Deviant Behavior, 36:42–67, 2015Copyright © Taylor & Francis Group, LLCISSN: 0163-9625 print/1521-0456 onlineDOI: 10.1080/01639625.2014.906282

Desecration, Moral Boundaries, and the Movement of Law:The Case of Westboro Baptist Church

Joseph O. BakerEast Tennessee State University, Johnson City, Tennessee, USA

Christopher D. BaderChapman University, Orange, California, USA

Kittye HirschEast Tennessee State University, Johnson City, Tennessee, USA

Using participant observation, in-depth interviews, and legislative histories, we examine WestboroBaptist Church, a religious group infamous for homophobic rhetoric and funeral protests. Employingcultural and interactionist perspectives that focus on the semiotics of death, the sacred, anddesecration, we outline how Westboro’s activities purposively violate deeply held signifiers of moralorder through language, while simultaneously respecting extant laws of behavior. This strategy, inconjunction with the political profitability of opposing the group, explains why the group’s activismtriggered extensive legal disputes and modifications at multiple levels of governance. Westboro’sactions and use of symbols—and those of others against the group—lay bare multiple threads in thesacred cultural fabric of American society.

When a belief is shared unanimously by a people, to touch it—that is, to deny or question it—isforbidden, for the reasons already stated. The prohibition against critique is a prohibition like anyother and proves that one is face to face with a sacred thing. (Durkheim [1912] 1995:215)

INTRODUCTION

“THANK GOD FOR DEAD SOLDIERS. SOLDIERS DIE, GOD LAUGHS. FAG TROOPS.DON’T WORSHIP THE DEAD. YOUR SONS ARE IN HELL.” These are the iconoclasticwords and message of Westboro Baptist Church (WBC). Such words, printed in a domesticgarage outfitted for sign making, have resulted in wide-ranging changes to law in the UnitedStates regarding free speech and the right to protest. Although WBC also routinely recites deeply

Received 1 April 2012; accepted 11 February 2014.Address correspondence to Joseph O. Baker, East Tennessee State University, Box 70644, Johnson City, TN 37614,

USA. E-mail: bakerjo@etsu.edu

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DESECRATION, MORAL BOUNDARIES, AND THE MOVEMENT OF LAW 43

offensive slogans about other matters—particularly homosexuality and public tragedies—it istheir vilification of military personnel that resulted in extensive renegotiations of the bounds ofFirst Amendment rights. In spite of the voluminous media coverage generated by WBC’s the-atrics, two fundamental questions about the group remain unsatisfactorily answered. First, whydoes WBC do what they do? Second, why have their actions aroused not only intense public ire,but also produced widespread changes to state and federal laws?1

BACKGROUND OF WESTBORO BAPTIST CHURCH

Fred W. Phelps, Sr. initiated his confrontational and highly public preaching style early in hiscareer. A series of episodes from a 1951 Time Magazine brief are illustrative. As a twenty-one-year-old student at John Muir College, Phelps began publicly decrying “sins of the flesh”committed by both students and faculty. Informed by the school’s administration that he couldnot preach on campus, Phelps promptly took up residence on a lawn across the street and contin-ued to vociferate for penitence. Foretelling the fundamental debate that follows WBC’s actions tothe present day—whether and where incendiary speech should be allowed—a student on campuswas quoted as saying “I don’t agree with what he says. But I agree he has a right to say it—offcampus” (1951:57).2

In 1955, Phelps founded Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka, Kansas.3 He was the leader andprophetic visionary of the church until 2013, when poor health and an internal dispute over whowould succeed him as leader forced him from the pulpit (Fry 2014). He died in March of 2014.He preached a strict version of double and absolute predestination Calvinist theology that viewedGod as omnipotent, in every sense; hence the group’s claims that God “causes” disasters andtragedies. WBC’s theodicy posits a God that hates and punishes people for their sexual wicked-ness, in this world and the next. This belief system undergirds their protest activity. Of course,many conservative religious groups hold the belief that homosexuality is a sexual and moralabomination. And other religious individuals and leaders share WBC’s view that homosexualityis a sin punishable by eternal damnation and even this-worldly tragedy. Where WBC differs fromother conservative religious groups is not in their beliefs about sexuality, but in their politicaltactics. In many ways, WBC members publically and forcefully proclaim what other anti-gayadvocates say in more coded, or at least less public language.

WBC is a small congregation relative to the attention they generate. There are seventy toeighty members, the vast majority related to the pastor. Phelps was not just a minister. He wasalso once a prominent Civil Rights lawyer, arguing on behalf of desegregation in numerous casesin Kansas, but was disbarred in 1979 for publically vindictive behavior (see Phelps v. Kansas

1These questions address the group’s internal motivation and the external societal reaction to the group’s actions,respectively.

2The police were called to take Phelps away for his persistence and he was suspended from school for a week. He wasundeterred, prompting the administration to send him to the school psychiatrist. Phelps berated and “psychoanalyzed” herinstead. “Gloated an admiring coed . . . ‘Just because you’re religious doesn’t mean you have to be crazy’” (1951:57).

3The group claims to be a Primitive Baptist church, but Primitive Baptists (not surprisingly) do not claim the group.Further, Fred Phelps was not baptized by a primitive Baptist minister, a prerequisite for being considered Primitive Baptist(Barrett-Fox 2010:36).

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44 J. O. BAKER ET AL.

Supreme Court). Knowledge of the law within the group is not limited to Fred, Sr., as many ofhis children are practicing lawyers, maintaining the Phelps-Chartered practice. Phelps, Sr. alsoran for public office at state and federal levels on multiple occasions.4 Members of the group arebright, articulate, and industrious. Their children attend public school and most adult membershold conventional jobs.

Ideologically, the group displays remarkable consensus and “tightness” in that each individualtends to express the same sentiments on the same issues (see Martin 2002). In our interactionswith the group, similar questions posed to different members elicited nearly verbatim responses.In formal interviews, when asked to describe God’s characteristics, all informants responded thatGod was “wrathful” or “angry.” Further, in nearly half of the interviews, members described Godspecifically as a “Jealous Man of War” (referencing Isaiah 42:13, King James Version). In termsof the unity of their ideology, WBC members internalize, and then externalize, the hermeneuticperspective of their authoritative leader. Although WBC takes outspoken and provocative posi-tions on a wide range of issues, it is the perceived threat of homosexuality that resides at the heartof their activism.

WBC began protesting about homosexuality in 1989, in response to a “tearoom” (seeHumphreys 1970) in a local park in Topeka. Since then the group has protested relentlessly andtirelessly, decrying matters of perceived sexual immorality in scurrilous terms. The group claimsto have conducted over 50,000 protests at the time of this writing. They continue to referencethe origins of their long-running and expansive protest campaign to their initial cause by rituallycelebrating the effort to stop the local tearoom (e.g., “week 1078 of the great Gage Park decencydrive”).

WBC began protesting funerals in 1991, typically those involving AIDS victims. Theyreceived wider media attention in the mid-1990s, when they staged counter-protests of lesbian,gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) pride events (McKinley 1994) and protested the funeralsof famous advocates for LGBT rights (see Gowen 1995). Protesting the funeral of hate crimevictim Matthew Shepard brought them increased media attention (Richardson 1998); however,only when the group began protesting the funerals of soldiers killed in Iraq and Afghanistan inthe summer of 2005 did they garner wide-ranging media attention and legal responses.

Figure 1 displays the number of mentions for “Westboro Baptist” using a Lexis-Nexis searchset to “all (English) news,” which includes newspapers, select blogs, news transcripts, and maga-zines. The rapid increase in the level of media interest in the group coincided with the passage ofstate and federal laws restricting funeral protests. In 2010, Snyder v. Phelps—a civil suit broughtby the father of a Marine killed in combat whose funeral WBC protested—was heard before theSupreme Court. That year Westboro was the fourth most popular news story featuring religion,and “during the week of the Supreme Court ruling (in 2011), the church accounted for 79% of allreligion coverage.”5 Nearly half of Americans (46%) responded in a poll that they were following

4For a general overview of the church’s background and activities, see the reports compiled by the Southern PovertyLaw Center.

5Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life. 2012. “Religion in the News: Islam and Politics Dominate ReligionCoverage in 2011.” (http://www.pewforum.org/uploadedFiles/Topics/Issues/Government/Religionandthenews2011.pdf).Pew Research Center. 2011. “As Gas Prices Spike, More See Economic News as Bad.” (http://www.people-press.org/files/legacy-pdf/713.pdf). All Web links listed in the footnotes throughout the article were active when last accessed onFebruary 20, 2014.

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DESECRATION, MORAL BOUNDARIES, AND THE MOVEMENT OF LAW 45

Matthew Shepard's Funeral

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Syder v. Phelps

2182

1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013

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FIGURE 1 Lexis-Nexis results for “Westboro Baptist” in the news byyear.

the case “very closely” or “fairly closely.” To date, this is the high-water mark of media and pub-lic interest in the group, although it deserves note that the figure for 2013 shows an increase fromthe initial post-Snyder decline in media coverage.

THE POLITICS OF DEVIANCE, PROTEST, AND BLOOD SACRIFICE

The unique strategies of activism employed by WBC resulted in an abundance of legal chal-lenges and legislation as reactions, along with more informal efforts at social control such ascounter-protests and the repeated hacking of the group’s website. We use cultural and interac-tionist perspectives that draw on the semiotics of death, the sacred, and desecration to explorethe strategies of, and reactions to, WBC’s protests. The social processes surrounding symbolicdesecration, moral entrepreneurship, and the criminalization of protest as a means for reinforcingstate power are integral to understanding how the nonviolent tactics employed by a small groupof people resulted in extensive legal modifications.

Both classic and neo-functionalist theorists emphasize that deviance recognition and punish-ment serve to define the cultural boundaries of communities—indeed, that “society” cannot existwithout it (Durkheim [1893] 1984:31–67; Erikson 1966). Punishment is the method throughwhich classifications of good/evil are made tangible; that is, isolated and meaningfully expressed

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46 J. O. BAKER ET AL.

(Alexander 2003; also see Garland 1990). This distinction of sacred/profane dictates the “actions,groups, and processes that must be defended against” (Alexander and Smith 1993:157), asprotection of the civil sphere ironically, but not surprisingly, requires the exclusion of outsiders(Alexander 2007). Boiled to aphorism, there can be no “us” without a “them” (see Alexander2006). Such classifications are inherently political in the sense that power is required to enforcerules and make such designations stick for relevant audiences, and to persist beyond immediateinteractions (Ben-Yehuda 1990).6

Symbolic boundaries are not static but rather constantly negotiated and reproduced throughthe recognition of deviance and subsequent punishment (Ben-Yehuda 1985). The boundaries ofdeviance may be extended to include previously unrecognized behaviors, or retracted to dis-continue or lessen the severity of punishment. Individuals seeking to extend the boundaries ofdeviance, especially when transforming previously informally deviant actions into codified law,are “moral entrepreneurs” (Becker 1963). To the extent that such campaigns are publically per-ceived as legitimate and right, moral entrepreneurs reap political and status benefits from theiractivities.

Law itself is a multivalent repository of a ruling group’s values, along with the formalized(and state sanctioned) methods of social control used to discourage or punish behavior (Daviset al. 1962). This extends beyond what is commonly understood as “crime control.” Law andits surrounding discourses frame public dramatizations of interest group values pitting “right vs.wrong.” The law, its enforcement, and the ritualization of trials can be understood as the dramati-zation (and triumph) of symbols representing interest groups (Arnold [1935] 1962; Gusfield 1986;Schur 1968). The codification of moral imperatives played out in social dramas inform citizenshow they should feel about a particular action and/or group of people, (re)establishing socialorder in myth and practice (Gusfield 1981). Although deterrence and punishment of predatorycrimes are crucial for a state to maintain legitimacy, arguably “a government’s need to controlextremes of political dissent is even more important than its need to control crime” (Walsh andHemmens 2011:240).

The strength and veracity of societal reaction prompted by WBC’s activities owes to thegroup’s semiotic desecration of venerate signifiers of national unity. Interpretive analyses of flagburning provide a useful analog for how and why WBC’s efforts arouse such fervent emotion(see Marvin and Ingle 1999; Welch 1992, 2000; Welch and Bryan 1997, 1998). Although theyroutinely defile the flag in a variety of ways, WBC’s protests extend beyond simply disrespectingthe symbol of the flag. Their protests rhetorically violate the sanctity of funerary rites in effortsto defile the deepest signifiers of civil religion—soldiers’ dead bodies. Indeed, it is the flag’ssignification of blood sacrifice given to protect the national community that gives the symbolits intense emotive power. Accordingly: “Blood sacrifice at the [symbolic] border, or war, is theholiest ritual of the nation-state” (Marvin and Ingle 1996:774). In protesting a ritual centeredaround a deceased soldier’s mortal remains, WBC contests and semiotically desecrates a symbolfar more powerful than the flag—one closer to the tacit, sacred soul of America as an imaginedcommunity.

6Cases where religious groups are popularly labeled as “cults” represent a distinctive type of “stigma contest” (Schur1980) between the group and representatives of the general public (Ayella 1990). Groups losing these contests are subjectto a variety of interventionist measures, depending on the perceived threat posed to conventional society.

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DESECRATION, MORAL BOUNDARIES, AND THE MOVEMENT OF LAW 47

Extending the logic of his mentor’s position that codified law reflects the moral order of acommunity (Durkheim [1893] 1984), Robert Hertz ([1907] 1960:71–72) observed that funeraryrituals in particular communicate compelling messages about entire communities:

The final ceremony always has a pronounced collective character and entails a consecration of society.But here it is not the family or even the village, but the nation that intervenes directly to reintegratethe dead into social communion. This action thus takes on a political significance. . . . In establishinga society of the dead, the society of the living recreates itself. . . . There is therefore reason to fearthat enemies might desecrate the familial tomb and the energies lying in the bones, in order to servetheir own hostile designs; such a profanation is the worst of all calamities.

Rituals surrounding death seek to negate—through enacted cultural traditions—the imperma-nence of both life and the existing social order (Bloch 1992; Bloch and Parry 1982). The collectiverepresentations embodied in soldiers killed in the line of duty amplify the political nature of funer-ary rites. “Support the troops” is a sentiment so strong and near unanimous in the post-VietnamUnited States that even anti-war protesters must operate around and through this moral sentimentto receive a favorable hearing in public discourse (see Beamish, Molotch, and Flacks 1995; Coy,Woehrle, and Maney 2008; Stahl 2009).

By semiotically desecrating civil religion (see Bellah 1967, [1975] 1992; Gorski 2010) inthe context of a soldier’s funeral, WBC engages in a powerful political dynamic with the statethat challenges the conventional meanings projected onto the corporal remains of soldiers,transforming them into contested social objects whose wells of meaning and emotion are calledforth (Verdery 1999). In an era of purported rationalism, desecration often calls forth the sacredwith more thunder than sacrifice, for it is “Then [that] the almighty speaks—indeed bellows”(Taussig 1999:13).

METHODS

In order to explicate the worldview and actions of Westboro Baptist Church, we used a mixed-methods approach. We visited the group on two occasions, September 7–8, 2007 and November22–23, 2008, conducting participant observation at protests, worship services, leisure, and familygatherings. During our time in these activities we engaged in informal interviews with willingmembers, ranging from young children to those organizing protests. We took extensive fieldnotesupon entering situations away from the group. Initial fieldnotes were taken in an effort to recordas much detail as possible about our experiences, conversations, and emotional and analyticalresponses to the group before they were lost from memory. Over time, the notes were re-evaluatedand edited to draw out emergent themes and narratives from the experiences by taking “notes onnotes” (Kleinman and Copp 1993). We formalized these themes into analytical codes. Theseanalyses guide our discussion of the group’s self-understanding.

