Justices Roberts, Scalia, and Thomas are all wrong in their ruling on the reprehensible Westboro Baptist Church protests at military funerals. Alito alone is right. As he says, the First Amendment is "not a license for vicious verbal assault." The gay-haters at Westboro have plenty of free speech avenues open to them - books, articles, video, audio, TV, radio, public forums, internet postings, emails etc. But they do not have a right to "intentionally inflict severe emotional injury on private persons." The Supremes in this 8-1 decision have taken ugliness off its leash, turned it loose, and legitimized the most vile forms of public verbal attack. They have cried havoc and let slip the dogs of vitriol.
It's truly amazing!! ...
That Bryan Fischer thinks people will believe this crap!! OK, here comes the REAL reason for his rant:
The only upside here is that if the Supreme Court says it’s okay to say “God hates fags” - something that’s not even true, since the truth is the God loves homosexuals enough that he sent his only Son to die for them - then it certainly must be okay for students in a classroom, for public officials, and for radio talk show hosts to express reasoned and rational criticism of homosexual conduct without any kind of penalty whatsoever. We just need to tell heterophobes and Christophobes to get a grip, lighten up, back off, and read the Supreme Court’s Westboro ruling and go away.
A backhanded move if ever there was one.
And what exactly are "the dogs of vitriol"? A new group?
"Speech is powerful. It can stir people to action, move them to tears of both joy and sorrow, and - as it did here - inflict great pain. On the facts before us, we cannot react to that pain by punishing the speaker," Roberts said. "As a nation we have chosen a different course - to protect even hurtful speech on public issues to ensure that we do not stifle public debate."
"Public Debate" - has Fred Phelps and his clan ever had a "public debate" with America? Mindless hate can only debate with its opposite - meaningful love. And while Fred Phelps has always garnered the public's attention, America's "Church" has never really stepped up to the podium for that debate. We will hear an almost deafening chorus of "Although we abhor what Phelps does, we applaud the Court's decision."
A cowardly statement. A statement filled with relief. A statement filled with satisfaction. Free speech trumps hate speech.
Another chorus we will hear: "Phelps isn't really Christian. He certainly doesn't speak for us who are." We've heard that one before. Too little, too late: Phelps' rants have gotten notoriety for over 15 years, but few have ever actually chastised him in public. How many "faith-based" pickets have ever graced the outside of Westboro Baptist Church? How many have taken out ads in local or national papers denouncing Phelps' deeds? Not enough. When have the Baptist conclaves attempted to legally remove the name "Baptist" from Westboro Church? None that I know of.
America's denominations and non-denominational churches have always done more harm to America by NOT saying anything, by NOT doing anything. I saw the results of their indolence in the faces of AIDS victims streaming into San Francisco. It was definitely passive/aggressive behavior on the part of the Christian Right.
Interestingly, as of this writing, neither the FRC nor the AFA have commented on the decision. As of 8:30PM (EST), when I googled Phelps ruling response, the only ones to come up were:
“The Court’s decision properly and respectfully acknowledges the Snyder family’s grief. But it correctly holds that the response to that grief cannot include the abandonment of core First Amendment principles designed to protect even the most unpopular speech on matters of public concern.”
The response from the Phelps clan was predictably giddy and dire at the same time:
"A leader of the Westboro Baptist Church told reporters Wednesday that the congregation would "quadruple" the number of funeral protests in the wake of a ruling by the Supreme Court.
"Let me tell you what this church does: Shut up all that talk about infliction of emotional distress..,When you're standing there with your young child's body bits and pieces in a coffin, you've been dealt some emotional distress by the Lord your God"
As is sometimes the case with her, Sarah Palin got defiantly confused and combined two parts of the First Amendment in her tweet about the decision:
This coming from a woman who was "anointed" by a "witch hunter" from Uganda.
Speaking of freedoms, and what America will allow and not allow, the decision has paved the way for what I've called EMOTIONAL VANDALISM: that is the right to mar or disfigure in any way people's emotional state when faced with personal grief. While the Phelps clan believed that the funeral of Matthew Snyder was public, it was not: most invitations to funerals begin with the statement "For those wishing to pay their respects." The event of a funeral, whether lavish or plain, is the physical and emotional property of the deceased's loved ones presiding at the funeral. Again, the primary purpose of the Phelps' protest was not "public discourse," but to inflict true pain, true emotional distress on the loved ones. It was vicious and performed with malice-of-forethought. There are many churches in this country that have wished they could go as far as Fred Phelps, but have not dared to because of the possibility of misusing freedom of speech.
