Westboro Baptist "Church" is more a business plan/scam than a church. They go around being as offensive as they possibly can be, particularly at military funerals. Their objective is to piss someone off enough to do something like shove one of them, then sue for damages. Many of them are lawyers, from one extended family in Kansas. It's not possible to get overly cynical about them; nobody likes them. They've reportedly made a good living at it, too, including from taxpayers on the grounds of inadequate police protection. They defended their right to bedevil funerals of fallen soldiers all the way to the Supreme Court and won.
Lately they've branched out to concerts and other events. Perhaps it's because veterans and other supporters have become very well organized to counter their unwelcome toxic incursions. I witnessed how impressively Nashville sent them packing from a June 2011 military funeral. Perhaps they hope to get actionable reactions from less well informed concert-goers. Targets have included country diva Carrie Underwood, crooner Michael Bublé, with Mumford & Sons upcoming.
Vince Gill and wife Amy Grant
Twelve Days of Christmas Tour, 2011
Last weekend, Country Music Hall of Famer
Vince Gill had his turn. Gill is married to
Amy Grant, pioneer of the Christian pop music genre. It is the second marriage for each of them, after first marriages which ended in divorce. In the "logic" of WBC, that makes Vince an adulterer, and Amy his "whore." Vince is normally an easygoing kinda guy, with more than a little experience handling hecklers. But he doesn't much like it when anyone disses his wife, whom
comedian Lewis Black has described as "made of pure cream" in an extended shtick about following them onstage at a charity event.
The story of Vince striding up the aisle of the venue as fans were filing in to their seats, out through the lobby and on to the sidewalk to "see what hate looks like" has gone viral, with well over 400k hits on the WBC video in less than 48 hours since it was posted on YouTube. (Up to 550k at midnight.) Today, coverage reached mainstream outlets like CNN and USA Today.
Vince has declined public comment, but he's about the only one who's not had something to say in the aftermath of the R-rated faceoff. He did refer to WBC several times during Sunday night's concert: calling them "assholes", musing that maybe a few Tomahawk missiles could be re-directed from Syria, riffing that they should be offered some leftover Jim Jones' KoolAid. Like that. Putting it in perspective, he has said he's glad to have them outside his shows if it means sparing a grieving family burying a young soldier killed in the line of duty from their hateful drivel.
Below the squiggle, I've aggregated coverage and comments from assorted sources.
The 55-second video was quickly tweeted out to a variety of entertainment and news outlets, as well as to numerous other country music performers. It was picked up by a few outlets on Monday. Video hits topped 10k. Today, it "went viral."
Amongst the first reactions were the
comments on the video itself, of which there are currently over 700. The following are typical of the thousands of comments scattered around the WWW about this incident:
- Louis Long: Thats great. I wish more people would stand out and show these Westboro weirdos for what they are. A cult/hate group! They are not a CHURCH. Especially not a BAPTIST group! We believe in kindness, love, forgiveness, and they believe in nothing but hate
- Francine Mericle They are the voice of hate personified ! If you see peace in a message like this you need your head examined. Go get them Vince, and next time call me and ill help too!!!
- fuzzy4450 The Westboro Baptist Church? WTF? Who gives a sh!t what they think. Divorce plus Remarriage = Adultry? LMFAO! What a bunch of fools! Are these the same idiots that tell kids they'll go blind if they masterbate? Go Crawl back under your rocks AZZHOLES!
- CHOZENProductions Damn Vince - my man crush is getting out of control! Master of the Telecaster - calling out these punks - defending your woman. Gracefully done.
- Chris Thompson "...the C team" comment alone is making me buy one of his albums
- A lot of new fans, a few "Vince for President!" and a dose of meta:God hates video that's not shot in landscape
Vince Gill
Those are the typical reactions. Now for a few of the more fun ones. Gawker had had a more sensational headline than most:
Vince Gill Calls Westboro Baptist Church Protestor “Big Dipshit”
San Jose Mercury News
Gill then told a Bible-citing protester that Jesus Christ "said a lot of stuff about forgiveness, about grace. You guys don't have any of that." After being told by another Westboro member "I don't care what you think" Gill shot back, "You don't? Then why are you out here?"
That's a good point -- some of those country singers are pretty quick.
