April 02, 2004

Village unites in face of hate group

By Jeremiah Horrigan
Times Herald-Record
jhorrigan@th-record.com

New Paltz – No one, not even gay-baiting hate-monger Fred Phelps, could argue with the idea that New Paltz is a tolerant community.

Tolerance is just one of the things Phelps, the pastor of a Midwestern hate group known as the Westboro Baptist Church, finds revolting about New Paltz.

If things go as planned on Sunday, a heaping helping of tolerance is what the emissaries from Phelps' fire-and-brimstone congregation will be served when they arrive to protest the recent spate of gay marriages that continue to be performed here by gay rights activists.

In inflammatory language as crude as it is cruel, Phelps's hundred-member church has used its Web site to denounce by name gays who were married last month by Village Mayor Jason West. The most immediate effect of their promised arrival in front of village churches is one of unity.

Local pastors, whose churches are targets for pickets throughout Sunday morning, say they will follow the recommendations of New Paltz police Chief Ray Zappone and not engage the protesters directly – not even, as one said, to offer them coffee.

Instead, the members of New Paltz United Methodist Church, the first target of the protesters, will open the church door and windows and sing what pastor Dorothy Caldwell describes as songs of love and peace.
"People are hurt by what they're saying," she said. "Their actions are not of God; their spirit is hate-filled.

So their coming is an opportunity to unite in love."

She said congregations have been asked to fly banners declared "God Loves Everyone," and businesses will be asked to display small signs saying "All You Need is Love."

Zappone, who has met with religious, government and gay rights groups and leaders, said as many as 80 police from state, county and local jurisdictions will be available "just in case."

A group dedicated to continuing the gay marriage effort will provide trained "peacekeepers" to work with police to help cool any heated reactions.

"It [the visit] is really bringing the community together," said James Fallarino, spokesman for the New Paltz Equality Initiative, a gay rights group that formed to continue and support gay marriages in the village.

The group will hold an outdoor festival at SUNY New Paltz during the final hours of the protesters' visit.
The protesters are experienced hands at what they do. Shirley Phelps-Roper, one of Fred Phelps' 13 children, sounded weary as she ticked off what she expects to find when she gets here.

"There'll be a lot of 'God loves everyone' and counter-protesters and all that," she said.

Phelps-Roper is a lawyer who said the demonstrations will be legal and peaceful.

She said the peace-and-love model of traditional Christianity isn't one she or her church recognizes. The world as she sees it is divided into what she called "Jacobs and Esaus," people who, like Jacob in the Old Testament, is beloved of God from birth, or, like his brother Esau, is hated by God from birth.

Most of the world is comprised of Esaus, she contends.

The planned protests, she said, "will hold up a mirror" to people and "get people squealing off the fence."