A traveling sideshow

(Original publication: April 7, 2004)

The protests and visit to Rockland County this week by congregants of Westboro Baptist Church, a sort of traveling sideshow featuring the most virulent anti-gay bias and hate, would be more alarming had the Topeka, Kan.-based group been able to boast larger numbers or claim more adherents. As it was, counterprotesters far outnumbered Westboro protesters, suggesting the question: "Would they go away if we just ignored them?"

The answer, of course, is no. Since 1991, Westboro claims to have conducted 22,000 protests akin to the display in Rockland. Its calling card: Placards with messages like "God Hates Fags," "Fags Hate God," "AIDS Cures Fags," etc. When Matthew Shepard, at 21, was murdered in an anti-gay hate crime in Laramie, Wyo., in 1998, Westboro protesters showed up at his funeral. They held up signs proclaiming, "No Fags in Heaven."

So it is, perhaps, a badge of honor that Westboro has visited Rockland, an epicenter for the gay-marriage civil rights movement. Nyack Mayor John Shields is suing the state and Orangetown to force them to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples. Westboro mentions Shields and New Paltz Mayor Jason West in its protest literature. West faces criminal charges for conducting same-sex marriages in his village.

Westboro has plenty of other targets. Similar battles are under way in New York City, San Francisco, Oregon, New Jersey, Massachusetts and the U.S. Congress, to name just a few fronts. What seemed like early victories for gay-marriage proponents, mainly attention-grabbing same-sex marriage ceremonies in several locales, were mostly illusory. Not a single court has upheld the new unions. Moreover, a number of attorneys general, including New York's Eliot Spitzer, have said that their states' laws banned same-sex marriages.

And there was crushing news last week from Massachusetts: Attorney General Thomas Reilly said couples living in states where laws ban gay marriage will not be able to marry in Massachusetts come May 17, when that state's highest court said the state must commence issuing licenses to gay couples wishing to marry. Reilly pointed to a 1913 law that precludes the state from issuing licenses to couples who would be ineligible to marry in their home states. Gay couples in states including New York had hoped to marry in Massachusetts before that state shuts the door on such unions.

Massachusetts lawmakers recently adopted a proposed constitutional amendment that would ban gay marriages while legalizing civil unions for same-sex couples. The measure still requires several approvals, by legislators and voters. That explains one of Westboro's next stops: Massachusetts. Will the group find more friends or more foes?

Shields, for one, hardly seems deterred.

"Once the door is kicked open" by a group asserting its rights, Shields told Journal News columnist Bob Baird, "it may not happen immediately, but it happens eventually."

That's the course that most just fights follow.