perfidy

Via Andrew Sullivan, a great story about what happened in Sand Springs, Oklahoma when the execrable Fred Phelps came to visit. The story is a follow-on to a series the Washington Post ran a few weeks ago on being gay in America that featured an extended piece on Sand Springs resident Michael Shackleford. Shackleford is a teenager and high school student who recently came out of the closet, and the Post described Michael's efforts to cope with being out in a small, conservative, and conservatively religious town, as well as his mother's struggle with her own feelings against homosexuality.

As a result of the articles on Shackleford, Phelps and his crew of troglodytes decided to come to Sand Springs to protest the relative mildness of the town's feelings toward gays as revealed in the Post series-- the homophobia many residents do exhibit is especially mild compared to Phelps' plan to kill all gays for God. What happened next is a testament to the complexity of our nation's culture and people and a refutation of the red/blue state poison being sold to us daily.