WESTERN SKIES - March 26, 2005

*** WESTBORO RETURNS TO COLORADO SPRINGS ***

ERIC WHITNEY: On March eleventh, members of the Westboro Baptist Church of Topeka, Kansas staged a protest outside Palmer High School in downtown Colorado Springs. The church is famous for proclaiming that God hates homosexuals, America, and just about anyone else who doesn't agree with their strict interpretation of the Bible. Saying they were angered by Vice Mayor Richard Skorman's comments that the protestors "weren't welcome in Colorado Springs," the church members returned last week to protest again. Stephen Raher was on hand.

STEPHEN RAHER: About ten Westboro congregants arrived at city hall on Thursday afternoon, displaying signs that said "thank God for September eleventh" and "God hates you." They then sang a rewritten version of "God Bless America," with the lyrics "God hates America"

SINGING: God hates America, the pervert's home. God hates America [fade under]

RAHER: About thirty counter-protestors were on hand, including some who had missed the event at Palmer High. After a few minutes, Colorado Springs Mayor Lionel Rivera delivered a letter to the group.

MAYOR LIONEL RIVERA: And the letter basically says that we don't welcome their hate speech and their discrimination speech in Colorado Springs. We don't think that any city in the country, or even their hometown welcomes that kind of speech.

RAHER: The protestors angered some onlookers by standing on and spitting on American flags. Church attorney Shirley Phelps explained her interpretation of the flag's symbolism.

SHIRLEY PHELPS: It is a symbol of filth and perversion. That red on that flag, represents the blood of the innocents, babies ripped from their mother's wombs, and the rectal blood of fags that run this country.

RAHER: After half an hour, Phelps and her fellow protestors moved on to Vice Mayor Richard Skorman's restaurant, Poor Richard's, where a crowd of about fifty counter protestors cheered as Skorman gave free coffee to his supporters.

[sound of cheering and clapping]

RAHER: In a show of solidarity, several of Skorman's fellow city council members attended. Skorman himself said he was gratified by the support, and wasn't particularly concerned about the prospect of the church visiting again in the future.

COUNCILMEMBER RICHARD SKORMAN: I'm very proud that we have so many people that will stand up against these kinds of hate groups, and it makes me proud to live in Colorado Springs, and proud of our citizens here.

RAHER: After a brief and sparsely attended protest at the Gay and Lesbian Fund for Colorado, the group left, saying they would return in a month to picket Focus on the Family.

For Western Skies, I'm Stephen Raher

WHITNEY: Last time Fred Phelps' Westboro Baptist Church was in Colorado Springs, about five hundred people showed up for a counter protest organized by the Citizens Project, a local group that stands up for equal rights, individual freedoms and the separation of church and state.

This time, the Citizens Project decided to take a different tack, says Ellie Collinson the group's Executive Director.

ELLIE COLLINSON: We certainly could have counter protested again, there were some logistics about him moving from one location to another, and each of the locations not having a large enough park to accommodate a counter protest the way Acacia Park did. But we also, I really felt, after the first visit, when there were letters to the editor from various perspectives, there was a real need on the part of people in the community to have a dialog about the issues that his ministry raises, and we wanted to provide a venue for people to begin talking about them.

WHITNEY: So Citizens Project teamed up with the Pikes Peak InterReligious Clergy Alliance to convene a panel of religious leaders from nine different churches and organizations.

About ninety people gathered in Colorado Springs' city council chambers to hear the panel, and to pose their own questions. Here's a sample of what the panelists had to say:

DON ARMSTRONG: I'm Don Armstrong, I'm the rector of Grace Episcopal Church on Tejon Street. It is interesting, in reading Reinhold Neibauer's (ph) talk about the golden rule, that he disconnects Christian love from tolerance. It is important to make this distinction, he says, that tolerance is a civic virtue in which one grants unquestioned space to diverse opinions. But Christian love is governed by an absolute set of standards grounded in and judged according to God's own character, God's own standards of behavior, of discipline, of knowledge.

RICHARD BAKER: Hello, my name is Richard Baker, I represent the Colorado Springs Freethinkers. A freethinker is one who forms opinions independently of tradition, authority, or established belief, and the sphere of religion. A freethinker is one who forms opinions independent of the authority of revelation, doctrine, or scripture. It seems the religious may tend more to intolerance, because someone has written intolerance precepts into religious chronicles, such as the Bible, the Koran, Book of Mormon, et cetera. These precepts, which by the way, simply reflect the prejudices of the day. Other prejudices of man that are assigned to a god to validate them and provide rationale and the authority necessary to freely discriminate against those who have been selected.

