This morning, hate comes to Cambridge. According to their offensively titled website, the Westboro Baptist Church will be protesting Cambridge Rindge and Latin’s acceptance of homosexuality before moving on to the air force base and high school in Lexington, Mass., and capping off their packed day with a protest in Reading, Mass. The daylong protest spree is inspired by Reading Memorial High School’s staging of the Laramie Project, a play depicting the horrors of hate crimes against homosexuals.

The Westboro Baptist Church is a Topeka, Kansas, based group that loosely uses religious principles to justify a universally offensive agenda of hate. To further this agenda, they have taken to protesting at high schools, Elton John concerts, and even at the funerals of our soldiers. They typically carry banners with offensive anti-homosexual slogans and claim that the attacks of 9/11 and the casualties in the Iraq War were punishment for America’s acceptance of gay rights. Their highly objectionable tactics have largely been met with mockery, disdain, and vocal opposition. The Westboro Baptist Church has essentially succeeded in offending rational people at every point on the political spectrum. Given that the WBC is little other than a marginal group with no real agenda or goal besides the spread of hate, it is dismaying that their spiteful rhetoric will be present at Cambridge Rindge and Latin.

The upside to their ignorance and spite is the validation that it lends to the principles of free speech. The vocal and offensive rhetoric of this small group is so clearly preposterous, absurd, and uninformed that they act as the very best argument against themselves. Though they may have little societal value, they affirm the necessity of an open marketplace of ideas and show that the self-regulation of such a market can actually work.

Facebook.com groups organizing counter-protests for today sprang up with haste. The group for the counter-protest in Lexington has over 100 attendees. These counter-protests will act as the rational response to the potent hatred of the WBC. Of course, residents of Cambridge will, and fully should, get angry over the spite and hate spewed from this ignorant group. Maybe the best response, though, is to simply ignore them. These protests are enough to make any reasonable person ill, but no one can demonstrate the ignorance of the Westboro Baptist Church better than the Westboro Baptist Church can.