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Members of Westboro Baptist Church from Topeka, Kansas, plan to protest at Owasso Public Schools on March 6, 2024 in response to the death of a self-described nonbinary individual[1] (see endnote for definition) one day following an incident at Owasso Public Schools on February 7, 2024. The Westboro protest is not about the unfortunate death of an Owasso Public School student, the Owasso Public School student body, the City of Owasso, and most certainly does present the true message about homosexuality as found in the Bible. What the protest is about is (1) publicity for a tiny sect of misguided false teachers, and (2) a massive public relations campaign to gain sympathy and support for the LGBTQ+ agenda and its followers.
What is the Westboro Baptist Church and what do their followers they believe?
The Westboro Baptist Church (WBC) is an American, unaffiliated Primitive Baptist church in Topeka, Kansas, that was founded in 1955 by pastor Fred Phelps. It is widely considered a hate group, and is known for its public protests against homosexuals and for its usage of the slogans such as “God hates fags” and “Thank God for dead soldiers.” It also engages in hate speech against atheists, Jews, Muslims, transgender people, and other Christian denominations…WBC has been protesting against homosexuality since 1989. Within a few years, the group expanded to protesting across the country. They often protest at public and private events, including funerals, sports games, and concerts…In 2016, Forbes stated WBC had about 70 members…The group is known to deface the American flag or fly it upside down while protesting. It also draws counter-protests. The group primarily consists of members of Phelps’s extended family, although many of its members have either left and/or been excommunicated.[2]
WBC is a cult that has clothed itself in a distorted form of Christianity and therefore is not Christian but a cult. Although WMC members vigorously teach and preach the five points of Calvinist doctrine, they twist or distort the true meaning of the Scripture such that it bears little resemblance to the doctrine of the vast majority of Baptist churches or other churches that adhere to five-point Calvinism.[3]
Although the message of WBC is almost universally repugnant, the vast majority of Americans are substantially ignorant of what the Bible and Christianity actually teaches about homosexuality and how to engage its practitioners. They condemn the WBC’s message but do not realize that their message is an absurd and nonsensical distortion of the Bible and the meaning of Christianity. Based on WBC’s miniscule size, we can unequivocally know that the WBC protests have been and remain one of Satan’s greatest successes in legitimizing the homosexual lifestyle and the LGBTQ+ agenda in the minds of Americans over the last thirty-five years since WBC began protesting homosexuality in 1989.
Satan’s success has occurred in two ways:
(1) Because most Americans (including many Christians) are ignorant or blind to WMC’s perversion of Scripture and the precepts of Christianity, their knee-jerk reaction is to paint Christianity as morally evil and/or the Bible as irrelevant when it comes to the moral condemnation of the practice of homosexuality and its many branches.
(2) Satan is also successful in using WBC’s message to silence a large number of American pastors and their congregants (including large numbers of evangelical churches) with regard to speaking the truth about the sin and consequences of homosexuality for fear of being tarred with the same brush as used to condemn the WMC and their followers. The consequences of this silence have been disastrous for America and its culture for over a half-century.
Since 2013 when President Obama and Vice President Biden openly and forcefully endorsed same–sex marriage, the legitimization of homosexuality and transgenderism has come to dominate every facet of American life: government, politics, military, education, arts and entertainment, media, education, business and economics, and the family. Not one facet has escaped the draconian force of this evil because the American evangelical church ceded its moral authority through its silence. This was predicted in the very first article posted on culturewarrior.net on March 6, 2013.[4]
To mark the 10th Anniversary of this website, an Culture Warrior article was posted on March 4, 2023, that described the astounding success of the LGBTQ+ agenda through the infiltration and corruption of every sphere of American life as noted above.[5] This article reveals how the initial 2013 Trojan horse of equality in the battle for cultural acceptance of gay marriage was just the beginning of the homosexual agenda’s efforts to dramatically undermined America’s moral foundations informed by the Bible and the founders’ Judeo-Christian worldview.
Events leading up to the March 6th protest by Westboro Baptist Church
The events preceding the death of Nex Benedict (born Dagny Ellis Benedict) is just a microcosm of the culture wars swirling in American in 2024. What is known at this time is that a 16-year old girl by the name of Nex Benedict, who identified as nonbinary, was involved in an altercation with three other girls in a restroom at Owasso High School. The timeline of events at Owasso High School and thereafter is found on the Owasso Police Departments website.[6]
Investigation Update 02-21-2024:
Since February 7th, 2024, the Owasso Police Department has been actively involved in an investigation into a physical altercation that occurred at the Owasso High School and Owasso Public Schools has been cooperative throughout the investigation. The students involved in the incident were all juveniles and juvenile files are confidential and inaccessible to the public in most circumstances.From reports, records, and statements of witnesses, it appears that:
• On February 7, 2024, a physical altercation occurred in a restroom at the Owasso High School West Campus.
• The physical altercation was broken up by other students who were present in the restroom and a school staff member who was supervising outside of the restroom.
