Fred Phelps, the head of the Westboro Baptist Church, died earlier this week.

On Friday, the Westboro Baptist Church (WBC) went to protest a Lorde concert in Kansas City.

Is Lorde a devoted supporter of gay rights? I don’t know. Evidently they think so.

They went to protest with their usual hateful message that “gays are destroying America and that God is a hateful and angry being.”

And what they ran into was amazing.

These days, the WBC publicizes where they’re going to be. Part of their message is that they are trying to get attention. So, in a lot of areas, counter-protests appear. People will try to physically block them or hold up pro-equality signs. There was a counter-protest in Kansas City.

And that protest was to counter hatred with love.

It would have been so easy to protest his funeral or piss on his grave. Or do all sorts of other awful things to someone who tried so hard to spread hate.

Instead, these counter-protesters held up a sign that said Sorry For Your Loss.

It’s one of the most compassionate things I’ve ever seen.

Showing compassion to those that we feel don’t deserve it is hard. But we should do it anyway. It can be so easy to let our hate carry us away.

Becoming hateful—clinging to our hate—doesn’t help anyone. Hatred only hurts. It never helps.

 

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Editor: Jenna Penielle Lyons

Photo: Screenshot courtesy of the author