In addition to informal interviews and fieldnotes, we conducted formal interviews and col-lected survey data from group members. We conducted in-depth, semi-structured interviewswith twenty members of WBC. Informants were interviewed individually or in pairs. Pair inter-views consisted of spouses or siblings. The question schedule probed members’ images of Godas an avenue for better understanding their worldview, perceptions, and motivations. Given the

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group’s rhetorical focus on God, this seemed a logical point of entry into their collective iden-tity. Interviewers began with broad questions about informants’ perceptions of God, such as“What is God’s personality like?” “Is God active in your daily life?” followed by “In whatways?” Questions then moved to theodicy, such as “How does God deal with sinners?” “Is theredivine justice?” After these questions, interviewees were asked about what God “thought” abouta range of specific matters including behavior, political policy, specific individuals, or other top-ics. Examples include homosexuality, the Iraq War, George W. Bush, and the United States. Thequestions were developed as part of a larger study of images of God (see Froese and Bader2010:77–81, 170–173).

Interviewers also freely pursued issues that arose spontaneously in conversation, as theydeemed appropriate. This proved to be necessary in interviewing the members of WBC.For instance, the series of questions about what God thinks about different matters such ashomosexuality and the United States elicited short, scripted responses. This is, after all, whatWBC members talk about every day, usually in verbally antagonistic encounters with others.At times, the questions effectively bored informants because their answers were the same: “Godhates.” Similarly, questions about how God works in a person’s life were almost nonsensical tomembers because they believe God controls everything. Below is an example of an interviewfollowing the schedule that was failing to elicit informative responses:

I: Um, let’s see, what do you think God wants to do with your life?R: Come on man. (laughter)I: You know, shape it, I understand . . .

R: He wants to glorify God through his vessels. If I’m a vessel, I don’t know what my latter endis going to be.

I: Let me rephrase it.R: I’m sorry, I’m not trying to pick on you man.I: No, I know. I just—let me help that question out. I’m trying to think of how I would . . .

R: God has a plan for your life! (in a mocking televangelist voice)I: I mean, I understand that you’re—how do I phrase it? Where do you see your service to the

Lord going? How long do you see that lasting? How do you see that maybe changing in thefuture?

This last effort to phrase the question worked, resulting in a long, pondering answer that includeda number of insights into how the group sees themselves, their connection to God, and theirmissionizing through protests.

As a result, we quickly learned to ask questions that elicited less scripted responses. In thesame interview quoted above, the interviewer began asking more specific questions about theBible, such as “What prophets, like in the Old Testament, do you feel closest to? Or are familiarwith the most? Or empathize with the most?” These types of questions interested members farmore and elicited more informative responses. When we found questions that worked better, weused those in subsequent interviews. The interviews lasted between forty-five and seventy-fiveminutes. The sessions were audio recorded and fully transcribed.

Interviewees ranged in age from eighteen to fifty-four years old. Seven were men and thir-teen were women. All of the people interviewed were college graduates, with the exception offour interviewees between the ages of eighteen and twenty-one who were currently in college.

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DESECRATION, MORAL BOUNDARIES, AND THE MOVEMENT OF LAW 49

Some of the members are lawyers, especially the children of Fred Sr., but many others workregular jobs, including management in the Kansas prison system, nursing, and jobs in informa-tion technology. Further, “no one works in a blue-collar job, and all of the women of the churchexcept for the elderly Margie Phelps, Fred Phelps’ wife, work outside the home” (Barrett-Fox2010:106). Nearly all members were raised in the church, with only a handful of members whohave converted to the group.

We coded interview data axially and then selectively, using both sociological and in vivo codes(Strauss 1987). For example, after spending time informally with the group in different settings,it became apparent that “idolatry” was central to their understanding of what makes “them” dif-ferent from “us.” In/outgroup dynamics were a theme of interest prior to contact with the group,but the role of “idolatry” in this process (and others) became apparent only after our interactionswith members. With these experiences in mind, we analyzed interviews for references to idolatry,which were coded axially by looking for the context in which informants understood “idolatry.”After this round of coding, we used selective coding to determine how idolatry related to otherconceptual themes. While we were looking for specific attributes of the group based on our back-ground knowledge of their activities and our training in the sociologies of religion and deviance,we generally applied a grounded, inductive approach to understanding the group.

FINDINGS

The Theology of the WBC

After spending time with the members, it was clear that much of WBC’s motivation to protest isbound to a particular conception of God. Based on standard survey measures of religiosity, WBCmembers look no different from other committed Christians, with the typical member attend-ing religious services once a week (90%) and describing himself or herself as “very religious”(85%). What makes WBC unique is their view that God is both extremely judgmental and activelyengaged with the world.

Most theists wrestle with how God renders judgment and what role, if any, the almighty playsin tragic events such as 9/11, school shootings, or natural disasters (Froese and Bader 2010).Members of WBC, however, have very consistent views on such matters. We asked members toindicate how well a series of words described God’s disposition (see Froese and Bader 2007)(Table 1 shows members’ responses). While there was some disagreement amongst respondentsabout how well adjectives such as “critical,” “concerned,” and “distant” describe God, the remain-ing adjectives reveal WBC’s uniformly fearsome conception the Almighty. The members are innear unanimous agreement that God is not friendly, but rather, severe. They were also in completeagreement that God is wrathful and punishing, with an ever-present, watchful eye on humanbehavior.7

7There were some minor differences in interviewees’ views of God by age and gender. Younger members were morelikely than older members to think God is “critical” and reserves judgment of sinners for the afterlife. Younger membersalso saw God as slightly more engaged in the world. Regarding gender, WBC women were more likely than men to sayGod was concerned with their personal wellbeing, that “God often performs miracles which defy the laws of nature,” andto perceive God as “critical.”

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TABLE 1Beliefs about God’s Disposition amongst Members of the Westboro Baptist Church (Row Percentages)

Very well Somewhat well Undecided Not very well Not at all

Critical 12 (60%) 2 (10%) 1 (5%) 3 (15%) 2 (10%)Concerned 8 (40%) 1 (5%) 4 (20%) 3 (15%) 4 (20%)Distant 4 (20%) — 1 (5%) 1 (5%) 14 (70%)Friendly — — — 1 (5%) 19 (95%)Loving 20 (100%) — — — —Ever-Present 20 (100%) — — — —Punishing 20 (100%) — — — —Severe 18 (90%) — — — 2 (10%)Wrathful 20 (100%) — — — —

WBC members also unanimously agreed that God is “loving.” At first this might appear atodds with God’s wrathful and judgmental nature; however, group members imagine a God ofpowerful emotions—with the capacity to love His faithful servants as strongly as He hates thewicked.8 As a thirty-four-year-old male member told us:

[T]he only way I can describe the justice of God is that . . . even though everybody He has created isdeserving of the punishment that He leads out, He is merciful and kind and tenderhearted. And justas wrathful against evil men. He is just, and as merciful and kind and long-suffering and loving to thepenitive [sic].

WBC receives considerable publicity in the wake of tragedies due to its practice of picketingor threatening to picket the funerals of victims of disasters such as the West Nickel AmishSchool shootings, Sandy Hook Elementary School shootings, and the shootings in Tucson thatseverely injured U.S. Congressional Representative Gabrielle Giffords. The group also issuespress releases and creates picket signs with titles such as “Thank God for 9/11” and “Thank Godfor Hurricane Katrina.”

Table 2 shows members’ agreement with statements about God’s agency in the material worldand interaction with humans. WBC imagines a God that actively engages with the world, met-ing out terrible judgments to the wicked. Members expressed some level of disagreement aboutwhether God might show pleasure or displeasure in minor ways, such as helping an individualfight off a cold or causing someone to get into a minor accident. Respondents, however, agreedthat God rewards the faithful with major successes (95%) while He punishes sinners with “ter-rible woes” (100%). All members strongly agreed that God causes major tragedies to occur aswarnings to sinners. Combining the measures of the above characteristics of God, with each indi-cator measured from one to five, all but one member of Westboro had a maximum score of thirty.By point of comparison, not a single God-believing respondent to the national survey of Americanadults (n = 1,443) from which the battery was taken reported these same characteristics for God(loving, punishing, wrathful, ever-present, not friendly, causes tragedy). Further, no respondents

8We use a capitalized masculine pronoun to refer to God in text where it represents WBC’s views, as they decidedlysee God as an omnipotent male deity. On the importance of perceptions of God’s gender, see Whitehead (2012).

