If only God looked like Graham Norton

One of the biggest mysteries on this planet is how the entire congregation of the Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka, Kansas has avoided being bludgeoned to death. Their actions seem to be calculated to upset and outrage just about everyone on the planet who isn’t a Westboro Baptist. Perhaps it should come as no surprise that this rabble of virulently homophobic lunatics have trained their guns in Ireland.

Three months ago the Westboros launched a new website God Hates Ireland. The main target appears to be David Norris who, when elected to the Seanad Eireann in 1987, became Ireland’s first openly gay public figure Mr Norris was a prominent member of the Campaign for Homosexual Law Reform (an organisation that had both the current Irish president Mary McAleese and her predecessor Mary Robinson as legal advisors). Legal actions taken by the organisation finally bore fruit in 1993 when homosexuality was finally decriminalised. The website is full of the usual invective one would expect from them. Apparently “Ireland is a land of vile, feces-eaters and anus lickers and those who have pleasure in them - all of whom are abominations to God and headed for Hell.” There of course a tirade on paedophile priests

According to a Sunday Independent article the spur to set up the website was an invitation to Fred Phelps (the leader of the WBC) from University College Dublin’s Literary and History Society to speak at a debate on gay adoption. Apparently Phelps feared that if he came and launched into his usual tirades he would be arrested under the Prohibition of Incitement to Hatred Act (which is "a draconian, antichristic (sic) cup of Satan's slimy vomit, straight from the maw of hell") and that he was thus being set up by the UCD society. His daughter Shirley Phelps-Roper said he would come to Ireland only if pigs fly. "And," she added, "I mean really fly, not in a retouched photograph, or shot out of a catapult".

Graham Norton - Their worst nightmare?

This wooly minded pinko liberal just can’t get his head around what motivates the Westboros. What kick do they get out of picketing the funerals of servicemen and women or the victims of disasters such as the bridge disaster in Minnesota? I suppose it is just single minded fanaticism and the view that any publicity is good publicity. I suppose the best thing to do is ignore them (which defeats the object of this post. I know!) even if they make one want to greet them warmly on the head with a lump hammer.

It would be quite ironic if God turned out to be a Polari speaking Graham Norton lookalike. I would love to see the look on Fred Phelps’s ecaf when he rolls up at the pearly gates and God says unto him “Vada your bijou cartso, we’re all fantabulosa homy polones here”

Notes

Polari was a cant or secret language which seems to have orignally been used by fairground and show folk since the 17th century. It was used by gay men until the 1960s either as a way to discuss gay subjects without being under stood. Some gay men may have used it as a way of asserting their identity. It fell into diisuse after homosexuality was partiially decriminalised in Britain in the 1960s.

Graham Norton is a very camp Irish comedian and television presenter. He first came to notice in the UK playing the character of Father Noel Furlong in the sitcom Father Ted.