Fred Phelps / Phelps Family / Westboro Baptist [mega-merged]

[Laufey]

Re: Picketing the Funerals of Dead Children!!?? Really Westboro Baptist Church? Realty??!!

Some of you are still speaking like free speech is complete in the US and that it can't be regulated.

Because of that I will post this again:

The existence of free speech zones is based on U.S. court decisions stipulating that the government may regulate the time, place, and manner—but not content—of expression.

So the government can't forbid them from expressing their opinions in general. What it can do is forbid them from doing it at the time and place of a funeral... even if it is "just" in a public place nearby.

 

[SLOPPYSECONDS]

Re: Picketing the Funerals of Dead Children!!?? Really Westboro Baptist Church? Realty??!!

is no free speech anywhere on planets plots awsum lands

cause medievel is so putrid is da days solds a ons millions wot no figa they is not in medievel days

wake up

there go

thankyou

world leadurs yea ya zips opens fa eons

 

[gsdx]

Re: Picketing the Funerals of Dead Children!!?? Really Westboro Baptist Church? Realty??!!

I believe that what is right and good for one nation is not right and good for another.

I was differentiating between 'offensive speech' and 'harmful speech'. I wasn't saying anything about 'right' and 'good'. Given your definition and support, Americans will NEVER solve the 'bully' problem if it's their right to bully people. Hate speech does mental harm. It's not a 'sticks and stones' thing. Hate speech makes young people put a gun to their head and pull the trigger. Hate speech makes young people jump off bridges or buildings. Hate speech makes young people chow down on a bottle full of drugs. Hate speech makes young people tie a rope around their necks and hang themselves in their closet.

Like it or not, hate speech kills. It is legalised murder.

Hate speech denies gay Americans from many basic rights granted to others, not to mention the right to marry the person you love. Your rights are trodden upon. Your rights don't matter. The haters prevent you from enjoying your life the way your straight friends enjoy it. Your rights don't mean shit to haters.

Canada has hate speech laws. It's not censorship. It's equalisation. It makes the people who hate and the people they hate equals under the law. No one can tramp on our constitution and hide behind it the way Phelps does. Even more, nobody can profit by it the way Phelps does.

I congratulate our government for standing up against the bullies and telling them they can't get away with it anymore. It makes life a whole lot more pleasant and worth living.

 

[Ram]

Re: Picketing the Funerals of Dead Children!!?? Really Westboro Baptist Church? Realty??!!

Are we really surprised? They have been doing this for years and to people who don't deserve it. I doubt they draw any lines at anything.

 

[bankside]

Re: Picketing the Funerals of Dead Children!!?? Really Westboro Baptist Church? Realty??!!

I've said before that I'd gladly have them at my funeral; it would mean I've been doing something right.

 

[gsdx]

Re: Picketing the Funerals of Dead Children!!?? Really Westboro Baptist Church? Realty??!!

Many communities have enacted laws establishing a perimeter the Phelps can't cross when picketing. If it was up to me, I would keep them one mile away. To me, this nullifies any harm their speech might cause.

Isn't that what is called 'censorship'? That is preventing Phelps from getting their message across to the people for whom it is intended.

You cannot support their right to free speech and then deny them of it.

 

[Laufey]

Re: Picketing the Funerals of Dead Children!!?? Really Westboro Baptist Church? Realty??!!

Well funerals are for the living, not the dead.

 

[zoltanspawn]

Re: Picketing the Funerals of Dead Children!!?? Really Westboro Baptist Church? Realty??!!

I was differentiating between 'offensive speech' and 'harmful speech'. I wasn't saying anything about 'right' and 'good'. Given your definition and support, Americans will NEVER solve the 'bully' problem if it's their right to bully people. Hate speech does mental harm. It's not a 'sticks and stones' thing. Hate speech makes young people put a gun to their head and pull the trigger. Hate speech makes young people jump off bridges or buildings. Hate speech makes young people chow down on a bottle full of drugs. Hate speech makes young people tie a rope around their necks and hang themselves in their closet.

Like it or not, hate speech kills. It is legalised murder.

