Oh boy folks.  I have a doozy of a story for you this morning.  It’s just wonderful.  It will make you smile all day long.

But to truly appreciate it, first I have to make you a little sad.

You probably know who the Westboro Baptist Church is, even if you don’t know them by name.  They are the total nutjobs who travel around the country holding protests with signs that say things like “God Hates Fags,”  “God Hates America,”  “Thank God for IED’s”  “Thank God for 9/11”  etc. etc.

Basically, they kind of hate everyone, but they really really hate gay people.

This Kansas church is famous for their in your face, offensive protests.  They regularly go to the funerals of homosexuals and soldiers and famous people to wave their signs outside the funeral home. 

They protested at Matthew Shepherd’s funeral as well as that of Heath Ledger, Michael Jackson, Mr. Rogers, and Coretta Scott King. 

They try to attend the funerals of any prominent homosexual or Aids related death as well and that of a number of fallen soldiers and college students.

Wikipedia has an excellent synopsis of their wacky history:   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westboro_Baptist_Church

Basically, they really really hate Gays, so much so, that they hate everything that has to do with gays or anyone who has ever supported gays or any place where a gay has ever been.  So they hate the military because there are gays in it and they hate Catholics because of the Priest thing and they hate Episcopalians and Presbyterians and Methodists (I’m so proud!) because they haven’t condemned homosexuality adequately.

Oh yeah, they hate Jews too, but mainly just because the Jews like the gays.

They also have a number of websites promoting their hate, such as GodHatesAustralia.com, PriestsRapeBoys.com and GodHatesIreland.com

Now come on!  God SO does not hate Ireland.  Ireland is where God goes to drink after a long day!

They also protested a local appliance store because it sold Swedish vacuum cleaners and the Swedes like the gays too much.  (good logic)

They have even recorded a version of “We are the World” called “God Hates the World.”  If you’re in the right mood, it can be very funny - to listen to these sweetly singing voices proclaiming hatred, but at its core it is deeply disturbing.  If you’re in the right mood, here’s a link:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p0enY6pf6L0

So, obviously, they are slightly deranged, but also rather wily.  Their goal is to gain publicity and attract attention (although I’m not sure to what end) and they are masters at this.  They go where the cameras are and come out with the most outrageous proclamations they can all designed to draw media attention.

When you show up at the funeral of someone who was murdered because he was gay and you hold signs that say “God Hates Fags” you know it’s going to be on the nightly news.

They approach society at its most vulnerable, at its most emotionally fractious and they stoke the flames of anger, hoping for a response. 

And they usually get one. 

People get angry, people yell at them.  The TV cameras flock to cover their vitriol.  And most of the time they are given precisely the attention they desire, all wrapped up in the safety blanket of our first amendment.

This makes dealing with this group extremely difficult.  Over the years, different people have tried a number of methods to stop them, all with little success. 

Initially cops were called, but the group always has a protest permit for their performances and they have clearly figured out precisely how vulgar they can be without crossing outside of the grey area protected by the freedom of speech.

Then groups started planning counter protests, but these usually just turned ugly.  Shouting ensued, and people holding signs saying “Love not Hate,” usually ended up in tears or with balled fists, ready to strike.  Regardless, the shouting of the voices of hate usually dominates over the calm suggestion of peace and love.

People have showed up to turn their backs symbolically on the group or to encircle them to shield the community from the church, but these are largely symbolic and not actually effective at blocking the signs or voices.

At one funeral a group held up white sheets to block the signs, but they couldn’t block the shouting of the people holding those signs. 

The Westboro Church is persistent and they don’t care what you think.  There is nothing you can say that will change their mind or force them to back down.

The only example I could find of them being run off was at a funeral for three college students who died in a fire in Wisconsin.  The church showed up to protest at the funeral because they said that the students deaths were from a “Fire sent by God” because their parents taught them to be “whores and bastards.”  Well, over 1,000 students from the local community showed up and literally drove the protestors off.

This is however one incident of success out of an estimated 41,000 protests the church has conducted over the last two decades.

In general, all of the peaceful protests and counter protests and singing of songs has been largely ineffectual.  The Westboro church has stayed, the signs remained visible and the hatred continued to spew and to hurt.  No one left these events happy.  Any passerby left them angry, or sad, or both.

Until now.

Someone, (God bless ‘em) has come up with the perfect response to the absurdity and ridiculousness of the protests of the Westboro Baptist Church:

Absurdity and Ridiculousness.

Last week the nut cases showed up to protest outside the headquarters of Twitter in San Francisco, presumably because Twitter (sigh) likes gays.  (It really does get old after a while).

Well, some brilliant individual realized that there was no point in trying to fight insanity with logic, the only solution was to fight it with even more insanity.  So the counter protest group made up its own signs.  Signs that carried equally logical and damning statements, such as:

God Hates Kittens!

Build Prisons on the Moon!

Where’s Waldo?

God Hates Ponies!

ME!

God Hates Retweets!

I Was Promised Donuts!

God Hates Signs!

God Never Gonna Give You Up!

God Never Gonna Let You Down!

God Never Gonna Turn You Round And Desert You!

(and my personal favorite)

God Hates Sporks!

Please, please, please take 51 seconds and watch this video.  Just sit back and enjoy it.  Rewind it, listen to the laughter and the constant requests for donuts.  It is delightful.

You see, the beauty is that this worked.  Look at the passersby in the video.  No one is angry.  No one is crying.  They are laughing.  They are pointing.  And no one is looking at the signs being held by the crazy people, they’re looking at the signs being held by the sane crazy people.

It’s brilliant.  It accomplishes what no other counter protest had managed.  It completely robs the Westboro church of their potency.  They are now nothing more than a bunch of flaccid protestors trying to keep their signs up.

And where the hell are those donuts?

Furthermore, the church was scheduled to protest at a production of Fiddler on the Roof later that evening because…….oh, hell, I don’t know, I guess because it’s about Jews and Jews like gays and, oh, whatever.

Anyway, the church decided not to show up.

Think about it.

The crazies had traveled from Kansas to San Francisco and then didn’t bother to go out for their evening protest because they knew there would be no point.  No one would care about their signs, because they had been robbed of their potential to hurt.  Once onlookers were given permission to laugh at the insanity instead of be hurt by it, all of that anger and evil dissolved in a puddle of nonsense.

I would absolutely give whoever came up with this idea the Nobel Peace Prize and I am 100% serious about that.

And I’d sure as heck give them a donut.