They no long need to fear: they will be free to disrupt solemn gatherings and inflict as much emotional pain on others as they want. This case will bring out an impertinent plethora of screamers with placards coming dangerously to violence - violence which they may want to incite for purposes of publicity.
The "Dead Zone" Proposal
I've long thought about how to handle Phelps and his kind, but the answer always came back: the most effective disciplinarian would be the Christian Right itself. OK. Fat chance. But please hear this one out. The Christian Right is very fond of boycotting businesses that commerce with or support "evil" groups or even specific people. The one glaring fault of their tactics is that they have never, ever used them to censure - or "shun" - one of their own. Of course they don't view Phelps as Christian, let alone one of their own. But perhaps it's time for self- monitoring to give them the credibility they lack. A strong stance against the Westboro Baptist Church would tell the rest of the country churches will do more than just pay lip service to "righteousness." Let them take a small area around the Phelps's physical sphere (say 5 miles) and warn all the businesses that they will be picketed if they continue to provide services to the Westboro Baptist Church. After all, like many things the Church disapproves of, if someone's actions are "legal", they can still be immoral. I'm sure this has been proffered before, but if someone like Rick Warren (who still needs some good PR and has said that "God tells us to do away with evil-doers") were to spearhead a protest and boycott of nearby grocery stores, banks, ATMs, drug stores, gas stations, clothing stores on religious grounds ("it's against our religion to give succor to the devil"), Westboro would find out what life is like without even minimum support. Afterwards, the boycott could be expanded to all services the Phelps could receive via the internet. They would be busy with lawsuits, of course, but that's part of the strategy: they couldn't "quadruple" their efforts if they're too busy with legal briefs.
It's time that America's religious community "quadruples" its actions in calling Fred Phelps immoral. And the churches of Topeka, KS must be tired of defending themselves, explaining to people that they are not hate groups.
It's all rather draconian, of course, this concept of creating a "Dead Zone" around Phelps, this update of traditional "shunning"* but is there a better idea? His family can't hold picket signs if he can't get them printed up (or get his printer serviced). He can't travel much anywhere without gas. Shirley Phelps-Roper would have to go miles outside the compound to shop for groceries.
One church's activism against another church on moral grounds is not new. The bickerings witnessed by the rest of the world are always seen as titanic clashes by their own congregations. They have been able, however to set those differences aside in favor of unison against what they think is an extreme evil. So isn't it about time churches set aside their consternation for gay marriage and abortion against a force doing evil under their very noses and insulting God by calling it "Christian?"
It is a challenge. And, dare I say it, a moral one at that.
If for reasons of indolence or cowardice this fight is not fought to a finish we may imagine what conditions will be like 500 years hence. Little of God’s image will be left in human nature, except to mock the Creator.
- Adolph Hitler, Mein Kampf
These last several weeks have brought out the worst and most unreasonable attitudes in people. It must have been the eclipse. Or the full moon. Or Gay Pride parades.
We've covered Lou Engle's attempts to eradicate homosexuality (by eradicating homosexuals) and, quite frankly, if people haven't gotten the message that this is a very, very dangerous man, then no amount of additional, honest but unrestrained rhetoric will seep in.
"Your honor, we believe the protesters were within their rights because they were nuts."
Before arguing a case before the Supreme Court, it is wise to submit a brief stating your client's case. It is not wise, however, to state that your client (also being your own family) was "hysterical" while exercising their right of free speech. The brief for the defendant in the case of Snyder v. Westboro Baptist Church is a case in point:
Phelps also argued that the church was engaging in public speech on a matter of public concern; that the funeral was a public event; and that the church did not assert provable facts but instead expressed “hyperbolic, figurative, loose, hysterical opinion.”
This is a case that will receive national attention simply because it is so emotional: do dimwitted right wingnuts have any right to spew insanely vile hatred anywhere near something as emotionally charged as a funeral? Remember, these were the same people (stretch of the imagination here) about whom The Laramie Project was based and who have a website featuring Matthew Shepherd engulfed in the flames of hell. The basic rule of humanity - that you NEVER insult widows or orphans or anyone connected to someone who has just died - is breached by people screaming how glad they are that the deceased are dead and rotting in hell!
If the Phelps clan wins, then every hate-filled group on the planet will be marching with misspelled signs (oops, the Teabaggers already do that). At the very least, their victory will encourage some people to be more uncouth and vile in their protests. But if they lose, the Christian Right will have a very real conundrum on their hands: someone they hate (Phelps is bad PR) will have gotten the heave-ho using their only real defence - free speech. Tony Perkins will have a hard time choosing puns for that article.
