ADL Alerts LA Jewish Institutions about Church Group Protests

Date: October 19, 2009

The Westboro Baptist Church (WBC), a small virulently homophobic, anti-Semitic hate group based in Topeka, Kansas, that regularly stages protests around the country, returned to Los Angeles October 16-19 to protest at local synagogues, Jewish day schools and other Jewish and non-Jewish sites. The group pickets institutions and individuals they beleive support homosexuality or otherwise subvert what they believe is God's law.  Since April, the group has focused its efforts on dozens of Jewish institutions around the country. 

ADL reached out in advance to all Los Angeles area targeted institutions with background information and suggestions how to respond to WBC's protests.  Advice includes not to engage members of the group or to encourage publicity about the group.

WBC has been sending volumes of faxes and emails announcing planned protests, with anti-Semitic and anti-gay messages, to various Los Angeles area Jewish institutions and individuals.  Previously, the Israeli Consulate in Los Angeles and the ADL Pacific Southwest Region office have been targets of WBC's protests, with a small contingent of group members holding up various signs including those charging Jews with the act of deicide.

In addition to the Jewish community, targets include schools the group deems to be accepting of homosexuality; other Christian denominations that the WBC feels are heretical; and funerals for American soldiers killed in Iraq and Afghanistan, praising these deaths as the judgments of a just God.