Westboro Baptist Church Pickets School With Gay Football Player

LADUE, MO — Students at John Burroughs School, a private prep school in Ladue, Missouri, had a contentious start to the school week amid a protest from Westoboro Baptist Church outside the school Monday morning.

The group said last week it planed to protest senior Jake Bain, the school football team's star running back who is headed for Indiana State University in the fall, because he is gay. Bain was profiled in the Post-Dispatch last year.

Calling the high school senior a "beast," among other slurs, the group said in a press release it hopes to counter "Satan’s agenda of planting pride across the land." Westboro Baptist Church is not associated with any national Baptist denomination and has been denounced by the Baptist World Alliance, Southern Baptist Convention and many other Christian groups. The Southern Poverty Law Center calls them "the most obnoxious and rabid hate group in America."

For example in 2014, on the anniversary of September 11, the group demonstrated at ground zero in New York, thanking God for the attacks, which they said were a punishment for America's tolerance of LGBT people. Westboro Baptist has also celebrated the deaths of American soldiers, protesting at the funeral of a U.S. Marine killed in Iraq in 2006, among other military funerals. The group has even protested in front of the Holocaust Museum in Washington, carrying signs reading "God Hates Israel" and "Jews Killed Jesus."

"From the beginning, I wanted to just be myself," Bain told Fox 2 St. Louis. "And I wanted to show people around St. Louis and everywhere else that you can be whoever you want to be." He told the television station that the protest bothered him, but he was encouraged by a bigger counter-protest being planned in his defense.

The Ladue Police Department shut down the westbound lanes of Clayton Road during the demonstration for safety reasons, the department said, and its officers were on scene to keep the peace.

Pride St. Louis, a local LGBT advocacy group, organized a counter protest on Facebook which dwarfed the Westboro Baptist demonstration.

In a letter to parents, the school said it had received messages of support from parents and community members. "But most inspiring, I have to tell you, has been the response of our students," the head of the school, Andy Abbott, wrote.

He continued:

On Monday morning, I shared the news in assembly and there was a wide range of emotions: fear, sadness, anger. On Tuesday morning, however, more than 200 students showed up an hour before school to discuss the situation and talk about what our response should be. At assembly on Tuesday, one of our students spoke passionately and received a spontaneous and sustained standing ovation. He shared Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s words, "Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that," and encouraged us to "shine our brightest lights next Monday." On Wednesday, Diversity ETC student leaders spent their free afternoon processing the input they received and developing what Daniel Harris, our director of diversity, and I believe is a wonderfully thoughtful plan.

"WBC wants us to engage with them," Abbott wrote. "Our primary response will be to ignore them."

The school said last week it planned to start assembly late Monday morning to allow any students who want to avoid the protest entirely to do so:

To avoid contact with the WBC, here are our suggestions for drop-off and parking: If you drive your student/s to school, please drop them off at the main entrance or Schnuck Wing, both off Price Road. Student drivers can park in the Price Road lots or in my front yard (accessed through the north entrance). We will encourage faculty and staff to park in the Clayton Road lot.

"We expect a large number of students will participate in a 40-minute display of support for our LGBTQ+ community," Abbott continued. "Any students who feel the need to join the counter-protesters at the Clayton entrance will be accompanied and carefully supervised by senior administrators."

The school discouraged additional adults from joining the protests and said students would prefer notes, video clips and other expressions of support.

Abbott offered a final word:

In our society, there is always room for respectful differences of opinion. But WBC is nothing more than a hate group. It maintains that God is punishing America because of its tolerance of the LGBTQ+ community. Their vitriolic speech extends to Catholics, Orthodox Christians, Muslims, Jews and U.S. soldiers. Their picketing forays average between six and 30 people (including their own children), and their modus operandi is to carry inflammatory signs to incite reactions from those they picket. It is crucial to note that WBC is not affiliated with any national Baptist organization. Our families, who come from many religious backgrounds, have been vocal and passionate about supporting our students and denouncing the WBC.

On March 12, WBC will be on a sidewalk outside of our campus for 30 minutes ... and then they will be gone.

What we will remember is that our students responded with unity and care and courage.

Photos courtesy of Pride St. Louis