Long story short, Westboro Baptist Church “pickets” (and by “pickets” I mean “harrassing the recently bereaved at”) a funeral.
Family counters with a lawsuit.
WBC gets nailed for almost 11 million dollars.
Now, Phelps and his clan are complaining about stifling free speech. One thinks that it would be a valid thought, except for one thing:
Freedom of Speech allows you to say things others don’t like. However, Freedom of Speech is not license to harrass people or be an asshole.
Freedom of Speech: Speaking ill of the dead person.
Harassment/Asshole: Going to the funeral with the expicit desire to rub the family’s face in it and hurt them.
Or is caught with one. That would be untold amounts of awesome. “Lookit me, I hate gays and make a big deal about it because I’m projecting my hatred of my own sexual orientation on to other people!”
Still, it’s nice that someone finally bitchslapped him with a lawsuit.
One sign in his party reads “God is America’s Terror”… that is true it seems… he’s suicide bombing funerals with hate rather than the compassion it should have… all in the name of “America’s Terror”. (Watch the video and read the retarded signs)
I vote for “he sees the errors of his ways and asks for forgiveness.”
It is horrible that he did such a thing. I’ve already seen this on TV; hearing his reasoning and his whining about how this proves that religion is being squashed…it’s just disgusting for him to use his religion as a crutch for such hatred.
If he really believes that homosexuality is a sin, then what does he have to gain by picketing at someone’s funeral? Does he do this for all types of sinners? What about when someone receives the death penalty for multiple murder or rape? Do they hang over their graves and yell “SINNER! They’re going to Hell, friends and family, ahahahahahahahaha!”
Some Christians, mostly this type, complain that other religions and atheism are slowly overtaking them. Well, who in the Hell wants their religious leaders squawking and judging other people when there is a specific verse in the fucking book that is supposed to be so sacred that tells you NOT TO JUDGE? I have absolutely no idea how anybody can take the screaming, banner-waving, God bless America, rapture praying, Jack Chick reading, subservient wife brand of Christianity seriously.
First, even if the soldier were gay, and Phelps had Constitutionally valid reasons for expressing disapproval, it’d be an intrusion on the family’s privacy to intentionally disturb his funeral. The free-speech argument only works if Phelps can argue that disturbing the funeral was not among his intentions, which is implausible given his history.
But that’s not the case. The soldier <i>wasn’t</i> gay (as the article by-the-ways on page two). For Phelps, the soldier was a <i>symbol</i> of the military’s policy toward homosexuality. So Phelps is basically saying, “Nothing personal. You just picked the wrong employer.”
Phelps could just as well protest at his own church services, because he and his congregation purposely avail themselves of the laws of a state and nation that allow homosexuality. He and his congregation are thus <i>symbols</i> of government-sanctioned homosexuality. It’s an absurd reasoning process, and Phelps is a hypocrite to employ it.
In any event, as a matter of public policy, there’s no way a court would allow individuals to be treated as <i>symbols</i> of their governing bodies, for purposes of limiting their right to privacy to that of the governing body.
What people forget is that there is such a concept as emotional abuse. When free speech degrades into emotional abuse, it is no longer free. It’s as simple as that.
Frankly, how anyone who calls themselves Christian could possibly parade around with a sign saying “GOD HATES YOU” (which I’ve seen) is so beyond belief to me. The very idea that God could “hate” any of his creations harkens more towards Greek-style multitheism than the benevolence of the Christian God. Even if they would believe that sinners go to hell for eternity, the idea that God “hates” those sinners is against practically everything else that talks about the idea.
See, that’s one of the reasons I’m not a Christian – the incompatibility of the stated “God is all-loving” with … well … everything, starting with the existence of Hell.
Well, these people are quite disconnected from what they are supposed to be following. Like the Pharisee and tax collector parable. Not to mention forgetting the “love each other” part, God always being ready to forgive and hell being a free will decision yadda yadda. That’s the problem of the franchises, I guess.
The main problem I’ve had with Christianity is how God can be all-powerful and all-loving at the same time. If he’s all-powerful, that means he’s the one screwing up all of our lives, hurting us, etc. But why would he do that, if he’s also all-loving? Either God is loving but weak and Satan is the one hurting everyone, or God is all-powerful but a bastard.
Oh yeah, as for the topic of the thread, its good to see our justice system actually working once in awhile.
From what I’ve read about Fred Phelps, he is a control freak and abuser extroardanaire. You know how some people just can’t seem to go through the day without hurting someone? I think he literally can’t be happy each unless he’s made someone suffer somehow.
That is what Fred Phelps is. And his cult is for one thing and one thing only: forcing his will on his family and followers. End of story. As far as he (and his cult) is concerned, he IS God. God hates homosexuals because Fred Phelps hates homosexuals.
In a way, he kinda exemplifies my thought that Man wasn’t created in God’s image, but God was created in Man’s image. It makes a lot of sense sometimes.
But really, Fred Phelps can be summed up in three words: pure, absolute evil. He only cares about himself. Everything else is there to serve him. I’d actually be really, truly astonished if he actually felt something akin to love (beyond himself) at any point during his life.
This is a man who would physically and emotionally abuse his wife and children. In fact, my impression is that he started turning his abuse outwards only when his children got too big for him to get away with it. So by forcing his family to do such things (and most of them are pretty much too fucked up to NOT obey him) he drives them away from those who could help them and back to him.
The fact that he gets to hurt others outside his circle is icing on the cake to him. Honestly? I think he only rails on homosexuals because it’s a very divisive issue right now. If the government went to hell and started executing homosexuals tomorrow… well, I can say he would be happy, since they would be miserable. However, it would not last long, and he’d soon find another angle of which to hurt people and (more importantly) keep his cult in line.
This is a man who needs to hurt others to feel alive. The only way to stop him would be for him to die or for him to be locked away somehow. Either option is odious, honestly, because we still have his cult, which would most likely make him into a martyr and continue to obey him after his permanent removal from society.
