Anti-gay protesters fail to show up in Buffalo Grove

Members of the anti-gay Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka, Kan., did not show up at Buffalo Grove High School Saturday night, as their website suggested, but more than 100 counter protesters were ready for them.

The Westboro group threatened to protest a school performance of “The Laramie Project,” based on the 1998 torture and murder of Mathew Shepard, a gay student at the University of Wyoming.

Students, parents, and community residents from several suburbs and Chicago stood on the high school parkway at Arlington Heights and Dundee roads, and held their homemade signs up to passing cars. Several motorists honked in solidarity and the crowd cheered in return.

Steve Winston, a Buffalo Grove resident for 31 years, spoke for many in the crowd. He held the sign, “God loves everyone.”

“They are extremists,” he says. “They have a right to their opinions. I have a right to my opinion. If they stand here with their signs displaying their messages, I want to make sure there are people standing here with opposite views.”

“Who gives you the right to speak for God?” demanded one protester sign. “Equality for everyone,” said another. A small group of students chanted, “Two-four-six-eight only love can conquer hate.”

Through websites, blogs, Facebook, and Twitter, word spread that the Westboro group might taunt the Buffalo Grove school. Gay Straight Alliance clubs from Buffalo Grove and Hersey high schools, along with members of the Illinois Safe School Alliance at Maine South High School in Park Ridge, gathered their members.

Debbie Karbin, a Buffalo Grove High School alumna, remembers when she and a small group of fellow students started the Gay Straight Alliance at the school in 1999.

“With most clubs, if they got an adviser they could start a club. We had to have many meetings with the principal and a dean. Finally we got two faculty advisers and we got permission to start the club.”

Saturday's outpouring of support reminded Karbin of another, failed attempt to perform the play in 2002. “The theater director wanted to put on ‘The Laramie Project,' but some parents and community citizens did not want it at the school.”

This is a different year.

“The community has become more tolerant,” she says. “To see them speaking together against hatred and bigotry is a really galvanized experience. I'm very proud of our community right now.”