The Westboro Baptist Church has announced plans to picket Buffalo Grove High School’s performance of The Laramie Project play. The Laramie Project portrays the circumstances and death of Matthew Shepherd — a gay University of Wyoming college student tortured and murdered near Laramie, Wyoming in 1998 — drawing on hundreds of interviews of inhabitants in the town of Laramie. Matthew Shepherd was attacked on the night of October 6–7, 1998 and died at Poudre Valley Hospital in Fort Collins, Colorado, on October 12, 1998 from severe head trauma.
The Westboro Baptist Church of Topeka, Kansas issued a press release October 14 announcing plans to picket prior to the play’s opening curtain at 7:30 p.m. The Westboro Baptist Church (WBC) is an independent Baptist church and hate group led by Fred Phelps, founder.
The group is known for protests against gays, military soldiers, Jews and other groups the church’s leader believes have been condemned by an angry God. Church members are known for picketing U.S. soldiers’ funerals, whose deaths — the church members say — are evidence of God’s wrath against a sinful, disobedient nation.
Extra police patrols are expected in the area of Buffalo Grove High School by Buffalo Grove police officers. Presumably, Arlington Heights police will have an extra awareness at the area because Buffalo Grove High School is at the major intersection of Arlington Heights Road and Dundee Road, which borders Arlington Heights.
The last time WBC planned a protest in the area in Arlington Heights, they did not show. A protest group from the Westboro Baptist Church had planned to demonstrate at the funeral of U.S. Army soldier Will Newgard at St. James Church on Arlington Heights Road on January 15, 2007, but winter weather grounded their flight and prevented their arrival at O’Hare International Airport in time for the funeral. Will Newgard was killed by a roadside bomb in Baghdad, Iraq on December 29, 2006.
they didnt show up :(