Members of the Westboro Baptist Church of Topeka, Kan., will visit Princeton Borough this weekend to promote their church's anti-gay views and to protest Center for Human Values professor Peter Singer's writings on bestiality.
The 200-member church is known for its vituperative views on homosexuality. It has held approximately 20,000 anti-gay demonstrations in the past nine years, according to church member Rebekah Phelps-Davis.
Church groups picketed the funeral of Matthew Shepherd, carrying signs with anti-gay slogans. The church's website, www.godhatesfags.com, explains that the church is "dedicated to preaching the Gospel truth about the soul-damning, nation-destroying notion that 'It is OK to be gay.' "
Twelve church members will spend two days demonstrating in Princeton Borough, but will not be on the University campus. The group had planned to demonstrate in front of Nassau Hall early Monday morning, but changed their plans after finding out that students were in exams, according to Dean of Undergraduate Students Kathleen Deignan.
The Westboro Church will picket at the intersection of Bayard and Stockton Streets on Saturday afternoon, according to Princeton Borough Police Lt. John Reading. They will also picket and hand out leaflets at five area churches on Sunday morning.
Because they will not block sidewalks or use amplification, protestors did not need to apply for a parade permit from the Borough.
The University and the Pride Alliance urge students to ignore the protest.
"The views they espouse are not ones I think this University embraces," Deignan said. "Their speech is really quite antithetical to our policy of respect for others and aspirations for this to be a place where all our members are . . . welcome."
Charity Fesler '01, former vice president of Agape, a non-denominational Christian fellowship, noted that many Christians have differing views on the issue of homosexuality.
"But I would say that [the Westboro Church] is just using the religion to justify their hatred for the act," she added. The Westboro Church's message is "really wrong," she said. "If there's no love behind it then it's not of God."
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