Peaceful protest
By Barb Shelly, Kansas City Star editorial page columnist
Cheers to the Shawnee Mission East High School students who organized the heartwarming counterprotest to Fred Phelps' hate-mongering band of homophobic picketers.
Members of the Westboro Baptist organization -- it seems wrong to call it a church -- targeted the Johnson County High School, apparently because it has a thriving gay-straight alliance group.
But students turned out en masse with signs like "Gay? OK with me." Teenagers came from other schools. Parents joined them. About 450 strong, they overwhelmed the Westboro group with numbers and jubilance. (See photos
For good measure, students used the occasion to raise hundreds of dollars for AIDS research.
This story gives me hope that anti-gay bias might be a weak echo within a generation.
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I still want to know if the
I still want to know if the Phelpsians would have been happier if, instead of a gay Homecoming King, the straight HC King had spent the night screwing the HC Queen.
Kids protest bigots.
These kids make me proud!
Tell this to your Missouri legislators....they too need another.
lesson on discrimination.