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7 Times The Westboro Baptist Church Totally Got What Was Coming To It

The Foo Fighters join an illustrious list of folks who gave WBC a taste of their own medicine.

This week the Westboro Baptist Church got some comeuppance when the Foo Fighters blasted Rick Astley’s “Never Gonna Give You Up” at church members demonstrating outside the band's Kansas City, Missouri, show.

Related: 11 Queer Icons Of Punk Rock

A crowd of fans swarmed the truck and cheered Dave Grohl and Co. as they danced to Astley’s beats and stopped Westboro haters from ruining everyone's night.

It's not the first time someone's turned the tables on them, though—below, we recount seven times the Westboro Baptist Church totally got was coming to it.


1. When Kesha's Dancers Pranced For Equality

WBC demonstrators were allowed to protest Kesha's Lincoln, Nebraska concert in 2013, where they sang a parody of "We R Who We R” called “God Hates Who U R."

In response Kesha sent out three backup dancers to perform choreography as the religious zealots sang their tune.

“They were in this, like, 10-square-foot of hate, and across the street there’s a whole stadium full of love," Kesha told us in June. "I was just kind of astonished at how stupid they came off.”


2. When Drag Queens Marched On WBC

If there’s anything we’ve learned from RuPaul’s Drag Race, it's that you don't cross a queen: The Westboro clan got a ringside seat to fierceness last year, when Equality House, the rainbow-colored LGBT center located across from the WBC’s Topeka compound, held an outdoor fundraiser that included a lively drag revue, as well face-painting, balloon animals, music, candy and other things homophobes hate.

“This was another successful step towards silencing the hate from the WBC and bringing awareness to the high suicide rate amongst our LGBTQ youth, ” Aaron Jackson, said President of Planting Peace..


3. When J.K. Rowling Shaded Them On Twitter

After the Harry Potter scribe rejoiced in marriage equality's passage in Ireland, the church tweeted it would “picket” a theoretical wedding between Gandalf and Albus Dumbledore on the Emerald Isle.

Rowling brilliantly replied that “Alas, the sheer awesomeness of such a union in such a place would blow your tiny bigoted minds out of your thick sloping skulls.”

Zing!


4. When Twitter Suspended Westboro's Accounts

After the hate church picketed Twitter's New York HQ as part of its so-called Hate the Media 2014 tour, the social-media company suspended two of its main accounts, @WBCsays and @WBCShirl.

Don't shit where you eat, guys. #SorryNotSorry.


5. When The WBC Got Pranked On Thanksgiving

The Westboro Baptist Church was bombarded with calls in November after a site listed its phone number as the hotline for information about turkeys contaminated with a new, deadly strain of avian flu.

The National Report claimed the CDC had confirmed a new form of the virus found in turkeys distributed by a major supplier. The site warned consumers not to eat any turkey on Thanksgiving, because the virus could withstand cooking temperatures:

Concerned dupes calling the ficticious “Turkey Safety Hotline,” which just turned out to be the Westboro Baptist Church's main line. Some commenters said the line was busy all day, and their Thanksgiving dinner plans were ruined by the prank, but we'd say it was worth it.


6. When A Gay YouTuber Called Shirley Phelps-Roper For Advice

Gay vlogger Riyahd Khalaf called the haters at the Westboro Baptist Church in April for advice on how to get into heaven.

It was a kind of payback, as WBC leader Shirley Phelps-Roper responded to the Irish lad’s video last week, when he had his mom read the messages blowing up his Grindr.

Shirley managed to use the word “fag” an amazing 61 times. Someone get her a thesaurus!


7. When A Marine Threw Coffee On A WBC Loony

We abhor violence, but Vietnam veteran Richard Pierce was so outraged that the Westboro Baptists were protesting the funeral of Beau Biden earlier this year that he flung (or in his words, “spilled”) hot coffee on one of the picketers.

Pierce, 64, said he planned to “mind his own business” at the the funeral of Biden, son of Vice President Joe Biden, but lost his cool when he saw one protester dragging the American flag under her feet.

"[The flag] is very meaningful to me. So many people have died in defense of that flag," said the former Marine. "I don’t care who you are, you are not going to disrespect that flag. And if I have to go to jail to defend our flag, I’m going to do it."

We don’t blame you.

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