From last Saturday to Tuesday I staffed an academic symposium at a large downtown hotel (mostly I babysat laptops, projectors and such).

On Saturday AM, as I rode the escalator, I noticed a "Gay and Lesbian (something or other) Conference" on the hotel's conference board.

At about 10AM, I looked out the window and noticed a police sergeant standing on the sidewalk. A few minutes later, seven or eight people showed up, one of them carrying a stack of signs. Several of them pulled on brightly-colored T-shirts that said "God Hates Fags!", two of them wrapped themselves in large USA flags which they proceeded to tread on, and they all picked up one of the signs that either said "God Hates Fags!" or something more bizarre, more hateful, and/or more crude. One of them had a small bullhorn and, during a break, they attracted a fair amount of interest from conference participants, many of whom had come from overseas.

With my wireless laptop, I Googled a bit, and I was able to tell a gent from Sweden that the folks on the sidewalk were likely members of the W3ztb0r0 B4pt1zt Church (trying not to give them anymore Google time here!). These folks chanted until about 12 Noon, took a lunch break, and then returned to chant from 1PM until around 3PM.

In another (Walmart?) thread recently, I poked some fun at the notion of the mysterious, inscrutable god. The god that makes it hard to figure out what He/She/It wants us to do. Well, it seemed pretty clear that these WBC folks suffer no such tribulation. They seem to know *exactly* what their god wants them to do. Given how nasty those folks were, it occurred to me that I should be more sympathetic to folks -- politicians, say -- who are having a little more difficulty figuring out exactly what their deity wants them to do.

All that being said, as I looked out at this disagreeable group on the sidewalk, I asked myself:

- What makes their god less valid?

Why is their god not the one, true god? Whatever we think of their god's message, their god does not seem to have any problems with communication. The message could not be more clear.

So, I am prepared, for the sake of argument, to adopt a devil's advocate position: The god of WBC is not only not *less* valid, it is more valid than yours.

Eh?