The
whole thing was a fiasco. The primary goal the school had was to make
sure no one did anything stupid. The WBC are all smart, and several have
gone to law school, so anything that a student did would be held
against them. In fact, how the WBC gets a ton of it’s funding is through
lawsuits. My school repeatedly put out notices that this would be a
peaceful counter-protest and that any students who acted out would be
suspended. Our GSA contacted the Human Rights Campaign, the main group
fighting homophobic legislation, and the HRC gave us over five thousand
dollars of free merchandise to sell to raise funds in the coming week
before the protest. Our GSA set up a table in the lunchroom and sold
shirts and bracelets every period, every day. Practically every single
student in the entire school had some form of acceptance printed on
their persons.
The
WBC had contacted the local police department prior to their arrival,
and the Clayton PD had agreed to set up a barricade on the school side,
and a two hundred foot “neutral zone” in between us, and the ten by ten
space that was allotted for the WBC. It was a bitterly cold day, and
there was so much of a traffic backup that I walked to school that day,
two hours early so I could catch the protest that was scheduled to be
before school, so that students could still focus on academia afterwards
(as if that would ever happen anyway). When I arrived, the amount of
news vans on the street was ridiculous. Every conceivable radio and TV
station from the state (and in some cases, bi-state area) had shown up
to cover the protest and counter-protest. My friend and president of the
GSA had set up a very large donation collection area, where people
would donate to fund local pro-LGBT organizations. To paraphrase on the
press release she gave the news stations, the WBC’s hate would bite them
in their own asses.
When
the WBC finally arrived, there were over 700 people massed into our
zone (almost 80% of the student body!). Most people came to show their
support, and some people made signs. The beautiful thing was, that none
of these signs were negative, all were messages of love, and of
tolerance. We had hundreds of people from other schools and from around
the metropolitan area come and show their support for our school, our
GSA, and our message of tolerance and acceptance. By the end of the day
when the WBC finally left, we had raised a great sum of money to support
those being oppressed by people like the WBC. I personally think that
it was a wonderful day that really brought our school together in a way
that I’d never seen in my four years there.
