Making Sense of ‘God Hates Fags’ and ‘Thank God for 9/11’: A Thematic Analysis of Milbloggers' Responses to Reverend Fred Phelps and the Westboro Baptist Church

Abstract

Since June 2005, the Reverend Fred Phelps and the Westboro Baptist Church (WBC) have conducted protests at funerals of U.S. military personnel killed in the War on Terror. Investigating a webring of military blogs, we conduct an analysis of vernacular responses to the WBC's protests. Articulation theory informs our analysis as we characterize the ideological work performed in vernacular responses to the protests. Bloggers' responses demonstrate that the WBC exposes ideological tensions involving freedom of speech and religious expression, enactments of citizenship, injustice in the justice system, and disciplined military bodies out of control.

Desecration, Moral Boundaries, and the Movement of Law: The Case of Westboro Baptist Church

“…Shortly after WBC began targeting military funerals, tensions increased on "milblogs," forums maintained and used by members of the military and their supporters. Milbloggers typically downplayed Phelps' religious foundations and his core anti-gay message and instead attempted to define WBC politically in reference to the military (Brouwer and Hess 2007). Much like the politicians passing laws to restrict WBC, milbloggers viewed soldiers as an extension of the military; therefore, protesting at a soldier's funeral represented a cultural affront to the military itself and, in a broader sense, the nation.…”

“We Need Something Different”

“…Numerous church communications explain or defend their varied rebuke efforts as do media interviews. Supplementing church communications with in‐depth research, scholars have analyzed some aspects of public rebuke efforts in terms of desecration, cursing, and rhetoric (Britt 2010; Brouwer and Hess 2007; Usera and Tracy 2009).…”

Body Control

“…A colored body of any kind is now viewed as a threat to national order and a physical manifestation of the terrorist and criminal threats that make the nation vulnerable (Martin and Manalansan 2005). Therein, entrance into space as a queer transnational migrant of color or a domestic migrant of color, through social and media misinformation, is not only met with homophobia during a time where heteronormative narrative is reverted back to through religious rhetoric in the face of mortality (Becker 2002; Brouwer and Hess 2007; Cohler 2006) but also visibly awakened and amplified xenophobia and surveillance as well that becomes applicable to all bodies that transgress from whiteness (Boswell 2003; Martin and Manalansan 2005; Nguyen 2005; Poynting and Mason 2007; Puar 2007).…”