MELISSA FRYREAR: My name is Melissa Fryrear and I am the Gender Issues Analyst with Focus on the Family. Earlier this month, Focus on the Family submitted an official statement denouncing the tactics of radical zealots like Fred Phelps. As an organization, we are horrified and were deeply grieved that some may believe that this represents Focus on the Family or conservatives or Christians, or our Lord and savior, Christ Jesus. Those at Christian organizations like Focus on the Family want to extend, and are also asking for tolerance. Again, respecting, sympathizing, for beliefs or practices that are different or conflict with our own.

LAWRENCE PALMER: My name is Lawrence Palmer, I have the privilege of serving as minister of Unity Church in the Rockies. In Unity I try to teach my people a step beyond tolerance, because I used to have migrane headaches, and I tolerated the migrane headaches. The step that I like to take in my teaching and in my own personal practices is rather acceptance. Of being able to look at someone and say "you're accepting personal responsibility for your life. And though our ideas are very different, I can sit with you and talk about those things." That's my primary concern, not what doctrine they adhere to, or who they can quote, but what works for them. What works in their life? What do they say when I believe? Then we can look into each other's eyes and we can have an honest conversation, though we may differ, and differ radically, we can still look at each other and have that sense of acceptance.

ANAT MOSKOWITZ: My name is Anat Moskowitz, I'm the rabbi at Temple Shalom, and I'm representing the Jewish viewpoint here. My dream and my hope for Colorado Springs is something we've started at our synagogue, we've started the Temple Shalom Greenberg Center for tolerance and learning. And the idea is to bring different cultures and different religions and awareness of all of those into Colorado Springs so people will learn and understand each other and obviously get to a place of acceptance and tolerance and learning.

NORI ROST: My name is Reverend Nori Rost I am pastor of Pikes Peak Metropolitan Community Church. It's a Christian church with an outreach to the gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered community. I went to Fred Phelps website, www god hates fags dot com, and what I learned from that is this: if you go to his website, he has a whole list, a menu of items that you can look at. It has these really hateful links you can click on. But, you know what the very first one is? "Love thy neighbor." And it just says without commentary, scriptures that talk about loving thy neighbor, from both the Hebrew and the Christian scriptures. And so, what I think that sometimes we do the same. We think, "if I just say, 'Love thy neighbor,' I can think whatever I want in my heart." But what I would like us to do is to stop at that first link of love thy neighbor. And it doesn't matter who that neighbor is and what that neighbor looks like. And then I think that if we could just do that, my vision of a tolerant Colorado Springs would be one echoed in Matthew twenty-five that we fed the hungry, we housed the homeless, people who are sick or in prison, we visited.


MICHAEL SAYLER: My name is Michael Sayler, pastor at the First Baptist Church of Colorado Springs. My vision for Colorado Springs is that both our churches and our community leaders would model an attitude of tolerance towards one another. That we would not bully one another, that we would not be manipulative in our language. That we would not use guilt as a tool to pressure one another. And that certainly we would not secretly applaud the tactics of Mr. Phelps' group because he somehow affirms our personal attitude of rejection toward any member of our community.

DOROTHY SCHLAEGER: I'm Dorothy Schlaeger, I'm a Catholic, and also a Franciscan sister. In a nation such as ours, where government, at least at the federal level, tends to assume a righteous position, imposes its dominance through a might-makes-right mentality, dares to call its enemies evil, and reverts to a lot of untruths in propaganda as it attempts to sell its message, tolerance in this kind of environment is sometimes hard to come by.

ARSHAD YOUSUFI: My name is Arshad Yousufi, and I'm representing as best as I can the Muslim perspective. There is a lot of confusion about what is right, and what is wrong. What is a sin, what is not. We leave that up to God. God is the one who defines in his commandments right and wrong, good and evil, sin and a good deed. To presume someone is going to go to hell, is to blaspheme God, because God is the God of mercy and love and forgiveness. And we do not know how he will judge on that day. And those who think that they are going to go to heaven may find themselves in the wrong place, and those who are sinners may find themselves forgiven and in paradise.

WHITNEY: A few of the voices from the forum on tolerance sponsored by the Citizens Project, and the Pikes Peak InterReligious Clergy Alliance. When the floor opened up for questions, members of the public challenged the faith leaders to use their influence to fight divisiveness, and to match their rhetoric with actions.

Citizens Project Executive Director Ellie Collinson said that having Fred Phelps' church come to town and denounce homosexuals has been challenging, but it may have actually been good for the city.

COLLINSON: You know, his message is very hurtful and upsetting for the individuals that were exposed to it during his visits, but I think in the end his visits to our community has spurred dialog that we were too afraid to engage otherwise.