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Westboro Baptist Church condemned those mourning David Bowie’s death.
In recent news following the death of world famous music artist, David Bowie, there are reports that the Westboro Baptist Church will be picketing a music event to be held in the memory of the rockstar. The intentions of the group were made clear through a Twitter post on January 13.
Westboro Baptist Church Protest Against a Memorial Music Event for Legendary Artist, David Bowie.[/tweetthis]
Forget your tributes to #DavidBowie! Don’t follow him to Hell: repent of the sins HE TAUGHT, @The_Real_IMAN! https://t.co/prURAAs0BC
— Westboro Baptist (@WBCSaysRepent) January 12, 2016
David Bowie, a celebrated music artist and a member of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, passed away on January 10 after a long and arduous battle with liver cancer. The music artist, known for his hits such as ‘Space Oddity’ and ‘Starman’ was mourned by millions of fans across the globe.
The Westboro Church, after hearing news about the supposed Memorial concert for the artist, took to Twitter to voice their criticism. The group, which is known for its strong right wing ideologies, began condemning people who mourned the artist’s death. It included the artist’s wife, Iman Abdulmajid, who was married to him for 24 years.
However, the Westboro Baptist Church’s criticism was countered by another group called Planting Peace. Planting Peace is a community-centered organization that has criticized and protested against the church in the past. In fact, the organization is even located right across the street from Westboro Baptist Church.
The group has now announced a charity fundraiser of its own, in memory of David Bowie. It has gone on to state that the fundraiser will serve as a counter protest to the right-wing group’s plans of picketing the memorial concert.The fundraiser will be organized in collaboration with crowd-funding site, Crowdrise. The proceedings from the fundraiser will be donated to the St. Jude’s Children’s Hospital.
The Westboro Baptist Church isn’t the only group to come out against the artist. Social media platform, Twitter, was abuzz with posts from several individuals calling the artist “problematic”. This was in reference to the artist’s alleged sexual involvement with underage girls during his hey days. The allegations came in the wake of a rape case filed against the artist.