Why All the Hate?

     It was a sunny and beautiful day of my senior year and high school was getting out early.  At firt thought, this sounds like a dream come true.  However, the buses and parking lots were being re-routed so that cars would not pass the front of the school.  Police cars were lining up near the entrance and an armed security force was nervously guarding the area.  Everyone knew what was happening and students, parents, and the community had been warned weeks in advance.  A "religious" group was coming to our school to express the freedom of speech.  This highly controversial group calls themselves the Westboro Baptist Church.  

     The people of the Westboro Baptist church have a very unique set of beliefs that they try to spread.  They travel the nation and target schools, military funerals, military bases and much more to try to evoke as much disruption as they can.  As the photo shown expresses, their ideas mainly propose that God hates.  They have numerous different signs that can often cause so much anger in witnessing individuals that violence occurs.  These hate protests and occurrences of violence are a radical example of how the freedom of religion has separated instead of united the people of society.  

     The Westboro Baptist Church is obviously an extreme example of religious hate but when thinking about it, society is a lot more separated because of religion than we think.  Each religion's viewpoints are often much different from each other, which in turn isolates members of each religion to their own groups.  In order to stop this separation people need to be more tolerant of other peoples' beliefs.  Society does not need to agree on the same beliefs but rather just accept the fact that everyone has their own viewpoints.  As a result, members of society will be more united and there will be fewer disturbances such as those that the people of the Westboro Baptist church cause.