Chris Reeves reports from his home state on the travails of Westboro Baptist Church, which has the charming web address www.godhatesfags.com:
To say Pokemon Go is a hit is an understatement. In Topeka, Kansas, however, a small, virulently anti-LGBT Church is feeling a bit burned. Within days, they discovered their church was labeled as a “Pokemon Gym” by the geo-tagging app, and suddenly Westboro Baptist Church — associated with protesting funerals and demanding punishments for LGBT citizens — found themselves home base for the “Love Is Love” Gym. LoveIsLove Gym? Well, it’s what happens when a LGBT Supportive group, and our next door neighbor takes over your virtual space through a series of online Pokemon battles that went poorly for the organization (no kidding).
I am not familiar with the entire Pokémon phenomenon, but Wikipedia tells me I’ve been missing something:
Pokémon is the second-most successful and lucrative video game-based media franchise in the world, behind only Nintendo’s Mario franchise.[5]
And now it’s a weapon of satire against one of the most iconoclastic churches in the United States. I’ve never found WBC to be particularly understandable, but I suspect my temperament is far different from that of a WBC member. And this topic label from the WBC site caught my eye: Bible Verses About The Hatred Of God. Me? I prefer to think for myself, and I would hope God wouldn’t indulge in the easy hatred of things, but the hard hatred of concepts. If there is a God, he should hate injustice. And tying injustice to the treatment of the LGBT community makes it easy to make it a litmus test for God…
