Music
Here's how Panic! At the Disco trolled the Westboro Baptist Church perfectly
by Mark Teo
July 21, 2014
The Westboro Baptist Church has a long and sordid history with musicians. Last year, the hate-filled church threatened to protest Slayer guitarist Jeff Hanneman’s funeral, which prompted a Canadian black metal band to urinate all over their property. Their homophobic approach to religion has prompted bands like Touche Amore to create anti-Westboro merch. And they’ve created terrible parody videos of songs, like “Hey Jews,” their racist take on the Beatles.
Indeed, the church has been known to protest any musical acts with a message of equality. And recently, that led them to tangle with Panic! At the Disco—a band whose singer, Brandon Urie, has openly spoken about his fluid sexuality. Naturally, this didn’t sit well with the children of Fred Phelps, who, before threatening to protest one of their shows, released an incredibly sophomoric spoof of “I Write Sins Not Tragedies.”
The Westboro take’s name? “You Love Sin What a Tragedy.” We won’t reprint the lyrics here—because frankly, they’re not worth the attention—but if you must, here’s their Panic! At the Disco spoof.
While it’d be easy for the band to lash out at Westboro (and frankly, the church would probably relish in any reaction), the band instead concocted a much better plan: They took to Facebook and posted this brilliant retort.
Nearly 100,000 likes later, and they found the perfect way to neutralize Westboro without reducing themselves to the church’s lowbrow tactics. It’s perfect: They’ll donate $20 to the Human Rights Campaign, a LBGT charity, for every Westboro picketer who shows up, effectively de-incentivizing the protest.
Stupid as they are, though, 13 members of the church showed up in protest. True to their word, they donated $260 to the charity, and took to Twitter to announce it.
And to cap it off, they donated even more to the Human Rights Campaign by allowing them a cut of their merch sales.
Best dudes? We think so. Here’s “This is Gospel,” and no, it isn’t the same gospel Westboro’s preaching.
