Today’s the day for the Westboro Baptist Church UMass Amherst picket/protest. Time to see what happens when a certified hate group spews vitriolic ignorance in one of the most liberal places in America.
Updated: Hundreds show up to anti-rally in support of Derrick Gordon and LGBT community.
MassLive wrote about it a few days ago and today’s the day. According to Daniel Malone at MassLive.com, here’s the story.
A day after University of Massachusetts sophomore Derrick Gordon revealed to the public that he is gay, the Westboro Baptist Church tweeted Thursday (and in Spanish, too) that it will travel to Amherst to demonstrate and picket at the university.
It pains me to link to it, but here’s the tweet from WBC in which they announced their UMass protest. Derrick Gordon, guard on the UMass men’s basketball team, came out publicly earlier this month. The Amherst community and NCAA athletics in general have echoed overwhelmingly positive support for Gordon. Except for Westboro.
UMass has a well-established reputation of being an outspokenly liberal place and its student body is not ashamed of public demonstrations (to put it politely). Plenty of sources have covered the outpouring of positivity in the wake of WBC’s Sandy Hook protest. I, for one, expect UMass to react similarly, but perhaps with a degree of college-aged passion thrown in.
I hope to update this post with any follow-up news or photos. As always: please take care of each other.
Further Reading
- Westboro Baptist Church announces visit to UMass — Daily Collegian UMass newspaper
- UMass group planning rally to support UMass basketball player Derrick Gordon and counter planned rally by Westboro Baptist Church — MassLive
- #UMassUnited Facebook event
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