The Westboro Baptist Church (WBC) is standing down.



Photographs of Braden and Charlie Powell are displayed at a candlelight vigil in Tacoma, Wash., Monday. (Ted S. Warren/AP)

“Wow! @WBCFredJr will talk worldwide @bobbydshow 9:30CT. Icing on cake after @tacomaupdates saturated NW w message.WBC agreed to stand down,” Margie Phelps, one of the church’s spokeswomen, tweeted.

As with so many of the funeral pickets planned by Westboro church, the news was met by a number of planned counterprotests. When Occupy Seattle joined the planned protests, the story quickly became headline news in the Northwest.

The church blamed the Powell sons’ deaths on Washington state's legalizing of same-sex marriages, according to the News Tribune in Tacoma.

Braden and Charlie were killed along with their father, Josh Powell, when he set fire to the house they were in Sunday, police said. Their mother, Susan, went mysteriously missing from their home in West Valley City, Utah, in December 2009, and Josh Powell is now the prime suspect.

The Westboro Church has stood down from protests before in exchange for radio time. In November, the group said it would cancel a picket of fallen Marine Cpl. Jason Barfield's funeral because it was getting time on local radio station WKMX.

The church’s decisions to call off pickets in return for media exposure may signify their newest marketing strategy. In a video posted to Ebaumsworld.com last month, a gay DJ and local radio morning host who goes by the name Scoops has a surprisingly friendly conversation in Kansas City with WBC leader Shirley Phelps, in which he says of her: “Nobody gets press like this [expletive] gets press.”

“And I don’t even have a marketing strategy,” Phelps responds, laughing. “I just get out here and hold signs in the area and get arrested and get sued and have a lot of kids and take them with me. That’s my marketing strategy.”

In the past, the WBC has protested or threatened the protest of the funerals of Steve Jobs, Joe Paterno, Elizabeth Edwards and many members of the military. Perhaps after all these years of holding signs, the mere threat of holding signs is enough for air time.