• All students involved in the altercation walked under their own power to the assistant principal’s office and nurse’s office.
• School administrators began taking statements from the students present in the restroom and began contacting parents/guardians of the students involved in the physical altercation.
• Each of the students involved in the altercation was given a health assessment by a registered nurse at the school and it was determined that ambulance service was not required.
• While it was determined that ambulance service was not required, the school nurse recommended that Nex Benedict visit a medical facility for further examination.
• On the afternoon of February 7, 2024, an Owasso School Resource Officer was assigned to respond to Bailey Medical Center where Nex Benedict was being examined. The School Resource Officer interviewed Nex and their parent concerning the altercation at the Owasso High School.
• The following morning, the School Resource Officer followed up with the parent.
• On the afternoon of February 8, 2024, Owasso Fire Department medics were dispatched to a medical emergency involving Nex Benedict, who was transported to the St. Francis Pediatric Emergency Room where they later died.
• While the investigation continues into the altercation, preliminary information from the medical examiner’s office is that a complete autopsy was performed and indicated that the decedent did not die as a result of trauma. At this time, any further comments on the cause of death are currently pending until toxicology results and other ancillary testing results are received. The official autopsy report will be available at a later date. The invesigtion is ongoing.
A 21-minute video from the body camera footage from School Resource Officer Caleb Thompson captured a critical conversation in the emergency room between Thompson, Nex, and Sue Benedict, the teen’s grandmother and adoptive mother. This video is available on the internet on YouTube.[7]
The essence of the video and police report is that three girls in a girls’ restroom at Owasso High School were making derogatory remarks about how other girls in their presence were dressed. One of the other girls (Nex Benedict) threw water from a container on at least one of the girls who had made derogatory remarks. An altercation began between the three girls and Nex whose friends joined the fight. Nex stated that she threw one of the girls from the opposing group into a towel dispenser (According to another report, the girl was thrown by Nex with such force that the towel dispenser was broken open and the door hung by one hinge). Nex states that she was thrown to the floor and they “were beating the sh*t out of me.” The above police report shows that the school’s registered nurse performed a health assessment of all participants after the altercation, and it was determined that ambulance service was not required. However, the nurse recommended that Nex Benedict visit a medical facility for further examination.
As noted in the above police report, preliminary information from the medical examiner’s office indicated that a complete autopsy was performed and indicated that the decedent did not die as a result of trauma. The police will make no other comments on the cause of death pending receipt of the results of a toxicology report and other ancillary testing. It should be noted that forensic toxicology testing is performed after a person’s death and is known as postmortem drug testing to identify and quantify potential toxins, which include prescription medications and drugs of abuse and interpretations of the findings.
Regardless of the cause, the death of Nex Benedict is a tragedy as is the death of all young people at such an early age. Unfortunately, the scheduled protests and counter-protests on Wednesday, March 6, will continue to poison the civil discourse in America and advance the agendas of both Westboro Baptist Church and the LBGTQ+ movement and its supporters.
We shall take another look at these issues in Part II following Wednesday’s protests and counter-protests.
Larry G. Johnson
Sources:
[1] Nonbinary gender, Britannica, https://www.britannica.com/topic/nonbinary-gender (accessed 3-3-2024). “A nonbinary gender identity is adopted by individuals who feel that they do not fit into the traditional male/female gender binary. In the 21st century, the gender binary is increasingly considered to be a social construct that reinforces gender roles and stereotypes, a tendency that harms even those who are cisgender (that is, identify with the gender assigned at their birth). Those who identify as nonbinary may not feel that they are a man or a woman… Nonbinary is an umbrella term under which many labels fall: bigender and pangender individuals may identify with both or all genders at once, while genderfluid or genderflux individuals may feel that their gender identity fluctuates over time…Those who identify as nonbinary generally consider themselves a part of the LGBTQ+ community. They may identify as straight, gay, lesbian, bisexual, asexual, or any other sexual orientation.”
[2] Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westboro_Baptist_Church.
[3] Westboro Baptist Church website. https://www.godhatesfags.com/index.html
[4] Larry G. Johnson, “Equality – The Homosexual Agenda’s Trojan Horse in its Battle for Cultural Acceptance,” culturewarrior.net, 3-6-2013. https://www.culturewarrior.net/2013/03/06/equality-the-homosexual-agendas-trojan-horse-in-its-battle-for-cultural-acceptance/
[5] Larry G. Johnson, “Tenth Anniversary of CultureWarrior.Net – March 6, 2013 – March 6 2023,” culturewarrior.net, March 4, 2023. https://www.culturewarrior.net/2023/03/04/tenth-anniversary-of-culturewarrior-net-march-6-2013-march-6-2023/
[6] Owasso Police Department, Investigation update 2021-2024, Facebook. https://www.facebook.com/story.php/?story_fbid=797096819120305&id=100064599824990
[7] OPD 2024-3316 Community Release, YouTube, originally recorded 2-7-2024. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eJaBumoyRGg&t=12s (accessed 3-4-2023)
