everybody's gonna love today, gonna love today, gonna love today
where is the loo-oo-oove?
imagine all the people, living life in peace
Last week, a couple of OWU students discovered that the Westboro Baptist Church was scheduled to protest OWU's screening of the documentary "Anatomy of Hate." The WBC are known for their demonstrations of hate and intolerance against homosexuals (and "the Antichrist" Obama), often picketing the funerals of gay soldiers. I would link you to their website but I believe they get money from page views and we wouldn't want that, would we?
Anyway, these students were amazing at spreading the word through email and Facebook. They quickly set up a protest to the protest, which they called "Love Day on the Jay."
It would be a peaceful demonstration of the love, tolerance, unity, and diversity that can be found on campus. It would drown out the cries and obnoxious signs of the Westboro Baptist meanies. But most importantly, it would be a big ole dance party!
And as a "subtle" eff-yoo to the WBC, the playlist featured songs such as:
- Mika - Love Today
- Diana Ross - I'm Coming Out
- Lady Gaga - Telephone ("sorry I cannot hear you I'm kinda busy, k-kinda busy...")
- Lady Gaga - Boys Boys Boys
- Okay, lots of Lady Gaga
- Super hyper 80s techno music, which we all know is directly correlated to the SIN OF HOMOSEXUALITY
(Err pardon my thumb.)
There was singing (and rapping), dancing, and eating. Burgers (beef and veggie) and hotdogs were sold at $2 and $1 respectively, with proceeds going to GLBT organizations at OWU. Some non-OWU groups showed up to support the cause too.
As for the WBC, well...I didn't see them. Did anyone? We began speculating as to what could have happened. Maybe they were lost. Maybe they were in Delaware, looking for the town of Ohio. Maybe they had been successfully cowed by our show of strength and togetherness (yeahhh). Maybe Fred Phelps had overdosed on too much haterade.
In any case, Love Day on the Jay wasn't about them at all. It was about trying to eradicate hate bit by bit. It was about making yesterday less about the WBC, and more about what it was meant to be about all along: The Anatomy of Hate.
Whether they had shown their angry little faces or not made no difference to what last night's "protest" stood for. It's not every day that the whole campus gets together in such a show of solidarity. Before I end this with a sweeping, heartwrenchingly cheesy summation of What We Learned from this day, I should probably go. And leave you with a conga line.
just some notes:
ReplyDeletethey dont picket gay soldier's funerals- they picket all iraqi soldiers' funerals, because they believe that they died defending a "gay-loving nation" and therefore are evil by proxy.
proceeds did not go to OWU LGBTQ organizations, and while it seemed that a lot of the focus was on GLBT rights and acceptance, there were other groups involved with Love Day that the WBC targets, such as Jews, Muslims, Catholics, Swedes, Mr. Rogers, etc. (not kidding on those last two either...). So, we donated to the ACLU (known for championing minority rights), the Interfaith Association of Central Ohio (a group working towards religious tolerance), andaadvocacy group).