Hate speech denies gay Americans from many basic rights granted to others, not to mention the right to marry the person you love. Your rights are trodden upon. Your rights don't matter. The haters prevent you from enjoying your life the way your straight friends enjoy it. Your rights don't mean shit to haters.

Canada has hate speech laws. It's not censorship. It's equalisation. It makes the people who hate and the people they hate equals under the law. No one can tramp on our constitution and hide behind it the way Phelps does. Even more, nobody can profit by it the way Phelps does.

I congratulate our government for standing up against the bullies and telling them they can't get away with it anymore. It makes life a whole lot more pleasant and worth living.

If you think your posts are not saying anything about what is right and good you are confused.

I'm glad you are passionately happy with your Canadian laws.

Plainly, I think for Americans similar laws represent an overbearing restriction that more moderate regulation can address.

- - - Updated - - -

Isn't that what is called 'censorship'? That is preventing Phelps from getting their message across to the people for whom it is intended.

You cannot support their right to free speech and then deny them of it.

This is a dull idea.

 

[gsdx]

Re: Picketing the Funerals of Dead Children!!?? Really Westboro Baptist Church? Realty??!!

For the record, Canada was involved in this tragedy:

100 gather in Winnipeg to remember former resident, killed in Newtown shooting

WINNIPEG - About 100 people held candles on a sub-zero Winnipeg night Monday to remember one of the victims of the mass shooting at a Connecticut elementary school.

With prayers, aboriginal drumming, and silent reflection, the crowd paid tribute to Ana Marquez-Greene, a six-year-old girl who spent three years in Winnipeg along with her family before they moved south earlier this year.

http://ca.news.yahoo.com/100-gather-winnipeg-remember-former-resident-killed-newtown-024939612.html

 

[Kulindahr]

Re: Picketing the Funerals of Dead Children!!?? Really Westboro Baptist Church? Realty??!!

^Asking for reasons is merely rational.

It's not "self-evident" to many that extremely offensive speech should be prohibited.

This looks to me like a failure in reasoning applied to many topics -- a thinking that because something is a problem, or a good thing, in one set of circumstances then it's got to be the same everywhere. Just as with the old bit of yelling "Fire!" in a crowded theater, which doesn't mean no free speech should be allowed, proscriptions on abusive speech under special circumstances isn't a limitation on speech everywhere. And when it's an instance of protecting other constitutional principles, it's merely common sense.

Prohibiting abusive speech on a college campus would be an unconscionable attack on free speech. Prohibiting it for funerals is merely civilized protection of privacy.

 

[bankside]

Re: Picketing the Funerals of Dead Children!!?? Really Westboro Baptist Church? Realty??!!

Again, it bears repeating that most memorials occur on private property. There is no right of access by lunatics to private property.

 

[Kulindahr]

Re: Picketing the Funerals of Dead Children!!?? Really Westboro Baptist Church? Realty??!!

Picketing is the very definition of "freedom of speech."
. . . .
We have no protections in America against "harmful" speech. People speak hurtful things all the time. Emotional distress is no gold standard of censorship. The debates in Congress and Parliament would quickly be outlawed if that were so.

This is more universalization of a concept, stretching something to cover all situations without exception. I have religious freedom, but that freedom does not extend to animal sacrifices. There is freedom to picket, but that does not meant there is freedom to intrude on people's private and solemn moments.

And BTW, America has laws against verbal assault, and not merely in domestic abuse situations.

Because it is so closely aligned with religion, and because religious liberty was an important component of early political thought in the U.S., no matter how unfair or unbalanced, it will ever play a more important role here than in the U.K. and its dominions.

Religious freedom is not the freedom to persecute others, especially in religious moments.

Americans can and do have the right to say offensive things, especially political things, within our borders. The question of whether they are harmful to the emotions and psyches of others is up to the listeners to decide whether to give another person that power emotionally.

This might be reasonable if we were all androids without emotion chips. But it's divorced from the reality of human life.

 

[Kulindahr]

Re: Picketing the Funerals of Dead Children!!?? Really Westboro Baptist Church? Realty??!!

Seems to be a strangely ineffective strategy for building a profile.
The idea of protesting other peoples' funerals seems to only to appeal to the sensibilities of people within the church. They act as a cult, makes it hard to understand why they want the attention of the outside world.

