Skip to main contentThe Westboro Baptist Church, a Topeka, Kan.-based hate group that evangelizes against homosexuals, Jews, Catholics, and soldiers, will return to the Portland area over Memorial Day weekend and linger into the following week to picket local churches, synagogues and schools.
The group's nationally notorious pickets have included the funerals of soldiers because, according to founder Fred Phelps, "Military funerals are pagan orgies of idolatrous blasphemy where they pray to the dunghill gods of Sodom and play taps to a fallen fool."
Westboro's crazies were last in Oregon in 2008 when a handful came to picket Silverton's transgender mayor. Along the way in Oregon, they demonstrated against gender-neutral bathrooms at Portland State University and the Swedish consulate in Portland — only to learn Portland doesn't have a Swedish consulate.
Among the upcoming Oregon targets are congregations Ahavath Achim, Havurah Shalom, Neveh Shalom, Beth Israel, and the Jewish Community Center (all chosen apparently under the general rubric that "God hates Jews.") Also targeted is City Bible Church (apparently filled with "faux Christians"), The Church of St. Michael the Archangel (aka to Westboro a "filthy whorehouse), and New Hope Community Church ("lying false prophets") as well as Heritage and Grant high schools (filled with "rebellious brats" and "brute beasts.")
A quickie prediction: the counter-demonstrators will out-number the crazies, as in this display from Richmond, Va. in March.
WWeek 2015