, Ala., identifies Westboro Baptist as a hate group, and the Anti-Defamation League monitors its actions. "If you allow such a group and give them a platform, you give them legitimacy. This group should have no legitimacy," said David Barkey, a lawyer for the southern region of ADL, which opposes the amendment.

I can understand why people are upset over the invitation, but as I've said here many times, the ferociously vile Westboro Church is the merely the frank public depiction of the hate the "love the sinners" crowd tries to hide. Putting the Westboro monsters front and center on Amendment 2 can do nothing to hurt our side and will shame the Christianists. Brilliant strategy, just brilliant.

UPDATE: Jeremy at Good As You sends us a personal response he got from Shirley Phelps-Roper. An excerpt:

This bimbo Janet Folger has got that RIGHT!! She is NOTHING like us. She is a coward of the first water. She won't get into a debate or even a discussion with those people in Florida, because she is NOT ABOUT to warn her fellow man that their sin will take them to hell BECAUSE IT IS ABOUT THE STANDARDS OF GOD, or for any other reason. She is just about the business of setting her own standards, and THAT my friend Jeremy is EXACTLY what the scripture means when it says - JUDGE NOT THAT YE BE NOT JUDGED, because by that new standard that you set, God is going to judge you!! Now - think about these hypocrites having to be judged by their own standards. YIKES!! They are in a LOT of trouble with their maker! She doesn't say any words because she HAS NO WORDS!!