Westboro Baptist Church to be Rejected by Protesting Students
Date: 4/2/2010 11:06 am
Members of the Student Government Association at Virginia Tech are collaborating with members of the Blacksburg community to counteract a protest by the Westboro Baptist Church in downtown Blacksburg. The church has become controversial for running the site godhatesfags.com, among other things. Church members plan to conclude their protest in front of the Virginia Tech Hillel chapter at the Jewish Community Center in Blacksburg.
The independent Baptist church, founded by Fred Phelps in Topeka, Kansas, is widely considered to be a hate group, known for protesting at military funerals and for their use of strong anti-Semitic, anti-gay rhetoric, according to the Collegiate Times.
Church officials said that they were protesting over the shooting death of Virginia Tech senior Morgan Harrington, who went missing after attending a Metallica concert in October 2009 and whose body was found last month. Outside reports of the planned protest claimed that the church’s protests were related to the April 2007 shootings on the Tech
The independent Baptist church, founded by Fred Phelps in Topeka, Kansas, is widely considered to be a hate group, known for protesting at military funerals and for their use of strong anti-Semitic, anti-gay rhetoric, according to the Collegiate Times.
Church officials said that they were protesting over the shooting death of Virginia Tech senior Morgan Harrington, who went missing after attending a Metallica concert in October 2009 and whose body was found last month. Outside reports of the planned protest claimed that the church’s protests were related to the April 2007 shootings on the Tech