Keep Your Rosaries Off My Ovaries

There are things that disgust us all. I can’t stand blatant proselytizing, blind hatred, racism, or religious intolerance. Other people can’t stand homosexuality, illegal immigrants, or abortion. Some of you reading may even be disgusted by me, and that’s okay. But I have never found something that people from every walk of life can agree on hating more than the Westboro Baptist Church and their infamous protests.

Earlier in the year, the WBC decided to pay a visit to my area for some unknown reason. They were protesting at high schools for no apparent reason and showing up at synagogues, too. I guess being young or Jewish is enough of a reason to be hated in their eyes. I don’t even attempt to understand their logic anymore, as I have come to reason that there is no “logic” to it. So, being the socially concerned woman that I am, I grabbed a friend and we took to the streets, hitting up the counter protests for each location they had chosen.

Now, I don’t need to be told that counter protesting is “feeding the trolls,” and that all they want is attention. This has absolutely nothing to do with them or what they want. I know, though, that if I were a young girl at that school, or if I were worshipping in that synagogue, I would feel so much better knowing that there were people outside defending and supporting me.

I believe that the most powerful thing I have witnessed firsthand was a wall of signs spreading messages of love that blocked the view of the WBC and their hate filled words for two young Jewish men who stood outside their temple. I remember just welling up with happiness seeing the members of the WBC outnumbered by about 20:1. We were people from every conceivable background, be it racial, socioeconomic, age, sexual orientation, or religious.

Unexpectedly, the protestors decided to leave the synagogue and move to the abortion clinic where I work. This wasn’t part of the schedule; they must have noticed the clinic on the drive over. I was so worried, knowing inside that a good portion of the counter protestors were anti-choice, and I was scared to see the numbers drop outside the clinic. But something amazing happened; not only did everyone follow the WBC and continue spreading words of love and acceptance, but random people off the streets joined in. They didn’t carry signs, and they seemed generally unaware that any of this was happening beforehand, but they stood in line with us. Shoulder to shoulder, we held up signs, sang songs to drown the WBC out, held hands, and stood fast in solidarity.

We put aside our differences to stand together against hate, and that memory is sometimes what keeps me going.

As you may have noticed, almost all the comments I got on my first post were “hate” comments.  I completely respect and encourage you to have your own opinions and think for yourself; I think that’s part of what makes this world great.  At first I wasn’t sure if I was going to let the hateful, trolling comments through.  I didn’t want to stifle anyone’s right to express themselves, nor did I want to appear to be only letting in the comments that were agreeing with my point of view.  After all, I’m an equal-opportunity replier.  You can love me, you can hate me, and I’d love to hear your point of view.  But as a friend told me, recently “you have to think of the signal to noise ratio.”  He’s completely right, and I agree with his comment of “let in the signal, but block out the noise.”

So yes, I’m going to keep moderating the comments.  I will always let through intelligent comments, regardless from which side of the issue they come.  I will not let in unintelligent (“hurr baby killer”) comments for a few reasons.  These don’t hurt my feelings.  I’ve heard them all and probably worse.  I’m a big girl, and I can take some name calling.  But as I said before, all that does is add to the noise.  Also, if there are any women who have gone through an abortion who end up reading this site, I don’t want these comments to trigger any bad emotions for them, after having gone through what may have been an incredibly traumatizing incident.

I will be retroactively deleting the noise.  I hope you can understand my reasoning.

Until next time,
Eve