Looks like Fred Phelps will be gracing my little neck of the woods this weekend…

The Westboro Baptist Church is coming to Baltimore. On Dec. 8 and 9 a handful of protesters from the Topeka, Kan., church will be outside the Baltimore School for the Arts on Cathedral Street in Mount Vernon to picket the school’s production of the play The Laramie Project.

The church is infamous for its anti-gay rhetoric (it operates a web site called www.godhatesfags.com) and it protests at the funerals of military personnel killed in Iraq. According to the church’s attorney, Shirley Phelps-Roper, Westboro Baptist protests the funerals because they want people to make the connection that the war "is where God is dealing with this nation for their rebellion against him." Such rebellion, she says, includes putting on productions of The Laramie Project, which is based on the murder of Matthew Shepard, a Wyoming man who was killed in 1998 for being gay. Phelps-Roper says of the play: "It’s got only one goal, and that’s to promote a perverse manner of life."

One of the most poignant moments in the play is the scene where the Phelps clan is busy waving their obscenity laced signs at the townspeople in front of the courthouse where Matthew Shepard’s murderers were being tried, and Romaine Patterson and about a dozen of her friends, dressed as angels with huge wings, step between Phelps and the townspeople, and turn their backs on the Phelps’, their wings blocking Phelps signs from view.  So I’m sure The Laramie Project holds a special place on Fred’s little shit list.