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Westboro Baptist Church to picket Gaymercon
Thu, 16th Aug 2012
FYI, this story is more than a year old

The infamous Westboro Baptist Church will picket Gaymercon, a tech convention focused on LBGT geek culture.

Known for its extremist anti-gay views, the Westboro Baptist Church has picketed everything from appliance stores to funerals; already attracting massive resistance and rage from online communities such as reddit.com and gaming forums.

Gaymercon is currently scheduled to take place in August 2013 in San Francisco and is designed to be the world’s first all-inclusive gaming convention – irrespective of gender, race and sexual orientation.

According to the Gaymercon website: "We want all genders, races, and sexual identities including our straight friends and allies to come together and have a gay, geeky good time.”

The event has received its funding through a successful Kickstarter project, where it received half of its target $25,000 within 24 hours. Since its launch it has raised more than $50,000.

From the least biased point of view the event would be described as harmless; a more biased look at it would dub it noble.

But the reaction from the Westboro Baptists is extremely different, with Rebekah Phelps Roper, niece of church founder Fred Phelps, tweeting her glee at the chance for something to picket.

“What we’ve all been longing for: a fag-focused gaming convention! #MustPicket."

The group has targeted gamers in the past, making an appearance at Comic-Con this year in San Diego.

They tend to target anything they believe is linked to the “world’s acceptance of the homosexual agenda”, including the funerals of children and any event they deem to be promoting of homosexuality.

To take a look at the video click here, with a warning that it is a truly offensive post hence why it has not made our website.

What do you think? Give us your opinions below – what are they even thinking?