Honk if You Love Rainbows: GDS Students Respond to Hate with Advocacy

In March of 2010, the Westboro Baptist Church, a group known for engaging in public protests and hate speech turned its attention to GDS and planned to picket the school. Alerted via the Phelps-A-Thon, a Boston-based pro-LGBTQ+ organization that  works to counter such demonstrations, the GDS community debated what response they should take.

The protest was scheduled for a day when the school was closed for Spring Break, but many students expressed a strong desire to take action in response. Should they gather all students, faculty, and staff to stage a live counter protest? Or should they leave the campus empty–since it was break, after all–and deny the protesters an audience? Many voiced strong opinions, but the community couldn’t come to an agreement.

Alec Ward ’13 wrote a comprehensive account of the decision-making process in a special edition of the school’s newspaper, The Augur Bit, where he was working at the time as an Associate Features Editor. In it, he detailed the debate and shared voices demonstrating the varied opinions within the student body and faculty on how best to respond:

Alec shared that ultimately the rationale for a silent response won out. As many students would be away for Spring Break, it would have been difficult to gather enough participants for a protest that made an effective statement. Other students noted that the hate group feeds off the anger and disgust it engenders, so it was best not to draw possible media attention and unintentionally help spread the hate.

GDS’s Gay-Straight Alliance, Rainbow Connections, an alliance group that existed at the time, held a meeting to discuss the counter-protest measures. Ultimately, they encouraged students to direct their energy another way: to decorate the school with rainbow flags and posters to demonstrate GDS’s pride and advocacy. Several groups on campus held poster-making sessions and encouraged the entire community to come together in opposition to the WBC protest. They even flew a rainbow pride flag beneath the American flag on the school’s flagpole.

The students extended their advocacy to other groups and even countries the WBC had targeted, including Israel, Sweden, Ireland, and the U.S. In addition, they showed support for American soldiers, since the WBC had protested against the military for its acceptance of homosexuality.

Not all the students agreed with this approach of making posters and protesting silently, feeling it would demonstrate a lack of empathy or laziness on the part of the school. Will Ley, the Technical Editor for the Performing Arts, pointed out that the WBC was staging other protests in the area at prominent locations including the White House. He suggested that GDS organize a delegation to send to one of the counter-protests. Perhaps they could even encourage other schools to do the same. But he and others also advised caution. He had been to WBC counter-protests and stressed that the students would need to know what they were getting into, to be able to deal with the high level of verbal abuse they would face.

An alternative for students who wanted to do more than make posters, but were also daunted by the idea of facing the WBC directly, was to pledge money in support of the Phelps-A-Thon. Rainbow Connections set up pledge stations for the students. Students could pledge 25 cents to two dollars for each minute the WBC members protested at a given location. The money raised went to the Gay-Straight Alliance club of the picketed school, and a letter was then sent by the group to Fred Phelps, the WBC founder, informing him how much money his picket inadvertently raised for LGBTQ+ rights.