Just by threatening to show up in Charlottesville to put on their tired “God Hates Fags” routine, the Topeka, Kansas-based Westboro Baptist Church spurred hundreds of students to protest the protesters on November 14. Westboro had posted on its website that the church, led by Fred Phelps, would come protest UVA’s performance of The Laramie Project, a play about the 1998 murder of Matthew Shepard in Laramie, Wyoming. The church never showed, but it gave University students a good excuse to come together on a Friday evening.
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