A Kansas Church known for its anti-gay rhetoric plans to picket Walt Whitman High School on Friday, April 24 to protest the school’s namesake. Whitman students have responded in kind by organizing a peaceful counter-protest that they hope will vastly outnumber the church’s affiliates and drown out what they call a message of hate.

Led by Pastor Fred Phelps, the Westboro Baptist Church of Topeka, Kansas has gained notoriety in recent years for picketing the funerals of U.S. soldiers. According to the church’s Web site, the soldiers who have died in Iraq and Afghanistan were killed as God’s punishment "in righteous judgment against an evil nation," and the church has organized anti-gay pickets around the country since 1991 to protest what it calls "the modern militant homosexual movement."

When Whitman sophomore Ryan Hauck first heard about the scheduled protest at Whitman from a friend he thought it was a joke. Then he went online — the church’s Web site is www.godhatesfags.com -— and saw just how serious the church is.

"I was just shocked just from the second I heard it and I knew I had to do something," Hauck said. "[It was] the hatred of the whole thing that shocked me. It’s not disapproval, its outright hatred. It’s not something you would expect from people who would consider themselves a church."

The church’s Web site indicates that Friday’s picket at the close of the school day is scheduled at Whitman because the church believes that the American poet Walt Whitman was gay, but Sharon Phelps-Roper, a member of Westboro Baptist, told The Almanac by phone that the protest is about more than just that. Though aimed in part at the school’s namesake — Whitman is "in hell, where he belongs," she said — it will also target the nation’s public education in general that Phelps-Roper said promotes sexual promiscuity and generally sinful behavior.

"Those children sitting in that school are taught everyday, rebellion against God," Phelps-Roper said. "This is a nation of worthless, brute beasts."

THAT KIND of rhetoric is supplied in ample amounts on the church’s Web site, and it was what convinced Whitman sophomore Amar Mukunda to help Hauck. He set up a Facebook group to generate support for the counter-protest through which more than 600 students have committed to attend. Mukunda said he doesn’t expect that many to show up on Friday, but that he does expect a healthy turnout.

"The buzz around Whitman is so huge that we really do expect a ton of people, a couple hundred probably," Mukunda said.
Phelps-Roper said that there will be between five and 10 members of her church at the protest, a typical number for their picket lines. She said that her church does not permit non-members to take part in their protests because they can not vouch for their religious purity.

"What we’ve found is that … the next thing you’re talking to them and you find this guy is living in adultery, something like that," Phelps-Roper said.

ONLY WHITMAN students will be allowed to participate in the counter-protest because allowing people not affiliated with the school would have required obtaining a special permit, said Mukunda. The school’s administration, led by principal Alan Goodwin, has been cautiously supportive of the counter-protest, Mukunda said.

"His main thing is he wants to make sure it is peaceful and non-violent," Mukunda said. Goodwin could not be reached for comment before The Almanac went to press on Tuesday morning.

Historians have long speculated that Whitman may have been either gay or bisexual, but Mukunda said the poet and philosopher’s contributions to society — not his sexual preference — were more important than his sexual preference.
"I don’t think it should matter either way," he said.