I still suspect there is some type of an inside joke going on the the Fred Phelps camp. He started his career as a very prominent civil rights attorney fighting Jim Crow laws and he isn’t dumb by any measure. The only way that could be reconciled with what we see today is either that he is trying to make people with views similar to the ones he espouses look ridiculous or if he is just a professional troll. It is very strange but there has to be a put-on somewhere.
Trolled.
Fred Phelps is a Con Man says it all, I think.
If you read Fred’s screeds on the Westboro website, they’re just as nutty as those left behind by the shooter. The difference is, I guess, that Fred isn’t violent, and has managed to get a bunch of brainwashed nutjobs to agree with him. Probably because he’s couched his madness in religious terms.
Or maybe he really did whack out at some point.
Karma likes to procrastinate in the case of Fred Phelps.
When they were up here a few years ago for the funeral of a young serviceman killed in Iraq, the Boston Police bagpipe band took up positions right outside the church. Whenever Phelps’s crew got audible, they’d get treated to a verse or two of “Amazing Grace”.
The trick is to spin the Phelpses’ antics so as to make all Christian fundamentalists look bad.
Whoa. Late to the party here, but seriously, Oaky, as someone who generally doesn’t find you obnoxious, I’d suggest you don’t post while you drink. Especially if you’re drinking lead paint.
You don’t have to spin a thing. Just publicize it.
While it may not be a big deal to you or me I am willing to bet it’d be a big deal to the parents and family and friends of the 9-year old girl who is being buried after a senseless murder.
Without people who try to protect the funeral goers Phelps and clan will get as close as legally possible to be as intrusive as legally possible. I would be willing to bet if it was your little girl being buried and Phelps was in your way causing you and your wife added anguish you wouldn’t be so blasé about it.
Except, what good does all your predictable outrage over the latest antics of Westboro Baptist accomplish?
There are already laws that prohibit picketing within a certain distance. There are already laws against disturbing the peace.
What other actions or laws do you advocate? None? Are you headed to Arizona to counter-protest? Then what’s the point of complaining about this?
There’s no point in trying to tie this group to other Christian Fundamentalists, because they deliberately have cut themselves off from mainstream loony-right snake-fondling Bible-strokers. The people in this cult can’t be helped short of a Branch Davidian style compound storming. And so the best thing is to ignore them. Not because it will make them go away, but because paying attention to them doesn’t do any good.
In another discussion forum that I participate in, a couple of hard-right types have actually suggested something similar… that the antics of the Phelps clan are a plant by liberals/leftists/gays or whatever that are deliberately trying to cast Christian fundamentalists in a bad light. If that’s actually the case (not that i believe it for a minute) I’d have to say they’re doing their job quite well.
SS
I don’t have a cite but I read somewhere that they were picketing her funeral because her family is Roman Catholic, which I guess is somehow right up there with gays. :dubious: Can anyone explain that to me? (Seriously, I’m curious why they don’t like them).
WBC really has expanded their operation. Last July they showed up in San Diego to protest at Comic-Con. The results were hilarious. 
It has nothing to do with the dead person’s religion or beliefs. It’s because the funeral is going to be high profile. The picket is a deliberate troll, and the higher the profile of the funeral the bigger the troll.
This is why they switched from picketing gay funerals to picketing soldier’s funerals. The gay funerals didn’t generate enough outrage.
[pointless nitpick]It’s Hells Angels. Biker gangs don’t believe in apostrophes.[/pointless nitpick]
Notice the sign in the back? **"All Glory To the Hypno-Toad"**. 
I wonder why Fred’s clan doesn’t protest outside jail where Jared Loughner is caged?
You really don’t understand why they don’t do this? It isn’t obvious?
They don’t do it because picketing Loughner wouldn’t generate any outrage. Picketing his victims will.