As Shirley Phelps Roper, mouthpiece for Westboro Baptist Church, swayed back and forth and sang anti-gay lyrics to Macklemore's "Same Love," Ridge Porter of Cranston stood on the other side of a temporary barrier on the lawn in front of Cranston City Hall this morning, trying to make eye contact with her.
Roper, adorned with signs proclaiming "USA'S DOOM," along with the church's other more infamous messages, was accompanied by three other members of the controversial church to protest the recently-passed gay marriage law in Rhode Island.
They stood inside a penned-in free speech zone behind a line of Cranston Police officers. And what they met was a crowd of about 100 who carried signs that said "Jesus Loves All" and "Cranston Against Hate" and made it abundantly clear that in Cranston this morning, hate was far outnumbered by love by at least 100 to 4.
"If you make eye contact with that person, thats when you really have a conversation with them," Porter said of his effort to reach into the soul of the Westboro protester. "They wear glasses so they don't have to make eye contact, so I looked at her right in the eye and she tended to move her head the other way."
Porter's sign said simply: Love does no harm to its neighbor, therefore LOVE is the fulfillment of the law.
"What they're looking for is attention - they're attention seekers," Porter said.
And it came with a cost.
"Half the [police force] is here, to protect them — from what?" Porter asked. "We're not going to hurt them."
Rows of police cars flanked Park Avenue during the protest, which alternated between peace rally and circus side show. A group of anti-Westboro protesters were dressed like pirates, singing "What do you do with a Wetboro Baptist," while the church members stood alone in their expansive free speech area, dwarfed by the opposing crowd.
"Clearly we were the majority here," said Jonah Delasanta, an Anti-Westboro protester who came up from Richmond with a group of his friends. He said he wasn't worried about giving the hate group unnecessary attention.
"They get so much negative attention that nobody really takes them seriously," Delasanta said. "If you read the Bible and that's what you get out of it, you're absolutely nuts."
Delasanta said the Bible mentions shrimp four times as often as the abomination of homosexuality.
"They're not reading their stuff," he said. "'Fags can't repent?' That's not a Bible quote. Matthew never said that. God loves all his children. If you actually read the Bible, if you actually have a clear head, you'll read that and you'll see that everybody can be forgiven. If you're straight, if you're gay, if you're the biggest sinner in the world, everybody can be forgiven."
The protest lasted for about 40 minutes before the church members packed up their belongings and slipped back into the Ford they had rented. Anti-Westboro protesters shouted at them as they slinked away.
Meanwhile, upstairs, the City Clerk's office had opened for business. And in walked two men who applied for a marriage license, the first in Cranston's history.
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