Trolling the Westboro Baptist Church is a bit of a national pastime. Everyone from theater troupes to the Foo Fighters have taken time to bring the group down a peg in response to their continuing efforts to protest funerals and spread anti-LGBT hate speech, but Planting Peace is probably the best at it. The LGBT non-profit recently purchased a house across the street from the WBC and painted it in the colors of the transgender pride flag.
The new, colorful house is an expansion of their Equality House project, a house painted in the colors of the gay pride flag that the group purchased in 2013. That house was painted in the colors of the trans pride flag once a year to celebrate the Trans Day of Remembrance. However, the reaction of a trans child upon seeing the house in new colors inspired the non-profit to buy the house next door and make a permanent trans pride monument out of it.
Via a blog post on Planting Peace’s website:
“Once a year since it’s founding, the Equality House has been painted the colors of the transgender flag in honor of Transgender Day of Remembrance. On one such occasion, Avery Jackson, a transgender child, visited the house. When she saw the house so proudly and visibly painted in the transgender flag colors, she was filled with a new sense of pride. ‘I loved the rainbow house when it was painted like the transgender flag,” she said. “I felt so happy and proud to be transgender.’ Avery’s story, and the stories of countless other members of the transgender community who visit the Equality House each year, inspired Planting Peace to reinforce the importance of being highly visible in supporting LGBT rights. This has become increasingly important with the emergence of discriminating legislation and consistent messages of being broken or ‘less than’ targeted at the transgender community.”
The houses are far from Planting Peace’s only work combatting anti-LGBT sentiment. They previously hosted a wedding between Gandalf and Dumbledore in view of the WBC and are the group behind those billboards in North Carolina warning folks about the state’s regressive laws.
(Via The Gaily Grind)