They're proving to themselves that they're God's righteous ones.

 

[Kulindahr]

Re: Picketing the Funerals of Dead Children!!?? Really Westboro Baptist Church? Realty??!!

Or, I could hold the view that it will be necessary for all churches to perform gay marriages, or ordain divorced people, but I would be irrelevant not because my causes were unjust, but because my view of the role of church and state would be less than marginal in America if I believed that.

Except that religious freedom is protected because anything else is unjust -- so under the Constitution, the reason your view would be irrelevant is because it is unjust.

 

[bankside]

Re: Picketing the Funerals of Dead Children!!?? Really Westboro Baptist Church? Realty??!!

Free countries generally respect a right of peaceable assembly. If that is to be meaningful, it includes the right to not have to assemble unwillingly with those who do not share the aims of the assembly. I would set this principle above any discussion of free speech or hate speech, because I believe it is more basic and more relevant to the rights of the bereaved family members: they can choose to assemble in memoriam without the Westboro Circus.

So, whilst I would welcome the Westborosians as a form of entertainment for any of my mourners, I don't see why they have to be permitted to come within 500 metres of any memorial event.

 

[Kulindahr]

Re: Picketing the Funerals of Dead Children!!?? Really Westboro Baptist Church? Realty??!!

Pussy riot is a Russian band, from Russia. Russia doesn't have "freedon of speech". You are imposing your American ideals on a foreigners. Again.

They're not "American ideals". The rights protected by the Bill of Rights can be traced back a lot farther than that, for example into Scotland, ancient Gaul, Rome, and Attic Greece.

Besides, his argument is a pragmatic one not restricted by "ideals".

 

[bankside]

Re: Picketing the Funerals of Dead Children!!?? Really Westboro Baptist Church? Realty??!!

They're not "American ideals". The rights protected by the Bill of Rights can be traced back a lot farther than that, for example into Scotland, ancient Gaul, Rome, and Attic Greece.

Besides, his argument is a pragmatic one not restricted by "ideals".

Quite right.

For a quick reference of all the rights we enjoy, they are codified here in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights:

http://www.un.org/en/documents/udhr/index.shtml

 

[Ram]

Re: Picketing the Funerals of Dead Children!!?? Really Westboro Baptist Church? Realty??!!

“Freedom of speech does not protect you from the consequences of saying stupid shit.”
― Jim C. Hines

 

[zoltanspawn]

Re: Picketing the Funerals of Dead Children!!?? Really Westboro Baptist Church? Realty??!!

This looks to me like a failure in reasoning applied to many topics -- a thinking that because something is a problem, or a good thing, in one set of circumstances then it's got to be the same everywhere. Just as with the old bit of yelling "Fire!" in a crowded theater, which doesn't mean no free speech should be allowed, proscriptions on abusive speech under special circumstances isn't a limitation on speech everywhere. And when it's an instance of protecting other constitutional principles, it's merely common sense.

Prohibiting abusive speech on a college campus would be an unconscionable attack on free speech. Prohibiting it for funerals is merely civilized protection of privacy.

Yes, and only for clarity's sake, my post was an attempt to elicit rationale from another member and so I wrote "to many" and not "to me." I've never argued that there should be no regulation of speech; though that is a good place to begin.

By the way, you will note that you provided a rationale for what you characterize as common sense.

 

[Kulindahr]

Re: Picketing the Funerals of Dead Children!!?? Really Westboro Baptist Church? Realty??!!

Free countries generally respect a right of peaceable assembly. If that is to be meaningful, it includes the right to not have to assemble unwillingly with those who do not share the aims of the assembly. I would set this principle above any discussion of free speech or hate speech, because I believe it is more basic and more relevant to the rights of the bereaved family members: they can choose to assemble in memoriam without the Westboro Circus.

So, whilst I would welcome the Westborosians as a form of entertainment for any of my mourners, I don't see why they have to be permitted to come within 500 metres of any memorial event.

500 meters isn't a bad figure, though I'd want to know how far they can be and still be heard by the mourners. The right to privacy has to trump free speech in this situation; I'd even argue that the nature of a funeral generates a "sacred space" where it is no more appropriate to be offensive than in someone else's synagogue or church meeting hall.