Watch: Student drowns out homophobic preacher with bagpipes
Brice Ehmig broke out her bagpipes to drown out the preacher's message of hate
“I have seen too much tragedy in the LGBTQ community to let a man in cargo pants tell me I am the embodiment of sin. I am a gay bagpiper and proud.”
–Brice Ehmig, who was filmed playing bagpipes in order to drown out the hateful message of a homophobic preacher on her university campus. She was inspired to take action after being repeatedly harassed by the preacher, who regularly frequents Florida Gulf Coast University.
“After years of dealing with the homophobic comments aimed at me by the preacher, I felt I needed to stand up against these false prophets spewing bigotry,” she said, according to The Daily Record. “I have fought hard for my rights.”
In the video, recorded by her girlfriend, Ehmig approaches the preacher and starts to play her bagpipes. The preacher attempts to walk away, still spewing his homophobic messages, but Ehmig keeps following him. The onslaught of the bagpipes — which even the most die-hard Scottish person will admit can get a little grating after a while — clearly starts to take its toll.
“I could see in his eyes and the tense veins in his face and neck that he was enraged by my presence. So after four minutes I did give him some space for a little bit,” Ehmig said. “Then he started going on more about homosexuality, and earned my relentless playing even more so.”
Ehmig’s protest was about more than just annoying someone who had harassed her and her girlfriend. It was about sending a message that she wouldn’t give in to the preacher’s hate and reward him with violence. Ehmig claims that the preacher is part of a group that records interactions with people they’ve angered, including “law enforcement interactions and close calls with angered citizens.”
“If their intent was to educate the public with the peace and love of real religion, they would not need to record and post mostly the bad interactions they had,” Ehmig said. “Their intent is clearly to catch people losing control as they target them, and they want everyone to believe that they are the victims.”
Instead, Ehmig resorted for bagpipes. And when she’d tired herself out on those, an even better form of protest: “I then called over my girlfriend and gave her a big kiss right in front of the ‘preacher’ and group of people watching.”
Watch Ehmig’s awesome (and noisy) protest below:
I’ve never been so proud to be Scottish.
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