Meade Couple Get Replacement Flag and Unwelcome Visitors from Westboro Baptist Church

Meade boys confess to stealing couple's controversial flag

By Tim Vandenack
The Hutchinson News
tvandenack@hutchnews.com

MEADE, KS - Two Meade boys have confessed to cutting down a rainbow flag outside a hotel here, the proprietors said Monday.

The Lakeway Hotel became a focus of controversy last month after owners J.R. and Robin Knight hung the colorful banner, a gift from their 12-year-old son, in front of the place. Locals uncomfortable with such a symbol - it also stands for gay pride -- decried the flag's presence and then, in the early-morning hours of July 31, someone cut it down.

The disappearance had remained a mystery, but the father of two local boys brought them to the Lakeway on Friday and they owned up to their involvement.

"They apologized and said they'd replace it," J.R. Knight said. He didn't name the boys, and Meade County Sheriff Michael Cox said only that officials are investigating.

Meanwhile, Knight said replacing a 5-foot-by-5-foot plate glass window smashed in at the hotel's restaurant - also apparently due to the flag flap - probably would cost about $500. Two neon beer signs destroyed in the same incident probably will cost another $1,000.

Someone tossed a brick through the window early Friday morning, according to the Knights and local authorities, who are investigating. Scrawled on the brick was the word "fag."

Aside from being the talk of the town in Meade, the controversy has prompted a vigorous Internet debate, largely in the gay community, about the state of gay rights in rural America. Many bloggers have decried the response the Knights have faced from their critics as symptomatic of small-town bigotry.

Anne Mitchell, however, head of the Kansas Equality Coalition's southwest Kansas chapter, said she thinks the Knights' foes are not representative of Meade's overall population. The coalition combats discrimination based on sexual orientation, and members of its southwest chapter met Sunday, without incident, at the Lakeway as a show of support for the Knights.

"There are a few people in Meade who have acted out, and their behavior's not reflective of the vast majority of people in the Meade area," she said. She said she hopes the debate on the issue centers on "tolerance and nonviolence and educating each other."

That there will be debate seems evident, but the tone remains unclear.

Knight said he spoke with representatives from MTV, who want to visit Meade for some sort of report on the controversy.

Shirley Phelps Roper of Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka, meanwhile, says that virulently anti-gay group tentatively is planning to picket Aug. 27 outside the Lakeway.

Westboro will be hosting a crew from the British Broadcasting Corp., Phelps Roper said, and a picket in Meade "might be just the interesting thing (that the news crew can) get their arms around." Westboro members think the deaths of U.S. servicemen in Iraq are punishment from God for tolerance in the United States of homosexuality, and they are notorious for picketing soldiers' funerals.

Through it all, J.R. Knight remains somewhat perplexed at all the twists and turns of the controversy.

He and his wife put up the flag in early July as a means of having their son nearby, at least symbolically. The boy, who was drawn by the flag's vibrant colors, now lives in California. Then when the flap erupted, they refused to bow to their critics who sought the flag's removal on principle, replacing the torn-down banner on Friday with a new one.

"Everything is just out of whack," J.R. Knight said. "People are all upset about everything."

Maybe our western Kansas/Colorado/other places readers may wish to go out to Meade, KS on Sunday, August 27 to greet the Knight family and the picketers from the Westboro Baptist Church. PAT]