The Supreme Court came down on the side of Fred Phelps' Westboro Baptist Church's ability to picket the funerals of military dead to argue that soldiers die in war because God is mad at America for not executing homosexuals instead.
Just as the Holy Roman Empire was neither holy, nor Roman, nor an empire, Westboro Baptist Church is neither Baptist nor a church. It's a fenced compound in Kansas populated by the fecund spawn of a man in a cowboy hat called Fred Phelps. When Matthew Shepard was murdered, Phelps found his calling and launched a website called God Hates Fags.
There is no reason, no thread of logic, to be found in the Phelps's ravings. They follow the market, and protesting military funerals gives them lots more excuses to show up and bare their asses to the public and the media than just hating on gay people.
I've been to a number of Phelpsian pageants. One striking feature of all of them was that they generated no local support. They fly places, rent a minivan, show up with their day glow posters, and rant and rave. Mostly they seem to draw energy from how they piss off people. My view was that it was always more fun- and majorly frustrating to them- to mock them as silly pinheads who dress badly.
I was even once one of the subjects of a Phelpsiad- I was giving the homily at a church whose last minister had been a lesbian (long story, for another time). About a dozen of the Phelpsists stood outside the church, waving their signs and heckling worshippers with remarkably un-Christian comments given that they say they are the one true Church.
What struck me was how they dragged in Phelps minors to hold signs and spew the talking points. I worked the line, introducing myself as the speaker inside- and as a fag- and thanked them for coming and sharing their views. This seemed to displease them. They live for yelling and push back. Then I leaned over to each one and suggested God, not they, would decide who ended up in Hell, but if I ran into them there I'd invite them around for a cocktail.
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. wrote that difficult cases make for hard law. This is one of those cases. Emotionally, it's easy to feel betrayed by the Court's 8-1 decision, although if one reads it the logic and law are really pretty clear. Justice Breyer, concurring, tries to reframe its limits; Justice Alito's dissent is perfunctory and unconvincing, a softball to his natural constituency on the far right.
The genius of the First Amendment is that it allows people to get up in public and be stupid, people with heads like vacuum tubes. And it allows listeners to call them out as morons, haters, and moon-calves.
But the best thing about the debate is that free speech allows lunatics who can barely fill a clown car to spew all they want, and to mock them endlessly in return. Zealots and haters never recognize the boundary between hate and farce.
They need reminding. Not, of course, that it'll take. They just need to be goaded, time after time, into more and more outrageous hate festivals until they try to attend every death on the planet to celebrate how God has stricken the entire Earth for His tolerance of gay people. They are the spear point of the hate movement, and the more ludicrous their stunts, the more the spew indicts their more "I don't want to talk about them" camp followers.
The Phelpsisters are good at generating publicity, but they have no followers on their flaneuriades. It'd be interesting if any of the Big Media looked into who pays for the Westboro payrolls and travel budgets, but alas, it's not nearly such good video as old Fred struggling up on his pins with his bullhorns and a neck scarf to conceal his wattles. He's been hating since 1955, after all.
One striking thing: for all the SoBap and evangelical media hounds who populate the airwaves preaching the hate the sin, love the sinner stuff, not a one- ever- has denounced the Fredster and his clan as, well, a bit over the top. They are useful idiots.
Just as the Holy Roman Empire was neither holy, nor Roman, nor an empire, Westboro Baptist Church is neither Baptist nor a church. It's a fenced compound in Kansas populated by the fecund spawn of a man in a cowboy hat called Fred Phelps. When Matthew Shepard was murdered, Phelps found his calling and launched a website called God Hates Fags.
There is no reason, no thread of logic, to be found in the Phelps's ravings. They follow the market, and protesting military funerals gives them lots more excuses to show up and bare their asses to the public and the media than just hating on gay people.
I've been to a number of Phelpsian pageants. One striking feature of all of them was that they generated no local support. They fly places, rent a minivan, show up with their day glow posters, and rant and rave. Mostly they seem to draw energy from how they piss off people. My view was that it was always more fun- and majorly frustrating to them- to mock them as silly pinheads who dress badly.
I was even once one of the subjects of a Phelpsiad- I was giving the homily at a church whose last minister had been a lesbian (long story, for another time). About a dozen of the Phelpsists stood outside the church, waving their signs and heckling worshippers with remarkably un-Christian comments given that they say they are the one true Church.
What struck me was how they dragged in Phelps minors to hold signs and spew the talking points. I worked the line, introducing myself as the speaker inside- and as a fag- and thanked them for coming and sharing their views. This seemed to displease them. They live for yelling and push back. Then I leaned over to each one and suggested God, not they, would decide who ended up in Hell, but if I ran into them there I'd invite them around for a cocktail.
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. wrote that difficult cases make for hard law. This is one of those cases. Emotionally, it's easy to feel betrayed by the Court's 8-1 decision, although if one reads it the logic and law are really pretty clear. Justice Breyer, concurring, tries to reframe its limits; Justice Alito's dissent is perfunctory and unconvincing, a softball to his natural constituency on the far right.
The genius of the First Amendment is that it allows people to get up in public and be stupid, people with heads like vacuum tubes. And it allows listeners to call them out as morons, haters, and moon-calves.
But the best thing about the debate is that free speech allows lunatics who can barely fill a clown car to spew all they want, and to mock them endlessly in return. Zealots and haters never recognize the boundary between hate and farce.
They need reminding. Not, of course, that it'll take. They just need to be goaded, time after time, into more and more outrageous hate festivals until they try to attend every death on the planet to celebrate how God has stricken the entire Earth for His tolerance of gay people. They are the spear point of the hate movement, and the more ludicrous their stunts, the more the spew indicts their more "I don't want to talk about them" camp followers.
The Phelpsisters are good at generating publicity, but they have no followers on their flaneuriades. It'd be interesting if any of the Big Media looked into who pays for the Westboro payrolls and travel budgets, but alas, it's not nearly such good video as old Fred struggling up on his pins with his bullhorns and a neck scarf to conceal his wattles. He's been hating since 1955, after all.
One striking thing: for all the SoBap and evangelical media hounds who populate the airwaves preaching the hate the sin, love the sinner stuff, not a one- ever- has denounced the Fredster and his clan as, well, a bit over the top. They are useful idiots.
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