It may also be the first time "hate speech" has ever gone to trial on a national scale. Will the "man addicted to hate," the man banned from entering other countries, the man who bred a family of haters, the man who invented passages of the Bible for his own purposes of argument, will that man win?
I shudder at the thought.
Well, Ducky for DOMA!
Sorry, but whenever I see headlines by Tony Perkins, my prose starts to whack to the right. His bon mots, puns and witticisms are as toxic as the BP oil spill and I should be pitied for having to slog through them every day. When district court judge Joseph Tauro decided two cases against DOMA, Perkins had this to say:
Yesterday, a U.S. District Court did its best to preserve Massachusetts's reputation as the most liberal state in America on marriage. In Boston, a federal judge used his gavel to shatter the one law preventing a complete capitulation to same-sex "marriage" at the federal level: DOMA.
"... gavel to shatter." There's drama (which I like) and then there's melodrama. The characters in Perkins' plays all seem to have a large appetite for scenery.
In his decision, judge Tauro ...
...stated that he could not find “any identifiable legitimate purpose or discrete objective” for DOMA to treat same-sex couples differently.
In his piece, Klinghoffer recites the tired lie that Hitler was inspired by Darwin’s theory of evolution to force the sterilization of 400,000 people he judged inferior in the quest for racial purity. Klinghoffer, by the way, is a senior fellow of the Discovery Institute, an organization which has been trying to insert religion into public school science classrooms under the guise of intelligent design and anti-evolution lesson plans.
There are, of course, intelligent people in the evolution debate, but an irony lies in the fact that they don't seem to be on the side of intelligent design.
"Spoiled" Nevada Unemployed Have Sharron Angle Coming To Their Rescue!
Nevada U.S. Senatorial GOP candidate, Sharron Angle, the one who promised Harry Reid physical violence via the Second Amendment, has a new attack ad featuring Nevada's high unemployment rate. It would be good strategy if Angle herself hadn't herself said that people receiving unemployment benefits were "spoiled" and that she would have voted against any extension of those benefits. Sort of like saying "you don't deserve jobs, but I'm going to get them for you anyway!"
Prayers For Fear And Loathing
Sometimes it takes a foreign voice to give us a better perspective of how things really are: Matthew Harwood's article in Britain's Guardian, America's Paranoid Religious Right, gave a fairly good picture of Tony Perkins' Call 2 Fall nationwide 4th of July event. Harwood and his wife attended a Call 2 Fall service in a suburban DC church:
The experience was an insight into the cultural insecurities at work within the religious right and its Christian nationalism – the belief that the United States was, is, and for ever shall be a "Christian nation", utterly dependent on God for its success.
What Harwood experienced was what we, as Americans, have been experiencing on a constant basis: the "Christian nationalism" of which he writes has endeavored to put a strangle-hold on government and our daily lives. And in the process of strangulation, America has had to scream out the injustice:
What originally began as songs of love and sacrifice quickly rot into gay-bashing and the dangerous, yet indistinct talk of enemies everywhere. The room began to take on the darkness of Arthur Miller's Crucible more than the enlightenment of Thomas Jefferson's Declaration of Independence.
This article also begs the question: Just how many degrees of separation are these people from Fred Phelps? Certainly not six.
No People Evolving or Marrying Queers In Our State!
And last but certainly not least, America was treated to the latest GOP aberration: the Texas GOP platform, proving that since they don't believe in evolution, Texas GOPers haven't bothered to evolve.
To round out an astonishing set of policy positions, the Texas Republicans are against any regulations on gun ownership. Oh yeah, and they declare that this is a Judeo-Christian nation. And there should be capital punishment for rape convictions (like the good old days). Deep water oil drilling should resume in the Gulf of Mexico, employers should be able to discriminate, and the minimum wage law should be repealed, they say. No more birthright citizenship -- citizenship by birth would be limited to those born to a U.S. citizen. Finally, the Texas GOP assert that the U.S. should get out of the United Nations.
Of course, tthe Texas GOP may have simply stated which direction other extreme right-wingers in this country really want to move: not right, not left, certainly no forward, but - you guessed it - backwards.
An emotional vandalism case hits the big time. A Senate candidate runs a clueless attack ad. A repudiation of DOMA creates some serious melodrama. The 4th of July incites prayers of paranoia. An egregious link between Darwin and Hitler surfaces. yet again. A party platform takes its clues from the Dark Ages. Whatever brought all this on?
I dunno. But as surely as you can say "rabid right" we'll have more of the same.
Anger is an acid that can do more harm to the vessel in which it is stored than to anything on which it is poured.
Mark Twain
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