Students protest anti-gay activists

NEW BRITAIN — Students from New Britain High School started their day earlier than usual Wednesday as they engaged in an unplanned class on the constitution, equal rights and free speech.

About 40 students began gathering about a block south of Mill Street and South Main Street at 6:50 a.m. as a small contingent of out-of-town anti-gay protesters arrived.

Joseph Ellzey, a 16-year-old sophomore, said he was shocked to see the group so near the school.

“What they’re doing is an insult and disgusting,” he said, as schoolmates cheered him on. “People have the right to say things, but this is just hate.”

The anti-gay group, members of the Westboro Baptist Church of Topeka, Kan., is well-known for its virulent attacks on homosexuals, the U.S. Supreme Court and, with the recent codification in the Legislature on a gay marriage law, the state of Connecticut.
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Lawsuit over gay-marriage speech at LA City College spurs reactions

Protesters back the student who claims his professor reacted badly to his religion-related stance against same-sex unions; a gay unity club forms; a New York man gets misdirected death threats.

By Gale Holland
March 3, 2009

Ruben Rivera was dropping off papers to charter a new gay unity club at Los Angeles City College one recent day when he spotted half a dozen middle-aged people milling around the campus quad.

“God Hates Gays,” their signs read. Memories came flooding back of fleeing New Jersey after his mother discovered his sexual orientation and threw him out of the family.

“I was almost transported to my adolescence in Vineland, N.J., feeling less than, feeling unworthy, feeling ashamed,” said Rivera, 36, of Los Feliz.

The protesters appeared in support of Jonathan Lopez, a Christian student who has sued the Los Angeles Community College District, alleging that an instructor kept him from finishing a classroom speech about his religious beliefs and opposition to same-sex unions. Lopez has said he was discriminated against because of his religious views.
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Lawsuit over gay-marriage speech at LA City College spurs reactions

Los Angeles Times

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Planned anti-gay demo falls flat

A threatened mass protest by an anti-gay US church failed to materialise when only one demonstrator turned up.

Fred Phelps and his daughter Shirley Phelps-Roper from the Westboro Baptist Church were banned from entering the UK to protest against a play in Hampshire.

They had urged a picket of Queen Mary’s College in Basingstoke over the staging of The Laramie Project, a play about a man killed for being gay.

But only one protester arrived and was heckled away by counter-demonstrators.

Play supporter Blake West was among about 50 students who protested against Westboro church outside the college on Friday.

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