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Members of the infamous Westboro Baptist Church, a group that has drawn national attention for picketing funerals of fallen American soldiers and events regarding members of the GLBTQ community, were a no-show at a planned protest of a play at the University of Maine Sunday afternoon.
In a Thursday news release, the Topeka, Kan.-based group announced they would be protesting a showing of “The Laramie Project,” a play about the life of Matthew Shepard, a gay college student who was tortured and murdered in Laramie, Wyo. in 1998. Wilde Stein and UMaine’s GLBTQ Services put on the play.
According to a response on Twitter late Saturday from Margie Phelps, the daughter of church founder Fred Phelps, seven or eight members of the church were expected to be in Orono Sunday afternoon “barring any changes.”
The play was shown on Friday, Saturday and Sunday in Room 100 of the Donald P. Corbett Business Building. The scheduled Sunday protest, from 12:15 p.m. to the show’s start at 1 p.m., would have been met with opposition, as a counter-protest of approximately 15 people — mostly students — was organized and waiting for the church members in the lobby of the building.
Chastity Smith, a second-year psychology student, took a sign with her that read “Love is Love” to meet the protesters famous for signs with slogans such as “Thank God for Dead Soldiers” and “God Hates Fags.”
A group of friends said she organized the small protest through Facebook.
“Unfortunately, any media attention semi-promotes their cause,” she said. “But us being here shows that we are standing against them.”
Emily Farnham, a 2009 graduate of UMaine with a degree in English and theater, said the counter-protest would have showed “silence in the face of all their bulls—.”
“It’s only about media coverage,” she said. “They don’t even show up to their own protest.”
In the news release, the church called Shepard “a disobedient pervert” and announced three protests of showings of the play. UMaine was the first on the list. The others are at a Michigan high school and Washington State University, respectively.
“Matt Shepard has been in Hell now for twelve years, with eternity left to go on his sentence — without appeal, parole, or time off for good behavior. All else about Matt is trivial and irrelevant. Deal with it!” the release said.
“[The production] was to make sure that the people who were four years old at the time still realize that this happened,” Gavin Pickering, GLBTQ services coordinator and director of the play, told The Maine Campus Wednesday. “Students around here, they don’t really know about it — it’s not as familiar as it is with the older people. It wasn’t that long ago.”