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DESECRATION, MORAL BOUNDARIES, AND THE MOVEMENT OF LAW 51

TABLE 2Beliefs about God’s Agency amongst Members of the Westboro Baptist Church (Row Percentages)

Stronglyagree Agree Undecided Disagree

Stronglydisagree

God rewards the faithful with major successes 15 (75%) 4 (20%) 1 (5%) — —God punishes sinners with terrible woes 16 (80%) 4 (20%) — — —God rewards the faithful in small ways 9 (45%) 5 (25%) 6 (30%) — —God punishes sinners in small ways

(e.g., losing a promotion)8 (40%) 6 (30%) 6 (30%) — —

God reserves judgment for the afterlife 2 (10%) — 2 (10%) 1 (5%) 15 (75%)God sometimes allows major tragedies to

occur as a warning6 (30%) — 1 (5%) 1 (5%) 12 (60%)

God causes major tragedies to occur as awarning to sinners

20 (100%) — — — —

in the national sample were even close to the view of God held by WBC members, with no onescoring above twenty-six.9 WBC’s God is clearly an outlier.

God’s willingness to punish human sin via terrible events was a consistent theme throughoutour interviews. A twenty-year-old female member said:

God is known by the judgment that He executes on the earth, so when something happens, you knowthat God did it, and you know that that is one of His attributes, like the towers going down on 9/11.He is a wrathful God. He punishes, that’s how you know it, because that judgment right there thatwas executed.

When asked how the group determines when a bad event is a random occurrence or an indicatorof God’s judgment, a thirty-three-year-old female member said:

I would argue everything [is God’s judgment]. You know, every tornado, every earthquake, everyflood, and every hurricane. You know if you want to look at it in more worldly terms—you know,I look at the economic situation in Africa in the last twenty years. Those people got some things theyought to be thinking about. Why are they so destitute? Why is God essentially forsaking them? Whathave they done? I will tell you, that place is so steeped in idolatry.

In their literature, pickets, and websites (such as http://www.godhatesfags.com), it is clear thatWBC blames homosexuality for disasters such as 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina. Members believethat terrible events reflect God’s anger at increasing acceptance of homosexuality in the world ingeneral, and in the United States especially.

Attending WBC’s worship service brought us to deeper comprehension of the central positionof homophobia in Fred’s (and therefore the group’s) understanding of the world. The messageon a Sunday we attended focused on “the homosexual agenda,” which was presented as theroot of other problems in the world. A flyer was distributed among the congregants entitled“The Homosexual Manifesto.” The text was taken from a satirical piece in the, now defunct,

9Details on the collection procedures for the Baylor Religion Survey are outlined in Bader and colleagues (2007). Fordetails on the 2007 survey, see http://www.thearda.com/Archive/Files/Descriptions/BAYLORW2.asp.

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Leftist Gay Community News in 1987. In effect, it satirized the fears behind prejudice and dis-crimination directed toward sexual minorities. The piece originally began with the statement:“This essay is an outré, madness, a tragic, cruel fantasy, an eruption of inner rage, on how theoppressed desperately dream of being the oppressor.” This part was omitted. Instead, the flyerbegan with: “Reprinted from the U.S. Congressional Record,” from when notoriously homopho-bic Congressional Representative William Dannemeyer (R–California) asked for its entrance intothe record under the heading: “MILITANT WOLVES IN SHEEPISH DRAG, NO LONGER!”and the title “AMERICA: IS THIS THE GAY DECLARATION OF WAR?” (Dannemeyer1987:21194).10 This was used as evidence of “the homosexual agenda” purportedly influenc-ing all aspects of life and society. The sermon was organized around addressing the manifesto’sclaims, piece by piece. Phelps summed up his position:

I had occasion to read the filthy “Homosexual Manifesto” again recently, to see what progress theSodomites have made in achieving their Satanic agenda in the last twenty years; and I tell you,Beloved, it is amazing. It is nothing short of spectacular, the progress fags have made towardachieving their Satanic goals. It is simply impossible to explain—short of a supernatural Satanicmiracle.11

Us and Them

Although WBC is popularly considered a confrontational group because of their dramatic styleof protesting, they are strictly nonviolent. As an elder female member who organizes proteststold us:

There isn’t any room for me to be petty, invasive, proud, any of those things. That’s how we teach thekids when you are in school. And, when people want to engage and fight, we won’t do it. So all onthe picket line we are not supposed to be in your face spoiling for a fight, using improper language,giving ourselves the glory, all that kind of stuff, all of which the human creature inclines to.

Similarly, a middle-aged female member noted that:

When our kids go into the schools, they’re walking picket signs to a lot of those that they comeacross, but they still have the obligation to go there and do what the teacher instructs, attend to theirbusiness, be good students, the whole nine.12 And when we go to work, we don’t bring our religionand cram it in anyone’s face; but just the mere presence of us, because of our testimony. But part ofthe sanctification is, you will be there interacting, you will be representing me in the gates, but youwill not be absorbed by the world.

10Dannemeyer (1987:21194) vowed to combat “normaphobes” advocating for gay rights, saying “I commend thefollowing article to the American public so they can read for themselves the extent of homosexual militancy” (also seeDannemeyer 1989a, 1989b). The narrative of the “homosexual manifesto” outlines a conspiracy theory of secret, thenultimately overt domination. WBC is not alone in their use of the text for the purposes of propaganda, as it periodicallysurfaces in fear-mongering about homosexuality.

11Verbatim text of the sermon in question, like all sermons delivered at WBC, is publically available on the group’swebsite. Although we do not explore it further here, the perceived role of an active Satanic force is also a notable elementof WBC’s belief system.

12We interviewed a professor who had taught multiple members of the church in college courses. He noted that theywere typically among the best students in terms of attendance, attentiveness, and study habits; and also that they wereskilled at learning what professors “wanted to hear,” while maintaining their distinctive view of the world.

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In spite of this non-confrontational attitude outside of public demonstrations, the members arealso quick to point out that this tolerance runs shallow. An eighteen-year-old male quipped that,“If you don’t believe what we believe . . . then there’s no way that you can have any kind of areal friendship or fellowship with those people.” A thirty-three-year-old female, whose pronounuse is informative, drew a similar distinction:

Yeah, I get along with them, but when it comes down to who are my friends, who are the people I cancount on? It’s none of them. They are a resource for me to make the money to get along through thislife. I have been very blessed in that respect. They are the means through which God provides. It’s agreat thing.

WBC members relish the hatred they receive as evidence of divine election. This theme surfacedfrequently when we posed questions about their certainty of being God’s chosen people. A thirty-year-old male member asserted, “That is how the people of God lived through all those ages.So there is a huge token of your salvation, if the world hates you . . . because you are servingGod. . . . But it can’t just be a willy-nilly thing. If [the world hates you] because you are afaithful servant and you have faithful words to deliver, that’s your token.” When asked aboutGod’s engagement with the world, one of Fred’s daughters directly employed us/them language:“It’s when the whole world hates your guts. And he said that, they’re gonna hate you. They hateme, they hate my father, and they’re gonna hate you for God. They hate me, they’ll hate you.”Similarly, a twenty-year-old female member said:

Now everyone hates us. Everyone hates us. But that was such a blessing from God. From a humanperspective, all those things, being sued, and prosecuted, and all these horrible things are happeningto you and everyone hates you and they want you to shut up. They want to kill us. To be honest theywant us dead, they don’t want us out there preaching His word. . . . Jesus Christ has said: “Blessedare you where all men will hate you and revile you and persecute you, for my need’s sake.”

WBC sees its position as social pariah as proof of righteousness. They interpret their ability toremain alive and conduct so many protests as evidence of God’s favor. When asked about specificinstances of God working in their lives, many informants said the group’s ability to persist in theirefforts in the face of persecution was an example of divine protection. This collective sentimentwas well expressed by a twenty-six-year-old female: “If we were speaking the things to thisnation that we’re speaking and we didn’t have the protection of the Lord, then we wouldn’t still behere.” Hatred and survival are thus dual proof of favored status with God. This perspective and thepersistent external conflict surrounding the group create incredibly high internal solidarity. Themembers of WBC are more than family; they are brothers and sisters in spiritual battle, wagedthrough real world conflict. Their understanding of “us” and “them” is the central dynamic of thegroup’s interactions and identity, around which other matters revolve.

