Woody and Rizzuto are two talk show hosts for a morning program on 105.7 The Point. Earlier this week they had a woman from the Missouri/Southern Illinois branch of the Anti-Defemation League (ADL) on air with the guys to discuss the upcoming counter-protest that they are helping to forward against a group called the Westboro Baptist Church (WBC), an anti-gay hate group located in Topeka, Kansas headed by a man named Fred Phelps. Apparantly the WBC is staging a protest in St. Louis at Northwest High School tomorrow (11/12/09) using their slogan "God Hates Fags" against a memorial service for a fallen soldier and because the school has diversity programs. The counter-protest will be held at a church down the street from the high school, with the slogan "God Hates Douchebags" aimed at the WBC. The woman from the ADL was speaking about how the WBC people are extremely litigation-happy. Apparantly Phelps himself used to be a lawyer until he was disbarred, several of his many children are lawyers, and they use their knowledge of the law to perverse ends, obtaining money for the group by seeking lawsuits for emotional distress against people like and winning. Michael Moore did his own mini protest in his show The Awful Truth, driving a pink bus called the Sodomobile filled with gay men and women to the WBC's protests around the country. It's obvious that the group is just attention hungry, but it will be interesting to see if the counter-protest manages to stay peaceful and non-violent, and if any lawsuits come out of it on either side. For more information, click on the links below:
http://www.adl.org/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God_hates_fags
http://www.1057thepoint.com/WAR/
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I heard about this on the Point, but never got the whole story. I couldn't figure out what a group protesting gay people had to do with a soldier's memorial. So it seems, not much, just a stupid group trying to get attention. I know that there were arrests, but they were all on the WBC side. Interesting to see if and who they try to sue.
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