A group of church protestors from Kansas are bringing their message of apocalypse and hate to an intersection near Fort Dorchester High School on March 24 at school dismissal time.
Westboro Baptist Church, of Topeka, Kan. (a city that has changed its named to Google, Kan. for March 2010), plans to picket an area near the school from 2:50-3:20 p.m. to deliver their self-described hateful messages that are anti-homosexual, anti-Semitic, anti-Catholic, anti-America, anti-Obama and anti-military, according to their Web site.
Westboro Baptist members have picketed soldiers’ funerals. One case will go before U.S. Supreme Court in October, according to multiple news media publications.
FDHS is meeting with North Charleston Police this week to make sure picketers stay off school property, says Pat Raynor, Dorchester District 2 Schools public information officer. “By law, they can’t picket on school property,” Raynor says.
School property starts at the intersection of Lincoln Patriot Boulevard and Appian Way, according to DD2 security director Mike Turner. The picketers will have a hard time seeing the school from the protest area, Turner says. A wooded area and curve in the road block the line of sight.
“Our goal is to make sure our students are safe,” Turner says.
On Friday FDHS Principal Jim Atkinson alerted faculty and sent a phone message to all parents saying the district is working with law enforcement and is aware someone is protesting, according to district officials.
“A permit is not required for someone to protest within the city limits, however, protesters must remain on public property and cannot block the ingress or egress at any location,” says Spencer Pryor, North Charleston Police public information officer. “Officers will monitor this event as we do all other protests.”
The church lawyer, Shirley Phelps-Roper, also daughter of its pastor Fred Phelps, Sr., says she and others will be demonstrating near FDHS with her youngest son, who is 7 years old.
“Good for nothing, that’s what the face of your youngsters are,” Phelps-Roper says. She says church members, approximately 45 people of the 70 who attend Westboro Baptist, are not “doomed,” but she says America is. “I know we’re right because I can read,” Phelps-Roper says.
An improvised explosive device (IED, or roadside bomb) conference is bringing the protestors to the Charleston area, Phelps-Roper says. The church protestors will put words in the air and when they leave they will put thunder in the air, she says.
According to the Anti-Defamation League’s Web site, a civil rights agency, Westboro Baptist is “a small virulently homophobic, anti-Semitic hate group that regularly stages protests around the country, often several times a week. The group pickets institutions and individuals they think support homosexuality or otherwise subvert what they believe is God’s law.”
Westboro Baptist protestors have often been met with counter-protests that are satirical and absurd. No counter-protests have been announced for FDHS, although plans have been made for other Lowcountry sites.
The Charleston Air Force Base, Wando, West Ashley and James Island Charter high schools, College of Charleston and Charleston’s Jewish Community Center are on tap for Westboro Baptist picketing from March 22-24, according to the church Web site. The Charleston Harbor Resort and Marina, near Patriots Point, is scheduled to be picketed all three days.
S.C. Code of Laws Section 16-17-420, “Disturbing schools” states: “It shall be unlawful: (1) For any person willfully or unnecessarily (a) to interfere with or to disturb in any way or in any place the students or teachers of any school or college in this State, (b) to loiter about such school or college premises or (c) to act in an obnoxious manner thereon; or (2) For any person to (a) enter upon any such school or college premises or (b) loiter around the premises, except on business, without the permission of the principal or president in charge.
“Any person violating any of the provisions of this section shall be guilty of a misdemeanor and, on conviction thereof, shall pay a fine of not less than one hundred dollars nor more than one thousand dollars or be imprisoned in the county jail for not less than thirty days nor more than ninety days.”