J.K. Rowling Defends Her Westboro Baptist Church Tweet


J.K. Rowling has defended her tweet against the Westboro Baptist Church, despite critics saying that it has helped the “God hates f**s” message. Many of her fans supported her decision to attack the church’s view, and commended her on her efforts. She regularly battles against trolls on the social media site, and Rowling only really ever tweets with facts and backed-up opinions.

The whole situation started this week after Ireland voted a resounding “yes” in the same-sex marriage referendum. As Huffington Post reminds everyone, Ireland has become the first country to use a popular vote to legalize same-sex marriage. There were many people who rejoiced over the news, but as usual there were a small number of people hating the prospect. Westboro Baptist Church was among them.

Rowling tweeted her support, saying that she wanted Albus Dumbledore from her Harry Potter franchise and Gandalf from Lord of the Rings to get married in the country. The Baptist church quickly threatened to picket if that ever happened. It was an attempt to shoot Rowling down, but she would not stay that way for long. She instantly tweeted about how “bigoted” the church was.

There have been some people who say that Rowling should not have “fed the trolls.” However, she views the attack in a different way. It was not about giving Westboro Baptist Church air time, but about helping to quell the fears from young gay people around the world. She does not want them only seeing the hate and not seeing anybody attack haters for their views. It was all about giving the supporters a voice, which she can do easily and eloquently.

The Daily Beast reports that this is not the first time Rowling has used Twitter to share her opinions and debate with others. In 2008, she said that she supported the Labour Party’s attempt to tackle child poverty over the tax breaks for married people, which the Conservatives favored. She did not like the view that those struggling, single, hard-working parents are not worth as much as married, childless couples who usually have dual-incomes. This comes from her personal circumstances when she was a struggling single-parent.

Even now that she is a world-renowned author, Rowling keeps that view for the hard-working. In 2013, she attacked the coalition government as there were more cuts to welfare, while the 1 percent got more tax breaks.

This year, she also attacked Rupert Murdoch publically on the social media site after the Charlie Hebdo attacks. After he talked about peaceful Muslims being responsible for their jihadi counterparts, she said as a Christian she would be responsible for ex-communicating him. J.K. Rowling is never one to back down from a fight, and she has proved that this time by standing up for her reason to tweet against the Westboro Baptist Church.

[Photo by Daniel Barry/Getty Images]

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