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Westboro Baptist Church: David Bowie Funeral Protest Planned — WBC Attacks ‘Problematic’ Child Rape Allegations

Published on: January 11, 2016 at 2:03 PM
By Patrick Frye

David Bowie’s funeral date and location are not even known yet, and the Westboro Baptist Church is already attacking the death of the iconic musician. While their comments are fairly nasty as might be expected, they are actually feeding into a new popular trend on Twitter, which has some searching for the phrase “David Bowie problematic.” Although many celebrities have begun written touching tributes to the life of the musician, some on social media are claiming his life should not be celebrated because he was allegedly a child rapist and a pedophile based upon Lori Mattix’s story of underage sex with the rocker.

[UPDATE] Reports are indicating that David Bowie’s funeral may be held in NYC , which has the Westboro Baptist Church practicing their parody lyrics for the planned protest.

[UPDATE 2] The latest news suggests that Bowie’s family secretly buried him quickly upon his death.

In a related report by the Inquisitr , David Bowie’s wife, Iman Abdulmajid , has been posting tributes to her husband on Twitter and Instagram. His death took the world by surprise, since not many knew he was secretly fighting a cancer battle .

Earlier this morning, the Westboro Baptist Church’s Twitter account began their first attack on the dead celebrity.

They also made it quite clear that they are hoping to protest the funeral since they released another tweet where they used a hashtag to ask about the funeral details.

No official plans have been made public for a protest of David Bowie’s funeral, but a protest also depends on on the site of the funeral. The family has not discussed any details publicly, but Bowie lived in a New York apartment in Manhattan. The Westboro Baptist Church will likely target Bowie’s funeral, but if the family decides to bury him in England, then the WBC will have quite a problem planning their protest.

Back in 2009, the Westboro Baptist Church announced plans to picket in the United Kingdom. This would have been their first protest in the U.K., but according to the Guardian, the British Home Office responded by officially excluding Fred Phelps and Shirley Phelps-Roper from entering the country since they had “engaged in unacceptable behavior by inciting hatred against a number of communities.” Although Fred Phelps died in 2014, the British also threatened to ban other Westboro Baptist Church members , noting how “other church members could also be flagged and stopped if they tried to enter Britain.” Presumably, this may happen again if the Bowie funeral is held in England.

David Bowie’s Rape Allegations

Westboro Baptist Church’s David Bowie tweets did not end there.

But what did they mean by calling the life of Bowie “problematic”? It turns out they were responding to a debate now raging on Twitter.

Just what exactly are they referring to? Bowie was known for dressing in drag and applying heavy makeup, but some in the LGBTQ community claimed that Bowie’s “choice to out himself publicly right before the [1970’s] release of his next album was done for purely economic reasons.” Writing on Queer Feminist Ramblings , the blogger claimed that “Bowie’s perpetual performance of genderqueer (as a character or role rather than his identity) can be seen as problematic for the rest of the queer community.”

Still, that is not the main reason many are now calling David Bowie problematic . During the 1980’s, a 30-year-old woman claimed Bowie sexually assaulted her after a concert. A grand jury in Texas cleared Bowie of those charges, but then two women named Lori Mattixx (also known as Lori Maddox) and Sable Starr told their story about how underage groupies had sex with the rocker.

Lori Maddox was a young teen at the time, and she recalls how she had “probably kissed boys by that point, but I wasn’t ready for David Bowie.” She changed her tune after she met John Lennon and Yoko Ono while with Bowie in a private room. Five months later, she recalled how her friend Starr was upset when she was the first to be called into Bowie’s bedroom.

“Sable looked like she wanted to murder me. He walked me through his bedroom and into the bathroom, where he dropped his kimono. He got into the tub, already filled with water, and asked me to wash him. Of course I did,” she told Thrillist . “Then he escorted me into the bedroom, gently took off my clothes, and de-virginized me.”

Lori was 14 at the time. The sexual relationships with rock stars continued for years, so Thrillist asked how a “15-year-old kid” could have been with an “adult man with a lot experience, and power, and drugs.”

“I was an innocent girl, but the way it happened was so beautiful. I remember him looking like God and having me over a table. Who wouldn’t want to lose their virginity to David Bowie?” she responded. “In some ways, I was not different than one of the Kardashians. At that point, you could say, I was viewed as a groupie. People on the scene knew that I had been with Bowie.”

[Photo by Carl Court/Getty Images]

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