However, the lawsuit is not the most important aspect of this story. The group’s over-the-top antics and intimidating behavior are what turned the protest from a harmless demonstration to near chaos.

To protest the church’s belief that being gay is a sin, several Bash Back! members dressed in all black, covered their faces with bandanas and rallied outside the church with upside-down crosses and other anti-Christian symbols. Protesters also entered the church dressed as church members, threw flyers, kissed, presented a banner that read, “It’s okay to be gay,” and pulled fire alarms as they exited.

Church members claimed their First Amendment right protecting freedom of religion had been violated.

Bash Back! crossed the line. No group should have the right to interrupt the religious services of any church, even if they disagree with the church’s teachings. The group overstepped its right to protest when its members entered the church. If anything, this protest has done far more harm to the gay rights cause than good.

The main goal of this protest, as in every protest, is to gain publicity for a cause. The anti-Christian symbols, the banner in the church and the act of pulling fire alarms at one of the biggest churches in the state was all planned to gain more attention. Bash Back! accomplished what it wanted — to stage a protest that gave gay rights national attention. However, the group never seemed to consider that not all publicity is good publicity.

Bash Back! needs to focus less on its message and more on how people perceive that message. Several states have passed legislation legalizing same-sex marriage and we would certainly approve of Michigan taking similar measures. But the validity of the group’s argument is undermined by the image it gave off. Christianity has been portrayed as the enemy of gay rights, whether it is true or not.

But how is yelling anti-Christian slurs at churchgoers any different from the prejudices Bash Back! is trying to eliminate? Unfortunately, in politics, causes often progress based on the people involved in them, not the merits of the cause itself. So the actions taken by Bash Back! not only harm the group, but harm the gay rights movement as a whole.

It’s very likely the group was looking to be ironic with their protest. The protest could have been intended to mock the idea that gay rights would lead to a breakdown of church values. The demonstrators were trying to show the outrageousness of what a stereotypical churchgoer might think — advancing gay rights would lead to this kind of behavior. But that’s not the message that people will get from the protest. They will only see that a militant-looking gay rights group stopped services at a church, and the movement is only hurt because of it.

Christian values and gay rights will find a common ground in time. We would support any action from either side to advance this process. But to intimidate the other side to this degree, and become exactly what you’re fighting against, is unacceptable.