I'm glad you're putting the emphasis on how the church is not calling out the bigotry that led to the murder. Because, you know, In some ways, Westboro Baptist does homophobic conservative Christians a huge favor.
"See?" the homophobic Christians will say. "We're not Westboro! We don't even like them. We're calling them out."
But all that does is take the spotlight off the homophobic Christians' own bigotry. It takes the spotlight off them morally condemning us all as sinners. It takes the spotlight off them refusing to allow us to serve in leadership positions even when they do reluctantly let us attend their services. It takes the spotlight off their affiliated schools refusing to enroll queer children or the children of queer families.
That practice is extremely common by the way, and it's highly illegal, but church schools get an automatic exemption from following federal civil rights laws.... because religion.
Recently, the Supreme Court has begun extending the privilege of religions to fuck queer people... by making it easier for religious schools to discriminate against us even when we're attending religious schools funded by the taxpayer! (There's quite a bit about that in the headlines today, as a matter of fact, in a case out of Maine.)
All you have to do to hurt and mistreat a queer person legally is claim you do so on religious principle. Legally, that's usually the end of the story. Socially, it usually is too. We queer people get lectured all the time that we're supposed to respect faith and respect people of faith.
When they're hurting us. And I for one will never respect my own oppression, and I will always hold homophobic conservative Christians in the utmost disgust and contempt.
And I don't mean Westborough Baptist. I mean the church you're writing about, and tens of thousands of churches just like it all across the United States.
This is what it feels like to be one of the most despised minorities on the continent. People can treat us like shit and face nearly zero legal or social consequences.