Nashville Scene
It's become common knowledge that the bigots of Fred Phelps-led Kansas-based congregation Westboro Baptist Church are just about the biggest trolls under the sun. ... I'm sorry to give these guys more press, but I'm proud to call Vince Gill a fellow Nashvillian.
Comments from
the Tennessean:
- I know from personal experience that Vince Gill is one of the nicest people you could ever hope to meet. So if someone makes him mad enough to cuss them out, you know they've messed up!! Those Westboro nitwits tried protesting at a friend of mine's solder son's funeral a couple years ago, but the few Westboro people who did show up were outnumbered I'll bet 100 to 1! God doesn't hate anyone. Only bigots and terrorists do!
- A very wise man once said - "don't judge me because I sin differently than you."
- Always admired Vince Gill as a musician. He had me at "Little Liza Jane". But as good as his guitar pickin' and singin' is, THIS is even better. Nice to see when one of your guitar heroes does something heroic WITHOUT his guitar. That's tellin' 'em, Vince!
- They're probably paid actors for the government to stir shit up.
A
comment on Yahoo!:
who gives a flip about anyone in that joke of a church.. they would protest you if you didnt poo right in a toilet according to their standards..
Vince Gill and Keb Mo at a sound check for Eric Clpton's Crossroads Guitar Festival benefit concert (Chicago, 2010)
A.V. Club:
In the greatest video pairing him with Christians since that time he seduced Amy Grant, country music star Vince Gill recently confronted a group of Westboro Baptist Church protestors, using his beautiful, folksy tenor to call them dipshits. As per usual, the group was out trolling for the exact sort of attention that neither Gill nor we could resist giving them, yes, we are aware of that, protesting the singer’s concert in Kansas City on Sunday because of the fact that Gill divorced his wife and married Grant in 2000, thereby sullying the institution of marriage and whatever lingering aura of holiness was left in Grant’s Christian pop after “Baby, Baby.” A YouTube user (whose own unholiness involves not knowing how to film in landscape mode) uploaded the video of Gill confronting them. It is hilarious.
...
The Westboro Church has since responded by celebrating Gill for making its “divorce + remarriage = adultery” quote "go viral" (a quote it attributes to Jesus, as it does so many of its idiotic assertions), before reminding everyone that “9/11 was a gift from God,” because that’s what it does.
starcasm,com: Here’s Vince with a serious amount of the grace he mentioned above performing his song “Go Rest High On That Mountain,” live at the Grand Ole Opry.
Vince wrote "Go Rest High on that Mountain" in memory of his own brother, who never recovered fully from a very serious car crash. He's sung it at
a lot of funerals, including the recent televised memorial for George Jones, when
he broke down in tears.
Some of the commentary gets colorful in its own right:
If Vince is going to hell then I am going to the place people go when they get kicked out of hell. Is there such a place? Maybe it is the front pew at the Westboro Baptist Church.
queerty.com:
If there’s anything positive to say about the Westboro Baptist Church folks…oh, who are we kidding? There’s nothing positive to say about them, but they are certainly equal opportunity bigots when it comes to harassing entertainers.
Amy Grant likes to clear her mind before shows by playing ping pong, here with a roadie.
Amy Grant's fan base has long had a gay component. Earlier this year she gave her first-ever interview to a
gay publication:
Weren't you invited to perform at the wedding of one of your gay fans but couldn't due to your schedule?
I was invited. I was honored to be invited. I have to tell you: Anytime somebody asks me to perform at a wedding, I say, "I do not have a good track record." (Laughs) A lot of the weddings I've performed at, the marriages have ended poorly.
later in the interview:
When you don't understand something, you can either default to judgment or you can default to compassion. Those take you down completely different roads.
Ironically, the WBC is, in the end, a unifying force. People who normally don't get along at all put aside their differences in opposition to them. Sometimes they inspire people to a little self-reflection on their own prejudices:
I don't want to be like THEM!
Note: I wasn't going to post on this topic at all. Who wants to call attention to those WBC dolts? But that horse is already out of the barn. Just while writing this diary, hits on that YT have gone up from about 400k to nearly 470k. I guess the story's not fading away quite so fast as I thought it might. So, this is my take on it.