Spokane Pride Parade 2016.

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My family and I had the honor of attending the 2016 Pride Parade in downtown Spokane, Washington, today. I was proud that my fellow Spokanites showed up in droves to show support for our LGBT brothers and sisters. Vastly outnumbered were the handful of lunatics fenced off under police protection, who held up hateful signs and screamed how not only gays, lesbians, and transsexuals were going to hell, but indeed all of Spokane, and even all of Washington state! For the most part, those of us in the crowd watching the parade responded to those hateful loons with derisive laughter, especially when they counted off who all was going to hell, they included masturbators (let he or she with a free hand cast the first stone ). As vehicles in the parade passed by the shouting cretins, the cars beeped their horns, and the fire engine turned on their siren, in order to drowned them out. I like to think the forces of tolerance won out. Marching in the parade was my friend, who is also my daughter's Godfather, who was accompanying his Bear group, wearing an LGBT flag as a cape.

I wonder if you just had a close encounter with Westboro Baptist Church, the infamous "God Hates F@gs" cult. Fred Phelps has left Earth to roast permanently in Hell, but his cultists don't seem to have lost any steam-usually cults based around a charismatic leader dissolve once the leader dies or is discredited (such as when he predicts The End for a specific date).

No, these were just less famous Westboro wannabes. But they were cut from the same cloth: using legalistic Christian fundamentalism to justify their hate, and accomplishing nothing, save for getting the public's ridicule.
My friend (who is also my daughter's Godfather) had told me about the time the Westboro lunatics had showed up in Spokane a few years ago, only to be vastly outnumbered by counter protesters, which joined drag queens together with retired veterans in common cause.