Negative Persuasion and the Westboro Community

In this course, we’ve spent a good deal of time talking about the positive effects of persuasion and how we can use them to benefit us. But what happens when persuasion is abused?

The recent tragedies at NIU not only shocked an entire community, but also sparked an enormous controversy that is dripping with rhetoric and unfortunate persuasion. As if the situation isn’t heinous enough, considering the amount of grief and shock that has deafened a college campus, a third party has chosen to involve themselves. The Westboro Baptist Church, a congregation of roughly 100 members located in Topeka, Kansas, consider themselves a fundamental religious organization. While its members identify themselves as Baptists, the church is an independent church not affiliated with any known Baptist conventions or associations, nor does any Baptist institution recognize the church as a Bible-believing fellowship. The church bases its work around their well-known slogan of “God Hates Fags,” and preaches against homosexuality and other “sins.” They are well known for their picketing, in which they visit funerals of homosexuals, AIDS victims, or other hate-crime related deaths to protest that the death of the individual was “sent from an angry God.” The members of the Westboro Baptist Church believe that events such as 9/11, the Virginia Tech shootings, and the spread of HIV/AIDS are directly sent from an angry God, and those people deserved to die.

Unfortunately their persuasion, though perverse and wrong in my opinion, is effective to those who are weak in mind and judgment. They play heavily on each of the pathos, ethos and logos of an audience. This congregation is incredibly passionate about their cause, and their goal is to persuade and “win over” they people they witness too. They do this by playing on the emotions regarding sin and persuade their audiences (whoever will listen) that unless they think and behave exactly the way they do, God will be angry with them. They play the emotion card so well that people stop thinking about logic, at least, in my opinion. Aristotle himself even said that “emotion trumps logic,” and I think he proves himself right when that phrase is applied to this situation. How else would people begin to believe that God sent AIDS has a punishment, or that the students of NIU deserved to die because God was angry with them? People who have let persuaders and cunning rhetoricians get the best of their emotions, and lost all senses of logical thinking.

This reason this aggravates me so much, beyond the blatant ignorance of this community, is that the Westboro Baptist Church traveled to St. Charles, Illinois on March 17th to protest the death of Ryanne Mace, a student from my high school who lost her life at NIU. I was shocked enough to read that one of my classmates was killed, let alone to research this “church” and see that they’d be standing outside her funeral, saying she deserved to die.

Everyone’s entitled to their own opinion, but I’d be surprised to come across someone who disagrees with me. Do you? Regardless of whether you think this church is “right” or “wrong,” what do you think of their rhetoric?