Members of Rev. Fred Phelps’ Westboro Baptist Church, known for their fierce anti-gay rhetoric and hate speech, arrived at the Phillips Exeter Academy in Exeter, New Hampshire on Monday to an unwelcoming community of students, faculty and Exeter-area ministers. Followers of Phelps held up “Thank God for AIDS” signs outside the school in protest of the Academy’s decision to let gay and lesbian faculty and staff serve as monitors in student dormitories, while the Academy’s students and faculty donned rainbow pins and held diversity celebrations across campus. Fourteen area churches also united to denounce Phelps’s messages, recognizing the group’s right to free speech, but condemning its message of hate and denigration.
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