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You are here: Home > Forum > A Place of Safety > General Talk > Hate speech gets a reprieve in court...
icon4.gif Hate speech gets a reprieve in court...  [message #65394] Wed, 02 March 2011 17:10 Go to next message
chrisjames147 is currently offline  chrisjames147

Really getting into it
Location: U.S.
Registered: November 2009
Messages: 630



If you have visited Brody's website today you will see this is the top story. It is all over the various news sites:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110302/ap_on_re_us/us_supreme_court_funeral_protests

The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled 8-1 that the Westboro Baptist Church hate-mongers have the right to say what they will. Their speech is protected by Constitutional rights.

I'm sure most of us have seen the images of Freddy Phelps and his followers picketing with those "God Hates Fags" signs, it turns my stomach. But the law will allow such hatred to exist in our society and I am not opposed to that.

The same law allows gay protestors to hold up signs that say "Christofacists ought to burn in Hell." Perhaps we will see more of that now...I hope so.

But now the First Ammendment on free speech is something Freddy can use to defend himself, but there are going to be consequences, I can see it coming.

It is one thing to denegrate gay people, quite another to picket funerals of soldiers who have died in battle. I oppose the wars in which they have died, but then they were free to join the military and face the consequences. But Freddy is playing with fire.

Like many nations, the U.S. has a tradition of military families and the service organizations are very fraternal societies. So standing up like Freddy and saying "Let's have more dead soldiers" at a family funeral is not going go unnoticed. No matter what the Supreme Court says, there are some very angry families out there, and they know how to use guns.

Words of hate have followed the gay community around for years, we are used to it, although we abhor those who speak to us in that fashion. Freddy and his family are standing out in the open, the perfect place for retaliation by someone driven over the edge by their hateful acts and words. It would be easy here in the U.S., guns are protected as well as speech.

I don't want to see the violence and I don't think it will ever come from the gay community. What the Westboro Church folks are doing is absurd, and although it inspires derision I think they are laughable, at least to me.

I am concerned about the young children Freddy puts on the front lines of his picketing. Let's hope the backlash of his actions don't endanger any lives but his own. I would be glad to build Freddy a cross on which he could be nailed, perhaps that is what he seeks, and that speaks to his lunacy. Does anyone doubt the man is crazy?



Age appears to be best in four things; old wood best to burn, old wine to drink, old friends to trust, and old authors to read. (Sir Francis Bacon 1561-1626)
icon4.gif Re: Hate speech gets a reprieve in court...  [message #65395 is a reply to message #65394] Wed, 02 March 2011 17:33 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Brody Levesque is currently offline  Brody Levesque

Really getting into it
Location: US/Canada
Registered: September 2009
Messages: 733



Since Chris apparently has some sort of phobia about linking to our site or giving Mark or myself credit for being the "accredited" Washington based journalists we are, and rather than have you all travel to Yahoo which is a mis-mash of wire service reports, some of which our firm generates, here is what Mark wrote earlier today:

By Mark Singer (Washington DC) MAR 2 | The Topeka, Kansas, based Westboro Baptist Church, which has a nationwide reputation for its angry, Anti-gay protests including protests staged at the funerals of deceased U.S. military personnel, won a significant victory this morning when the United States Supreme Court in an 8-1 vote, ruled that it had a right to promote what its church members call a "broad-based message" on public matters such as wars. This case was seen by legal experts as an issue testing the competing constitutional limits of free speech and privacy.

"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," Chief Justice John Roberts wrote. "On the facts before us, we cannot react to that pain by punishing the speaker."

Associate Justice Samuel Alito was the lone dissenting vote.

The case that touched off the issue and this ruling began when a father of U. S. Marine, Matthew Snyder, who was killed in combat in Iraq in 2006, sued Westboro, saying those protests amounted to targeted harassment and an intentional infliction of emotional distress on the families of deceased servicemembers.

Select members from the church decided to protest outside the Westminster, Maryland, church where Snyder's funeral was being held. Fred Phelps and other family members who make up most of the Westboro Baptist Church have picketed numerous U. S. military funerals to draw attention to their view that U.S. causalities in the wars in both Afghanistan and Iraq, are "God's punishment for the nation's tolerance of fags," according to church spokesperson Shirley Phelps-Roper.

Westboro pickets display signs saying "Thank God for dead soldiers," "You're Going to Hell," "God Hates the USA/Thank God for 9/11," as well as signs with slurs against Gays.

Albert Snyder won $11 million during that first trial, later reduced by a judge to $5 million which the church appealed.

The decision this morning by the Supreme Court upholds the ruling by the federal appellate court in Richmond, Virginia, which threw out the $5 million judgment saying said the Constitution shielded the church members from liability.

Westboro protest in suburban Hyattsville, Maryland. Photo courtesy of CNN

[Updated on: Wed, 02 March 2011 17:36]

Re: Hate speech gets a reprieve in court...  [message #65438 is a reply to message #65394] Sat, 12 March 2011 11:09 Go to previous message
saben is currently offline  saben

On fire!

Registered: May 2003
Messages: 1537



I think it's great that free speech is being protected.

The law doesn't allow hatred to exist in society. The hatred would always exist.

The law just allows people to air their dirty laundry in public so we can see them for the bigots they are.



Look at this tree. I cannot make it blossom when it suits me nor make it bear fruit before its time [...] No matter what you do, that seed will grow to be a peach tree. You may wish for an apple or an orange, but you will get a peach.
Master Oogway
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