If Anything is Truely “Evil”… (But I Propose a Possible Solution)
November 2nd, 2007
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I saw a news report about this group, which routinely pickets the funerals of fallen soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan. They claim that God hates the United States and hates just about everyone except them. Why? Because America and the world has accepted homosexuals and other “unholy” behavior. The saddest thing is they have indoctrinated their kids with this, despite their kids not even knowing what a “fag” is. These are the followers of Fred Phelps, the disbarred lawyer who pushes offensive speech beyond the bounds of the worst flame-baiter, with statements like “Thank God for 9/11″ and “God hates America.”
I can say that I do indeed hate these people. They are worthy of no other feeling. But I feel pitty for the kids they are using as pawns. And no I am not worried that makes me “as bad as they are.”
What they are doing is actually an idiotic yet common mistake of fundamentalist religions. It’s called the fallacy of the individual versus the collective. Basically they do not understand that a society’s policies do not equate to those of individuals, and that the individuals effected by an event do not necessarily equate to the society. So in other words, it doesn’t really “punish”America when a troop dies, nor do the actions of America justify treatment of individuals who may not agree. So the individual soldier who died, for all they know, could have been a raging homophobe. But apparently they don’t get this. The irnoic thing is that they seem to think they, individually are distinct from “Americans” but the “Americans” as a whole deserve to die in terrorist attacks, because of the homosexuals, prostitutes and abortionists in their country.
Actually, Christianity makes this mistake a lot. Just think about how the Bible claims that we all are tainted by the original sin of Adam and Eve which other humans are still punished for. And remember how God thought it was okay to kill the “Egyptian” first born regardless of their individual feelings toward the jews? Or flood the Earth just because people in general were being bad? It’s also what motivates groups like Al Queda, who’s warped minds to not comprehend that blowing up a building full of “Americans” means blowing up a lot of people who potentially disagree with the American government. This idea of the “collective” is a recuring theme in religion, even if it is a very obvious logical fallacy and inherently injust.
But I digress…
What is the answer to this? Clearly the speech is protected by the First Amendment. But only to a point. The message is protected, but not necessarily the manner of delivery. So it’s entirely legitimate for these people to be prosecuted for violating laws which say that you cannot create a disturbance within 300 feet of a funeral. Such a law doesn’t say what sort of speech is allowed, it simply says “Whatever it is you can’t say it here.” or at least you can’t say it in a public manner. These sort of laws have been tested before in courts and generally the courts have ruled that it is legitimate to restrict people from protesting activities which cause a disturbance or otherwise interfere with the business of others – as long as it’s independent of the message. And for a funeral, that’s reasonable. You wouldn’t want pro-war or anti-war or anti-abortion protesters causing a scene when families are grieving.
But such laws can only do so much, especially when you consider that some of these assclowns are lawyers by trade and have made an art out of making scenes while dodging legal attempts to stop them. The other option is to sue. One father of a fallen soldier did sue them for intentional infliction of emotional harm. He won. And although the courts tend to put a high value on free speech, this is a valid issue too. Expressing an opinion is protected, but the manner in which this was done was clearly intended to cause trauma and pain. Your speech is protected, but using it to cause such harm still means you are responsible for the effects. And this case is pretty dramatically one-sided.
But can the law really be used to stop these idiots from going out there are spouting hatred and trying to cause as much pain and trauma to the grieving families and friends of those who have fallen? I don’t think so. For one thing, any time you start restricting speech at all, you have to be very careful because it’s a slippery slope. And while you may be able to keep them from funerals you can’t keep them from spouting hate elsewhere.
So I propose a different solution? I’ve always seen freedom of speech as the best way of attacking intolerably hateful or dangerous speech. When somebody says something so offensive and reprehensible, they should be allowed, but they must be subjected to the speech returned by the community. But clearly these people don’t care if you hate them back, so what to do?
What I would suggest as the best community response would be to have a sort of counter-protest. Get some guys together to go where they’re protesting (or infront of their house) and start shouting things like “Hi Boys, do you know how good sin can be?” and “Do you ever feel curious? Want to experiment? Want some fun? To try the other side?”
And have these “demonstraters get together in a scene something like this…
Being completely 100% honest, I really think that a bunch of flamboyantly gay guys flaunting it and attempting to “tempt’… That would shut them up and stop their damn protests immediately. I don’t know how they’d respond, but I’d love to see the look on their faces. It’s about the only thing I don’t think they’d be able to deal with.
This entry was posted on Friday, November 2nd, 2007 at 9:57 pm and is filed under Culture, Politics, religion. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
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November 2nd, 2007 at 11:06 pm
Actually, here’s something even better than a counter-protest to take the starch out of the bastards’ sails: all those “anti-queer protests” are by way of making Fred Phelps rich — or near as possible — by suing those whom his little group of ****heads provoke into physically attacking them or doing something else that would ordinarily be considered actionable. In other words, it’s a *racket*, a nasty one. The idea is that by provoking ordinarily decent folks into going mad-dog-crazy and attacking Phelps’ group, he can sue the attackers and get rich off it. I’m not sure whether the idiots in his group realize that he’s using them to make money and pocketing most or all of it rather than sharing the wealth, but I wouldn’t be surprised. All the supposed “moral outrage” of Phelps’ followers over “queers” is a big fat sham. Spread the word, and shame them out of town — or maybe even turn on their erstwhile group-leader and leave him in shape not even good enough to sue them or anyone else! (If I sound angry about it, actually, that understates the case — I’m absolutely incandescent over this jerk’s use of other people, and the grief he’s gotten his followers to cause people who never did anything to deserve it!)