Reaching the World

WBC considers any media outlet carrying their message a “door of utterance”—a conduit throughwhich God’s message passes. The members think of this as: “Any place we go in public. Everytime we get our message in the newspaper, it is holy contrast to what the media would do. Theydo it in a mocking way—not understanding,” (female elder). To the extent that our report is trueto what the group believes about themselves, we have (unwittingly) opened a door of utterance.

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To achieve broader message dissemination and reach the widest possible audiences, WBC usestactics designed to elicit shock and outrage. Although publically combative, the members ofthe group were welcoming once they trusted that we were simply interested in studying them,a common experience among ethnographers and documentary filmmakers examining the group(e.g., Barrett-Fox 2010:14–23, 2011).13

When asked why the group chose to deliver their message through such antagonistic meansrather than more conventional methods, a middle-aged female member said, “Well, we have aduty to cry aloud, fear not, and show our people their transgressions, and cause them to knowthat they are an abomination. The best way to do that is to get in their face with harsh wordsthat are from the Bible on a sign that can be clearly read.” Members noted that when theyattempted to publicize their message through more conventional means they were not achievingthe desired effect. The following exchange occurred in an interview with a thirty-three-year-oldfemale member:

R: We came to an hour where we realized, we were not going to deliver any kind of a messageeffectively if we did not do it very, very publicly. You know, mailings, faxes, we’ve done thatand not a single one of those techniques is nearly as effective at reaching as many people asstanding— just one of us—standing on the street corner with a sign that says, “God hatesyou,” or “God hates America,” or “God hates back.” That . . . it polarizes people and . . .

I: So the polarization is intentional? That you want to go to a place where it is going to draw alot of attention, because it is shocking, so more people will see the message?

R: There’s only two responses. When you boil it all down, there’s only two responses to thatmessage; you’ll either hate it, or you’ll embrace it. Now the mass, vast majority have hated it.

Although they target high profile events to picket, they also have a constant schedule of lowerprofile protests, carried out at schools, churches, and public spaces in Kansas and elsewhere.The planner used to organize their activities showed an intricate, well-oiled machine of protestmobilization, with multiple protests in multiple locations every day. In the words of one of theelder organizers: “We have spent many more hours outside churches and conventions than outsidefag events.” Another female elder astutely noted that “anything can be a spectacle.” Their strategyis relentless and rhetorically mercenary, with the ends of message publication justifying the meansof incendiary speech.

Yet, these tactics are strictly legal. Before going to protest, a representative of the group notifiesthe local authorities of their intentions, requests the support of law enforcement, and asks forclarification about where they are allowed to protest. The members’ knowledge of jurisprudenceon the First Amendment is extensive, as is their knowledge of laws specifically designed to limittheir activity. Although they are frequently berated, taunted, and harassed by counter-protesters,WBC’s protest strategy is strictly nonviolent. When physically threatened, as they have beenmany times, they disengage and attempt to extricate themselves from the situation. Of course,WBC’s protests consist of an ample amount of baiting by the group to counter-protestors. In asense, their conflict strategy is to bait through language and signs to the level acceptable by law.

13For example, see the commentary by K. Ryan Jones about his documentary Fall From Grace, filmed while he wasa student at the University of Kansas.

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This combination of activism strategies— simultaneously being behaviorally legal and max-imally offensive with speech—makes WBC notable; however, it was only when the groupcombined these strategies with the purposive, symbolic desecration of soldiers’ remains that theiractivities inspired wide-ranging changes to American law.

Desecrating Civil Religion

“The message is: Unless you repent, you will all, like them, perish” (twenty-year-old femalemember). Bloch’s (1992) cross-cultural study of the political and semiotic dynamics of religiousritual makes a compelling neo-Durkheimian case that rituals pointing toward the sacred estab-lish a dichotomy between the permanent (spiritual) and the temporal (vital). In such rituals, thespiritual must eventually prevail due to the impermanence of human existence. Through this con-sumption by the spiritual (cultural), humans and the social systems they create stake a claim topermanence. Such rituals are “necessary for all social systems which rely on the illusion of aninstitutional framework transcending individuals” (Bloch 1992:21). Due to the impermanence ofvitality imposed by death, funerary rites are particularly centered on this dynamic. To questionthe sacred undergirding a collective ritual is to question the triumph of permanence. Viewingthemselves as iconoclasts, this is precisely WBC’s goal.

As we noted, a prominent theme in the rhetoric of WBC members is idolatry, which theycite as the primary affliction of the outside world. The placing of other concerns before (theirunderstanding of) God is the reason the world receives divine punishment. As one of their signsreads, “GOD HATES YOUR IDOLS.” The list of things the group considers idolatrous is longand varied. When asked about the reasons for God’s wrath, two young members, both women intheir early twenties, responded:

R1: You mean besides murdering unborn babies by the millions? And besides stripping the mar-riage covenant, violently raping it really, right down to the run of aggressive acceptance andpromotion of homosexuality, besides that? OK. That’s a three headed monster, and the otheris what I would put in the back of that: Military, wealth, capitalism, every kind of um . . .

R2: Lust.R1: Holidays. Anything other than serving God.

WBC is strict in their understanding of idolatry and its avoidance, keeping their kids out of schoolduring celebrations for various holidays (e.g., Halloween, Thanksgiving) and not permitting theuse of images of God or Jesus. Although many actions are believed to violate God’s will andthus be idolatrous, the most crucial sacrilege in their estimation is sexual immorality. In thissense WBC shares much with the view of sexual politics espoused by many other conservativereligious groups in the United States. The broader critique of American civil religion is whatdifferentiates WBC from other religious activists.

Idolatry’s central place in WBC’s portrayal of “the world” is intimately tied to their motiva-tions to protest. They seek to desecrate what they perceive as false idols worshipped by others.This led to their anti-American rhetoric and behavior. As one of the elder women mentionedduring an informal conversation, “When we saw the reaction after we started protesting militaryfunerals, we knew we found their idol.” Thereafter, WBC began purposively targeting symbols

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56 J. O. BAKER ET AL.

of civil religion for desecration, especially flags and fallen soldiers (Barrett-Fox 2010). Doing sofurthered the goal of getting their message to the widest possible audience.

When asked about God’s love, a twenty-six-year-old female member ironically noted that itwas shown because of who the group is not, while simultaneously contesting the sacred status ofsoldiers’ deceased bodies:

You know when we go to a soldier’s funeral, and you look across the street and you got the VietnamVets with their idols, idols just everywhere, there’s American flags just waving, and you’re across thestreet from them, there telling them the reason why that soldier is in that coffin. And you walk awayfrom that feeling it is the most humbling experience; the fact that you are not over where those peopleare, not over serving your idol, not worshiping that dead body. That is a sense of God’s mercy, andGod’s love towards His people.

Similarly, when asked about God’s judgment, a thirty-three-year-old male member said thatalthough there were numerous examples of immorality and the breaking of God’s laws, all actsof impropriety by outsiders were a “symptom of their own idolatry.”

WBC’s placement of idolatry at the center of their critical stance serves to justify thedesecration of symbols of others’ sacred moral orders. In committing acts of overt desecrationby invoking curses in public (Britt 2010), they stake a claim to moral superiority by refusing toshow deference to others’ conceptions of the sacred. A scene of desecration re-told by ShirleyPhelps-Roper, a central leader of protests for the group, vividly conveys this strategy:

So, about eight minutes into the picket I had gotten my army flag out and tied it on me. Then Irealized I needed to get my American flag out. Well [my daughter] was there with her camera . . .

taking photographs for our website. . . . And what this series of pictures show, because I was facingthe funeral which was still off over here, hundreds of those motorcycles,14 hundreds of flags, two bigfire trucks with their boom lifts, and mounted between those booms was the biggest flag I had everseen. It was just huge. And it was going up between these two fire trucks. You know, governmentproperty “separating church and state.” All this religion that was going on in the name of governmentwas all right there in front of us. So I’m facing towards there and I was singing. So I got that flag andtucked it into the army flag and it was staying there. My little boy, who is ten, got another flag, laid iton the ground and stood on it. . . . Suddenly a proliferation of cops appear on the scene.

