The Westboro Baptist Church, an American unaffiliated Baptist church known for its extreme ideologies, especially those against gay people, sent out a news release yesterday notifying the public of their upcoming protest at Apple headquarters in Cupertino, CA. Apple has been a proud supporter of the LGBT community over the last few years, with 5,000 employees showing up for the Pride Parade in San Francisco last month. According to Westboro, Apple is an evil corporation that was only founded so the church can use its technologies to spread their beliefs.
But Apple isn't the only corporation being targeted by Westboro. On August 12th, in addition to picketing Apple, the church will be outside Facebook in Menlo Park, GooglePlex in Mountain View, Skype in Palo Alto, YouTube in San Bruno, and Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram, and Reddit in San Francisco. The irony of the protests is that, without these various social media outlets, WBC would have no platform for their message. In fact, before protesting Reddit, WBC is holding a Reddit AMA (ask me anything), using the site to "preach righteousness and spread the gospel."
Another bit of irony--the upcoming Inaugural GLAAD Gala in September will be celebrating national and Bay Area leaders advancing LGBT equality through the media... and will also be happening in San Francisco. The gala, nationally presented by Ketel One Vodka, Wells Fargo, and Hilton Worldwide and locally by Southwest Airlines, will be held on September 13, 2014 at the Hilton San Francisco Union Square and will also fund GLAAD's national advocacy work to rewrite the script for LGBT equality. In light of all the protests and vile messages from the WBC, it seems fitting that GLAAD will continue to promote equality in the very same location.