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November 2nd, 2007 at 11:17 pm
hmmm… a very good point. I can what you’re saying. I respect freedom of speech and don’t really advocate violence (even if those jackasses deserve it), but if I was at the funeral of a family member who was just killed and saw those idiots provoking that bull, I really don’t know that I’d be able to control myself. It’s hard to blame people in such a state of loss and desperation for lashing out if at such blatant crap like that.
But that’s worth noting, that it should be recognized that they want to be attacked so they should sue. By the same token, while an angry response might be what they want, I do also hope they get sued left and right and completely sapped dry.
I don’t know what Felps has going on in his little mind, but I think it’s pretty obvious that some of the most vocal supporters do actually believe this warped insane repulsive message.
Really, I just hope Felps will die soon and the cause with him. And hopefully the more vocal followers will as well. Is it wrong to wish death on one like that? Eh, maybe. But he’s an extreme example of someone from whom no good can really come for the world in general. We’d all just be better off if he would croak.
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November 3rd, 2007 at 7:57 am
Yael Dragwyla points out a sad truth that unfortunately applies to most ‘protest movements’ active to-day. They have become cash-cows for the people at the top who are only interested in keeping the membership at a fever pitch so that the donations (or extortion, as Yael mentioned) keeps flowing.
The pathetic Fred Phelps is cut from the same cloth as Greenpeace, PETA, and others. Even MADD is run by men who are obviously not mothers and are out only to collect a regular paycheck.
The ultimate solution to this is to rewrite tax laws that allow these organizations to operate. Yes, there are a few legitimate charities left, but they should welcome a more stringent approval system as it would probably mean that more donations would be forthcoming if people like me would know our money is working as we intended.
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November 3rd, 2007 at 1:39 pm
There’s another thing about Phelps that comes out occasionally in the news: in general, he loves to sue people over everything and nothing, things that have nothing in particular with his and his followers’ “anti-queer” campaign. He was an attorney until he got disbarred, so he can prepare all his own papers and brief, and he sends his targets notice of one or another of his suits, assuming they’ll cave in immediately and pay him whatever he wants to keep him from pressing the suit in an out-of-court settlement. Lawsuits can be ruinously expensive, and nobody really wants to go through with such a suit if they don’t have to and it looks like the one doing the suing has a case. But people who’ve been his targets in the past got together and compared notes, and it turned out he never has a good case against the people he tries to sue. So they let everyone else know about it, and now people are defying him to go through with his lawsuits, which never hold water, and, if they go to court, always get tossed out. So the avenues he has exploited in the past to make money via extortion are closing off, which may put him out of that business for good.
However, that said, Phelps and his followers are still scary, psychologically speaking. When I looked at their website, http://www.godhatesamerica.com/, it was like a look straight into hell. Those peope live to hate and live on hate, and are joyously in love with every sort of cruelty and viciousness, keeping themselves in a state of endless raw, intensely sexualized exhileration through hate. People like that keep themselves in a continuous erotic frenzy by pumping themselves up until their bodies are loaded with adrenaline, cortisone, and testosterone or progesterone, keeping themselves permanently stoned on cruelty and hate, and in that state they’re capable of damn near anything, however violent or destructive. Phelps is an evil man, but what he’s got there is a stable full of crazy human pitbulls, and if they ever turn on *him*, it may be his end. You have to wonder: as a child, did Phelps torture, maim, and murder small animals, and set fires all over his neighborhood? Were his followers like that as children? These are potentially very dangerous people — let’s hope that they give up their vicious career soon, because otherwise they could do some truly horrific violence to others.
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November 3rd, 2007 at 4:45 pm
Yael, I agree with much of what you say except I really do take issue with the statement about a stable full of crazy human pitbulls.
I had made this post before which is somewhat related to my feelings on said statement: http://depletedcranium.com/?p=87
But I really think that’s a bit insulting to all the good natured pitbulls out there. Comparing Phelps followers to any breed… is kinda insulting to the breed.
I mean, even the worst cases of agressive dogs who attack people. The dogs attack generally because they are socially unbalanced or scared or think they have to defend teritory. They don’t attack just to be a douchebag. Which IMHO puts just about all species above these guys…
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November 3rd, 2007 at 10:45 pm
I agree with you that most pitbulls are sweet-natured and certainly not crazy. However, as we’ve seen lately in the news, there are unfortunately so-and-sos who, whether for o’erweening love of money or even worse vices, breed pitbulls solely for the arena, raise them in horrifying ways to ready them for the ring, then pit them against other dogs, punishing them for failing to vanquish their opponents with everything from beatings to death by electrocution. Puppies subject to that sort of chronic child-abuse — and make no mistake, that’s exactly what it is — expectably go off the beam one way or another. Those that survive this sort of ongoing horror-story in a physical sense may actually attain adult proportions and strength, but mentally they are severely emotionally unbalanced, and because they are trained to attack opponents, may go for the throat of anyone around them, canine, human, or otherwise. Phelps’ followers may actually have come from the human equivalent of such horrific child-rearing practices, in which case one can feel very, very sorry for them — but if one were wise, one would avoid them like the plague, as well. Even if they didn’t, somehow Phelps has turned them into attack-things, doing their attacking at his beck and call. Not good.
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December 27th, 2007 at 7:30 pm
Sweating, dancing with Girl Talk
Sweating, dancing with Girl TalkThe Heights (subscription), MA -Sep 17, 2007His transitions between songs were ingenious; for instance, I heard Earth,
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