The police were so enraged by these displays of disrespect that they arrested Shirley and chargedher with contributing to the delinquency of a minor and flag desecration. Ultimately, the case wasdropped. The state of Nebraska settled with WBC for $17,000 in exchange for dropping a suitbrought by the group against the state. The state law against flag desecration was blocked by afederal judge, citing Texas v. Johnson (1989).15 This situation displays two important elementsof WBC’s protest activity. First, their desecration of the symbols of civil religion is a purposivestatement against the perceived idolatry of nationalism. Second, such actions lead others to takeretributive legal action against the group. Ironically, such actions often benefit WBC.

To reiterate, although they had been protesting funerals for many years, it was only their post-9/11 protests of soldiers’ funerals that moved politicians at multiple levels of governance to

14The “Patriot Guard” is a group of motorcycle riders that regularly counter-protests WBC events.15For more details, see http://www.firstamendmentcenter.org/neb-officials-agree-flag-desecration-law-is-unconstit

utional. Shirley immediately cited this case to the arresting officers. They persisted, but soon realized the state law couldnot be enforced. She was released later that night.

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legislate social control, indicating that it was the desecration of the blood sacrifice of soldiersas symbols of civil religion in a time of war that triggered extensive legislative activity.16 Incontesting the sacred status of soldiers’ bodies, and therefore their sacrifice for the collective,WBC breaks the most fundamental taboo of national community (Marvin and Ingle 1999).

The Movement of Law

WBC is obsessed with law—both Divine and American. From the perspective of WBC members,when the law of the land fails to meet the standards of their understanding of God’s law, the resultis wrathful vengeance. Narratively they see any changes to law that impact sexual morality, orWBC itself, as having direct ramifications for others, due to their unique position of privilege inrelation to the Almighty. A common theme in informal conversations and formal interviews wasthe Supreme Court’s decision in Lawrence v. Texas (2003), which overturned the constitutionalityof sodomy laws. When asked why they viewed God as being responsible for disasters such as9/11 or hurricane Katrina, a thirty-three-year-old female member said, “We believe that, if youcould pinpoint a trigger, it was when the United States Supreme Court said, basically you have torespect fags and their private spheres.” Members mentioned the Lawrence case directly withoutany prompting, or even any pre-set questions about legal matters, in one-third of the interviews.

Members of the group also referenced the laws passed to restrict funeral protests in ways thatreflected their belief about having a privileged connection to God, noting how ill fortune for theworld resulted from the persecution of the group. During an interview, an elder female said thata recent tornado in Kansas had occurred because of legislative activity in the state:

I: Which law are you talking about?R: Kansas passed a law and they spent the whole session doing a lot of talking and that was

publicized more than any other activity they did, to try to put us a hundred and fifty feet awayfrom a funeral. . . . And I sent an email to every single legislative person in this state, and allthe local city fathers, and everyone I could get on my email list, talking about, “You betterconnect up these dots. You passed this law. You spent the entire legislative sessions . . .” Theonly real thing they really accomplished was that they passed this law; today it hangs out thereby a thread. It’s about to be kicked to the curb by the Supreme Court of Kansas.

Obsession with law also informs WBC’s protest strategies and rhetoric. Many legal measureshave been taken in efforts to curb the group’s activity, although the church has also won manycourt cases due to their extensive legal knowledge and careful observance thereof. The mostnotable example is Synder v. Phelps. In March 2006, Fred Phelps and six family members staged aprotest in Baltimore at the funeral of a U.S. Marine, Lance Corporal Matthew A. Snyder, who diedin the Iraq War. The church adhered to local ordinances that established time and distance restric-tions and conducted a peaceful protest, albeit displaying signs that read, among other things:“GOD HATES THE USA” and “SEMPER FI FAGS.” After the funeral, Snyder’s father, Albert,was made aware of the messages on WBC signs by word of mouth and by watching televisionnews coverage. He also viewed an “epic” posted on WBC’s website that accused the deceased

16However, the city of Topeka and the state of Kansas passed many laws in the early 1990s designed to stifle theefforts of WBC in various ways, including limits on protesting churches and sending faxes.

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Snyder’s parents of raising their son “for the devil” and of supporting the Catholic Church, whichthey called a “pedophile machine.” In response, Snyder filed five civil torts against WBC, FredPhelps, and two of his daughters, alleging intentional infliction of emotional distress, defamation,publicity given to private life, civil conspiracy, and intrusion upon seclusion. Westboro claimedprotection against any tort liability under the First Amendment’s free speech protections.

A trial court awarded Snyder a judgment of $2.9 million in compensatory and $8 million inpunitive damages (see Barrett-Fox 2010:382–390; Messar 2007:124–126), but a District Courtreduced the punitive fines to $2.1 million. The Court of Appeals then reversed all judgments,ruling that WBC’s speech represented protected statements that were rhetorical and of public con-cern. Snyder appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, which agreed to review the case. The SupremeCourt had to decide if Snyder was a private or a public figure, and if the church’s presence con-stituted an invasion of the funeral attendees’ rights to privacy, forcing them to become a captiveaudience. WBC argued that Snyder was a public figure and cited Hustler Magazine v. Falwell(1988), which ruled that statements made about public figures are protected speech. To define acaptive audience, the Court reviewed the Hill v. Colorado (2000) ruling that had defined “cap-tive audience” based on the proximity of picketers (eight feet) at an abortion clinic targetingindividuals entering and exiting.

After examining the collective content of WBC’s signs and their context, the Court concludedthat their speech constituted “matters of public concern,” thereby protecting them from liabilityfor any emotional harm suffered by Snyder. It held that speech is considered public when itrelates “to any matter of political, social, or other concern to the community,” citing Connick v.Myers (1983). The Court also rejected Snyder’s captive audience claim, deciding that the Hillcase had no bearing on Snyder v. Phelps. The church adhered to local ordinances restrictingtime and distance and conducted a peaceful protest that never included direct contact with thefuneral attendees. WBC’s First Amendment right was upheld; reaffirming previous free speechprotections (see Strasser 2011).

Because of their careful attention to extant laws, new legislation has proven more effectiveat restricting WBC’s protests than relying on existing legal constraints. Accordingly, legislatorshave moved the bounds of law to make the group’s protests illegal. Within a year of their ini-tiation, WBC’s protests of military funerals led to a federal law banning protests at funeralsconducted on federal property. Mike Rogers, a Republican member of the House, veteran, andformer special agent for the FBI, introduced the Respect for America’s Fallen Heroes Act (H.R.5037) on March 29, 2006. The bill garnered support from 99 Democratic and 106 Republican co-sponsors. The vote in the House was 408 to 3.17 In the Senate, the vote was 60 to 0 (see Cornwell2007 for a discussion of the constitutionality of the law). Although there was no ambiguity aboutthe moral and emotive impetus for the law, President George W. Bush further dramatized the billby signing it on Memorial Day after delivering a speech to soldiers and their families in Arlington

17The average number of cosponsors for a bill in the 109th Congress was 15.9. The number of cosponsors for the billwas greater than 99.3% of bills introduced during this Congress. Data were retrieved from http://congressionalbills.org.The dissenters included Ron Paul (R–Texas), a staunch libertarian, and Barney Frank (D–Massachusetts), an openly gay,longtime progressive congressional representative. Both opposed the bill on the grounds of civil liberties. In 2012 BarackObama signed a wide-ranging bill addressing veterans’ issues that included an extension of the time restrictions from onehour before and after to two (see H. R. 1627—34: § 2413). Text of the bill is available at: http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/BILLS-112hr1627enr/pdf/BILLS-112hr1627enr.pdf.

