Phelps plans Vancouver protest

Members of the antigay US preacher Fred Phelps’ Westboro Baptist Church are threatening to visit Vancouver Nov 28 to picket a performance of The Laramie Project.

Moises Kaufman’s play is based on more than 200 interviews with Laramie residents following the brutal killing of gay student Matthew Shepard. It captures the emotions and reactions of the people closest to the crime.

On Oct 7, 1998, Shepard, 21, met two men in a Laramie, Wyoming bar. The men pretended that they were gay, and offered Shepard a ride home.

Instead, Russell Arthur Henderson and Aaron James McKinney drove him to a ranch outside of Laramie, pistol whipped him, tied him to a fence pole, and left him.

Eighteen hours later, a cyclist came by, and after the horrific realization that Shepard was not a scarecrow, he called police.

Shepard died in a Colorado hospital of severe head injuries five days later.

The murder brought international attention to the issue of hate crimes.

Kaufman’s play is part of raising that awareness.

Staged by Fighting Chance Productions, the play runs Nov 26 to Dec 6 at the Havana Theatre on Commercial Dr.

Spokesperson Sabrina Mehra Furminger says the company was shocked when they heard of the protest.

“Our initial inclination was to ignore it and refuse to draw attention to their hatred,” she says.

However, after a meeting of cast and crew, it was decided that a counter-protest would be create more dialogue around the issue.

“We were just shocked at their audacity and the fact they’re going to cross international borders to bring hatred to Canada,” Mehra Furminger says.

It remains to be seen what will happen when church members attempt to enter Canada, says Shakila Manzoor, the local communications manager for Canada Border Services.

Manzoor says cases are dealt with on a case-by-case basis depending on what information is presented to border guards.

“Officers determine if a person is here to incite hatred,” she says, “and if they’re here for that, they can be turned back.”

Members of Phelps’ Topeka, Kansas-based church picketed Shepard’s funeral in front of his grief-stricken parents.

It was the first of many such pickets.

In the decade since Shepard’s murder, Phelps and his followers have also picketed numerous funerals for US soldiers killed overseas.

Phelps claims the deaths are God’s revenge for the United States’ embrace of gay rights and abortion. He has made similar claims about Canada.

“When Canada determined to fight against God, they took up a satanic mission which must be addressed,” Westboro Baptist’s website,

Phelps’ daughter, Shirley Phelps-Roper, says Westboro Baptist Church members are planning a peaceful protest in Vancouver.

She says they do not want to change anyone or prevent anyone from going to see the play or even from being ‘a pervert.’

They just want to warn people, she explains.

“Isn’t it good to have a voice to remind you that the only good thing about Matthew Shepard is he is in hell for eternity?” she asks.

“There’s nothing we have planned that is unlawful. We stand out on the public right of way and show our signs,” she continues.

“The Lord is coming,” she warns. “America is doomed.

“All we’re trying to do is warn anyone who has an ear to listen that the wrath is coming,” she says.

Play director Ryan Mooney says it would be naïve to believe such beliefs don’t exist in Canada.

He points to a group of students who wanted to stage the Laramie Project in Surrey, BC a few years ago. “They were shut down by the [school] board,” he points out. “It isn’t really much different.”

The play was later performed at Vancouver’s Lord Byng High School.

In opposition to Phelps’ planned Vancouver visit, a Facebook page has been started.

As of Wednesday, it had almost 1,800 members.

Phelps-Roper says she hopes Westboro Baptist Church members won’t be prevented from picketing this presentation of the Laramie Project by Canadian security.

She says church members had to halt plans to picket in Winnipeg last summer because of security concerns.

In August, Westboro Baptist Church members also threatened to picket a Toronto production of the Pastor Phelps Project. They didn’t show up but Toronto’s gay community staged a counter-protest.

The Pastor Phelps Project is a satirical cabaret that uses Fred Phelps’s own words as a jumping point to parody religious intolerance, hypocrisy and extremism in North America.

According to the National Post, the Westboro members were stopped at the border.

In response to Phelps’ picketing of soldiers’ funerals, the US passed a Respect for America’s Fallen Heroes Act in 2006. President George W Bush did not veto it.

The US House of Representatives also passed the Matthew Shepard Act, a federal hate crime bill, on May 3, 2007.

The bill expanded the 1969 US federal hate-crime law to include crimes motivated by a victim’s actual or perceived gender, sexual orientation, gender identity or disability.

The bill passed the Senate on Sep 29 of the same year, but did not become law because its sponsors realized that they could not override Bush’s threatened veto.

Republican presidential candidate John McCain was not in the Senate to vote, but he said that he would have opposed the bill. President-elect Barack Obama and vice-president-elect Joe Biden voted for the Matthew Shepard Act.

The men convicted of killing Shepard are in jail after a high-profile trial.

Henderson pleaded guilty to felony murder and kidnapping, allowing him to avoid the death penalty.

McKinney was convicted of felony murder and kidnapping.

Henderson is currently serving two consecutive life sentences and McKinney is serving the same but without the possibility of parole.

— With files from Sondi Bruner