It has come to light that the Westboro Baptist Church – the subject of Louis Theroux’s ‘The Most Hated Family In America’ docuseries – has announced they plan to picket an upcoming episode of Monday Night Raw next month.
WWE is set to hold WWE Raw at T-Mobile Center in Kansas City, Missouri and the Westboro Baptist Church have issued a press release announcing plans to picket at the event. The church is planning to picket the taping of Raw due to the sex trafficking, sexual assault, and physical and emotional abuse allegations made against former WWE Chairman Vince McMahon in the lawsuit filed by Janel Grant. The church is also picketing due to past storylines on WWE TV.
Vince McMahon is no longer involved with the day-to-day running of WWE after resigning as TKO Executive Chairman in January following the filing of Grant’s lawsuit. He remains a major shareholder in TKO, owning around eight per cent of the organisation.
Fred Phelps started the Topeka, Kansas-based Westboro Baptist organization in 1955, and a large number of his 13 children are still active members of the organization today. Because of their public protests against homosexuality and their hate speech against atheists, Jews, Muslims, and other Christian faiths, the church is commonly regarded as a hate group. The group also declared that the election of Barack Obama to the presidency was a prophecy.
According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, the group feels that by accepting homosexuality, the United States of America has condemned itself and that as a result, the Christian deity is punishing the country by bringing catastrophes upon its people. Since June 1991, the WBC’s “picketing ministry” has seen the church host over 40,000 pickets.