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National Cemetery. The final line of the law reads: “It is the sense of Congress that each Stateshould enact legislation to restrict demonstrations near any military funeral.”18

State legislators took heed. Within two years of beginning military funeral protests, over fortystates had passed laws restricting funeral protests, typically by defining such actions as a formof disorderly conduct (see McAllister 2007; Ruane 2011). At present, forty-seven states haveenacted such legislation (the exceptions being Alaska, Hawaii, and Connecticut). Table 3 providesinformation on these laws, including the spatial and temporal restrictions on protest, the date thebill was signed into law, and the collective vote tally for the bill (combined state House andSenate for bicameral legislatures). The vote tallies provide an empirical measure of the bipartisanand unanimous support of the legislation. Such moral entrepreneurship is relatively cost-free tolegislators, who are well aware that WBC’s activities garner very few sympathizers. Summing theyeas and nays for all the laws together, 98% of the votes were cast in favor of legislation restrictingfuneral protests. Sixty-seven percent of all the nay votes came from four bills: Georgia, the firstlaw in Missouri (since struck down), New Hampshire, and Montana, which accounted for nearlyone third of all nay votes by itself, but also has the widest spatial barrier (1500 feet). Sixty percentof these state laws were passed unanimously.

An example from the enactment of one of these state laws illustrates the theatrical politicsat play, as well as some corresponding legal issues. In South Carolina, a unanimously passedbill restricting funeral protests to beyond 1,000 feet was vetoed by ideologically libertarianRepublican Governor Mark Sanford,19 who said, “. . . the bill is unnecessary because protestshaven’t happened here and President Bush has signed the ‘Respect for America’s Fallen HeroesAct’ that covers military funerals” (Adcox 2006). The veto was unanimously overridden by bothchambers after a rousing speech from Bill Cotty, a Republican representing Columbia, whose sonwas in the military:

“My son called me and said, ‘I understand your governor vetoed the bill. . . . You send everybodyin that state and every veteran and every family a message that when they drive through those gatesto bury their dead, they won’t have a protest.’ Please help me override this veto,” Cotty said to loudapplause. (Adcox 2006)

DISCUSSION

Westboro Baptist Church’s collective image of God, theodicy, and homophobia lead them toexploit public tragedies in order to get their message out. Their protests are a highly concen-trated expression of religio-political revulsion at the increasing inclusion of same sex couples

18Although much of the rhetoric and focus has been and remains on military funerals, most state laws prohibitprotesting at funerals in general.

19Sanford routinely vetoed legislation from his own party based on libertarian economic principles, once bringingpigs to the House chamber to represent “pork” spending. In the case of the funeral law, he applied libertarian logic tosocial concerns and civil liberties. See http://www.wistv.com/global/Story.asp?s=1895905. Similarly a bill that passedthe California legislature restricting funeral protests to 1,000 feet was vetoed by Governor Jerry Brown, a longtimeDemocrat (Egelko 2011). See http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Gov-Jerry-Brown-vetoes-ban-on-funeral-protests-2310547.php. The law was passed and signed by the governor the following year, with 300 feet as the specified distance.

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TABLE 3State Laws Addressing Funeral Protests

State Date enactedDistance fromfuneral (feet)

Time restriction(minutes) Vote (Y–N)

Alabama 4/25/2006 300 60 136–0Alabama 2 6/6/2012 1,000 60 126–0Arkansas 4/7/2006 150 30 127–2Arizona 1/11/2011 300 60 87–0Californiaa 8/22/2011 1,000 60 111–1California 2 9/17/2012 300 60 115–2Colorado 5/26/2006 100 — 89–7Delaware 6/1/2006 300 60–120 59–0Florida 6/20/2006 — — 157–0Florida 2 4/10/2013 500 60 154–0Georgia 3/30/2006 500 60 195–15Idaho 3/21/2007 — — 103–0Illinois 5/17/2006 200 30 160–0Illinois 2 8/14/2011 300 30 172–0Indiana 3/2/2006 500 — 141–1Iowa 4/17/2006 500 30 154–0Kansasb 7/1/1992 — 60–120 163–0Kansas 2c 4/12/2007 150 60–120 163–0Kansas 3 4/3/2008 150 60–120 163–0Kentuckyd 3/27/2006 300 — 131–0Kentucky 2 3/23/2007 300 60 135–2Louisiana 6/30/2006 — — 139–0Maine 5/18/2007 — — 157–3Maryland 10/1/2006 100 — 182–0Massachusettsj 7/22/1978 500 — —Michigane 5/23/2006 500 — 202–1Michigan 2 2/15/2012 500 — 144–2Minnesota 5/9/2006 500 60 187–3Mississippi 4/21/2006 1,000 60 162–1Missourif 2/27/2006 — 60 170–17Missouri 2 7/6/2006 300 60 189–0Montana 3/16/2007 1, 500 60 100–49Nebraskag 4/4/2006 300 60–120 44–0Nebraska 2 3/17/2011 500 60–120 48–0New Hampshire 9/15/2007 300 60 322–22New Jersey 8/21/2006 500 60 116–0New Mexico 4/3/2007 500 — 93–0New York 9/25/2008 100 — 180–10New York 2 9/23/2011 300 — 200–1North Carolina 7/20/2006 300 60 158–0North Dakota 1/25/2007 300 60 137–0Ohioh 5/26/2006 300 60 128–0Oklahoma 3/3/2006 500 60–120 133–1Oklahoma 2 4/18/2011 1,000 120 145–0Oregon 2/23/2012 200 — 88–1Pennsylvania 6/30/2006 500 60 252–0

(Continued)

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TABLE 3(Continued)

State Date enactedDistance fromfuneral (feet)

Time restriction(minutes) Vote (Y–N)

Rhode Island 7/2/2007 — — 101–0South Carolinaa 6/14/2006 1,000 30 149–0South Dakota 2/13/2006 1,000 60 103–0Tennessee 4/24/2006 500 — 129–0Texas 5/19/2006 500 60 163–0Utah 3/7/2007 200 60 102–0Vermonti 5/20/2006 100 60–120 —Virginia 3/30/2006 — — 140–0Washington 2/2/2007 — — 131–6West Virginia 4/1/2011 500 60 133–0Wisconsin 2/20/2006 500 60 125–3Wyoming 7/1/2007 300 60 86–0Wyoming 2 7/1/2011 900 60 85–4Totals 58 laws

passedMean distance =

410 feetMean time =45 minutes

7,964–154(98% yea)

aVetoed.bAmended in 1995 to include specific time restrictions (see Phelps v. Hamilton 1997).cRuled unconstitutional for “judicial trigger” provision in Kansas v. Sebelius (2008).dRuled unconstitutionally “overbroad” in McQueary v. Stumbo (2006).eRuled unconstitutionally broad based on phrase “adversely affect” in Lowden v. Clare County (2011).fRuled unconstitutionally broad in Phelps-Roper v. Koster (2010); also see Phelps-Roper v. Nixon (2008).gRuled unconstitutional in Phelps-Roper v. Troutman (2011), citing Nixon.hProvision barring protests on procession route ruled unconstitutional in Phelps-Roper v. Taft (2007).iRules suspended and passed with adoption of specific amendments from judiciary committee.jLaw passed before WBC protests began, not included in summary counts.

in American society. WBC’s observant legalism, purposive desecration of sacred totems of civilreligion, and the political profitability of opposing the group combined to produce widespreadchanges to state and federal laws. The codification of the morality of a dominant group servesas “reassurance to some that the society is indeed their society, its meanings their meanings, andits morality their morality” (Gusfield 1981:182, emphasis in original). Unlike issues about whichthere exists healthy debate and discord, the actions of WBC violate near unanimous sentimentstied to American civil religion (and common decency), and the group’s activities are broadlycondemned by vehement, informal means. Legislative measures addressing funeral protests seekto enshrine this boundary in codified law, creating a protective sphere of sanctity around thesacred, and attempting to ensure reverence thereof. Yet even the harshest of these laws can onlyrestrict, but not prohibit, the actions of Westboro.

