There are at least two kinds of outrage junkies, those who get a hit off of taking offense, and those who positively delight in giving it to others. Neither of these groups would be terribly happy without the other, since it’s difficult to provide offense in bulk when no one is willing to buy it up wholesale.
In the U.S. we have no greater purveyors of hateful and offensive speech than the Westboro Baptist Church of Topeka, KS. They have elevated trolling to a sort of performance art, finding America’s most sensitive buttons and deliberately pushing at them. Tragic death? They will mock it. American flag? They will desecrate it. Gay rights? They will preach about inevitable hellfire. At the event pictured above, they did all three, and in doing so managed to get quite a rise out of one young serviceman, who had to be restrained and talked down by the local peace officers. This was, of course, the desired result. These folks exist to give offense, because doing so serves their personal and theological goals: fulfilling the Biblical prophetic role of preaching an unpopular message to an unwilling audience, calling a sinful citizenry to repentance and renewed religious devotion, sharing the gospel as they understand it, and (presumably) the warm inner glow of self-righteousness.
These are the same goals and pretty much the same message preached in fundamentalist Christian churches on any given Sunday. The WBC is much louder and cruder and more public about it, but the idea that our society is hopelessly sinful, comparable to Sodom in terms of sexual depravity, and worthy of divine damnation therefor is nothing remotely new or unusual, no more than the message that God has created a lake of fire in which to eternally torture those who don’t “freely choose” to love him. I’ve heard these sorts of messages from fiery Baptist preachers like Paul Blair, and I’ve heard them from friendly Baptist preachers like Dennis Newkirk, I’ve heard them from government officials like Sally Kern. I’ve heard these hateful messages my whole life: on Christian talk radio, on Christian television channels, on Christian podcasts, and from Christian pulpits. Apart from their colourful signage, their willingness to beat the streets, and their bizarre fetish for funerals, there is nothing particularly striking about the WBC. Theirs is a fundamentally Christian message, and they are more than happy to back up everything they do directly from the Bible.
With the above in mind, I’d like to ponder for a moment whether having the WBC around is a good thing or a bad thing, from the perspective of freethinkers who encourage critical inquiry directed at religious belief. I’m inclined to think that wherever they might go, the WBC tend to have a few salutary effects:
- They reveal the bigotry and hatred at the root of Christian doctrine, encouraging believers and non-believers alike to think seriously (perhaps for the first time) about the Scriptures which inspired those colorful signs.
- They inspire counter-protesters to organize and assemble in solidarity with whomever the WBC have arrayed themselves against.
- They create a media bounce which inevitably inures to the benefit of whomever they are protesting.
- EPIC LULZ!!!
Now, perhaps they have some negative effects as well. Certainly they have been known to inspire some hurt feelings on occasion. For all that, though, I’m generally glad to have these assholes around, and my only real complaint is that they haven’t been focusing enough of their Biblically-inspired ire on the atheist community. No one needs a positive media bounce more than we do, as the most hated minority group in the nation.