WBC provides an instructive example of a group whose language and actions are widely—tothe point of consensus—considered deviant, while at the same time being meticulous in theirobservance of existing laws regulating behavior. Their desecration of funerary rites centered onthe most sacred symbols of nationalism resulted in fast-paced legislation and extensive judicialdisputes, including but not limited to laws in nearly all states, multiple federal statutes, and aSupreme Court case. The breadth and volume of legal activity over WBC’s actions speak to the

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depth of the moral boundaries the group transgresses. Although WBC is idiosyncratic in manyways, responses to their actions reveal general processes involved in the ritual desecration ofcommunal totems, as well as the power of norms surrounding funerary rites. A comparison of thecultural responses to the group’s protests at LGBT advocates’ and military personnel’s funeralsreveals both the continuing societal ambivalence about full acceptance of sexual minorities andthe fully sacred status of the nationalistic ideals embodied in the mortal remains of soldiers.

Similar to reactions to flag-burning, pursuing criminalization of funeral protests effectivelyserves to “reinforce state legitimacy and power through imagery and symbolism,” and deflects“public criticism of government policy” (Welch and Bryan 1998:164–165) in enacting a unilateralWar in Iraq; an effort embarrassed by the absence of “Weapons of Mass Destruction” (see Simons2007). The opportunity for moral and political entrepreneurs to mete out punishment aimed atWBC’s activities provided a (short run) cost-free measure for demonstrating one’s patriotism(see Posner 2000), a near-unanimous “gesture of cohesion” (Gusfield 1986:171).

Layered ironies reside in the actions of WBC and the social reactions they incite. Shortly afterWBC began targeting military funerals, tensions increased on “milblogs,” forums maintainedand used by members of the military and their supporters. Milbloggers typically downplayedPhelps’ religious foundations and his core anti-gay message and instead attempted to define WBCpolitically in reference to the military (Brouwer and Hess 2007). Much like the politicians passinglaws to restrict WBC, milbloggers viewed soldiers as an extension of the military; therefore,protesting at a soldier’s funeral represented a cultural affront to the military itself and, in a broadersense, the nation. Bloggers expressed great irony in what they considered WBC’s abuse of freespeech protections to engage in targeted protests against those who had “fought to maintain thefreedom.” Lost, however, was the irony of opponents of the group routinely condemning WBC’sright to free speech while exercising their own—a “patriotic paradox” (Beil 2008). Nationalisticframes prevailed above others in the post-9/11 era, and the idea of dissent was equated with abetrayal of patriotism (Dardis 2006; Luther and Miller 2005; Welch 2009). The general revulsionevoked by WBC’s actions made the group a convenient symbol of traitorous dissent, and assistedin marginalizing more serious dissent about foreign wars.

Meanwhile, through WBC’s desperation to reach a wide audience, they increased the hear-ing, but also the misunderstanding of their message. In public discourse about the group, WBCmembers are routinely misidentified as anti-war extremists, liberals, leftists, and even terrorists,with only occasional acknowledgments that WBC’s views on homosexuality are in line withmany conservative religionists’ anti-gay views. WBC is the very public, blatant face of a homo-phobia that exists in many other religious groups, and in many ways, this point has been lostamid the condemnations of the funeral protests of fallen soldiers (see Barrett-Fox 2010:341–367;Cobb 2006). One of the greatest ironies surrounding the efforts of WBC is that their protestsare far more likely to mobilize opposition against the group—and by extension their causes ofhomophobia and anti-nationalism—than elicit support for their views. Finally, in spite of theiranti-American rhetoric, WBC is American to the core, simultaneously obsessed with and deter-mined to use freedom of speech and the rule of law to condemn sexual minorities in publicdiscourse, all buttressed by a neo-Puritan ideology of God’s omnipotence and just retribution.These facts generally remain unacknowledged.

On the side of social control, the laws intended to criminalize WBC’s protests will displace thedespised activity, but the transmuting of the offending symbols is highly uncertain (Posner 1998).Westboro Baptist Church will continue their protests and rhetorical desecration to the utmost

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limits of any laws passed, as Phelps’ followers will tirelessly persist in prophesying from “lawnsacross the street.”20 There have also been unintended consequences from the new laws. Forexample, in 2007 a couple in Michigan—a veteran and his wife—were removed from a funeralprocession and arrested while attending the burial of a soldier they were closely acquainted withbecause of homemade signs criticizing George W. Bush on their automobile. The charges wereultimately dropped, but not until the couple spent the night in jail. They later successfully suedthe county, and a federal judge struck down the law for being overly vague. A revised versionwas subsequently drafted, passed, and signed into law.

WBC effectively operates at the nexus of the tension between the ideals of individual rightsand collective obligations in American society, as well as the pure/impure distinction upon whichcivil spheres more generally are based (Alexander 2006). First Amendment scholar Timothy Zick(2004) notes that the thick description of ethnography is necessary in free speech cases to decipherthe multi-valence of potential meanings that surround activities occurring at the bounds of law.Further, he argues that: “Easily the most challenging—from both moral and First Amendmentperspectives—contemporary example of spatial contestation has been the spate of recent publicprotests near cemeteries during military funerals” (2009:124, emphasis in original). WBC’s inten-tionally and maximally offensive speech combined with behavior carefully observant of existinglaws provides an illustration of how actions widely viewed as deviant, yet not criminalized underextant codes may result in the movement of law to restrict the offending behavior. In this case, themovement was swift, broad, and near unanimous because opposing WBC made for a particularlyprofitable political issue. Few have much sympathy for the group due to their tactics, includingthose who would otherwise agree with particular aspects of their rhetoric, be it homophobia,freedom of speech, or anti-militarism.

Our goal here has been to render the activities of WBC, as well the societal response totheir deviance, more understandable. We have also tried to show how the group serves as anintriguing case study of religion, deviance, politics, and law; but we have only scratched thesurface of the themes exemplified and uncovered by the actions of and reactions to Westboro.Speech acts desecrating sacred symbols—especially those involving death rites, civil religion,and state authority—elicit the punishment of powerful institutions. WBC’s antics function as atest of American commitment to civil liberties of free speech and the right to protest, simultane-ously illustrating the boundaries of American civil society, the social processes of deviance andpunishment, and the (re)negotiation of law through symbolic politics. The implications of thecase for analogous situations where freedom meets civil obligations, as well as the possibilitiesfor further analyses of the group extending beyond those offered here are (hopefully) apparent.Westboro Baptist Church’s actions and use of symbols—and those of others against them—laybare multiple threads in the sacred cultural fabric of American society.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Thanks to Jared Maier and Jeremy Rhodes for conducting interviews. Thanks to Scott Draper,Ashley Palmer, and Sam Stroope for sharing their observations and fieldnotes after visiting

20The recent death of the group’s patriarch does raise the possibility of changes to the group’s tactics, although thisremains to be seen. As of this writing the group’s protests have continued unabated.

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the group. Thanks for Melissa Schrift, Bill N. Duncan, and Stephen R. McAllister for sharingtheir knowledge of the literatures on blood sacrifice, mortuary desecration, and funeral protestlaws, respectively. An earlier version of this study was presented at the 2012 Association for theSociology of Religion meeting in Denver, CO.

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JOSEPH O. BAKER is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology andAnthropology at East Tennessee State University and a senior research associate for theAssociation of Religion Data Archives. His research focuses on cultural sociology, particularlyin the areas of religion, secularism, perceived knowledge, and deviance. His research has beenpublished in more than a dozen peer-reviewed journals, and he is an editorial board member

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for Sociology of Religion. He is author of Paranormal America and his latest book, AmericanSecularism, will be available in 2015 from New York University Press.

CHRISTOPHER D. BADER is a Professor of Sociology at Chapman University and affili-ated with the Institute for Religion, Economics and Culture (IRES). He was principal investigatorof the first two waves of the Baylor Religion Survey, a nationwide survey of U.S. religiousbeliefs. He is Associate Director of the Association of Religion Data Archives (http://www.theArda.com), an on-line archive of religion survey data funded by the Templeton Foundationand Lilly Foundation and supported by Penn State University and Chapman. He is the author oftwo books, America’s Four Gods and Paranormal America, and has published, to date, 35 arti-cles and chapters in the fields of sociology, deviance, criminology, the sociology of religion andeducation.

KITTYE HIRSCH is an Adjunct Professor in the Department of Sociology and Anthropologyat East Tennessee State University. Her recent Master’s thesis in applied sociology examined theeffectiveness of evidence-based strategies to reduce recidivism rates among target populations.Her research interests include racial inequality, social stratification, and penology.

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