I’m thinking a speaker system with a “gay phone sex” spiel describing the speaker’s washboard abs and eight-inch cock and muscular ass, heavily interspersed with “You know you want it, Fred…” personalization.
“All I know is I heard he was kinda feelin’ down, talkin’ ‘bout endin’ it all…”
My POV is that it would be evil to *wish *him harm, but *not helping *is fine.
If you did find yourself in a situation where literally “lifting a finger” would save him, plenty of Good Samaritan Laws say you don’t have to. In Minnesota and Vermont you might be fined, but again that’s only if there were witnesses and someone actually wanted to press charges.
Grace Church Topeka ?
Then what’s the point in picketing?
I agree with a previous link, which essentially said that they don’t believe anything they say, and the whole point to picketing is to create potential lawsuits, so they can sue a police dept. for denying a permit to picket, or an individual or landowner for “abuse”. They are all lawyers, and get their income from lawsuits.
It appears that they have agreed not to picket in exchange for airtime from two radio stations. Link
Since when do we negotiate with terrorists? Disgusting.
Someone needs to show up with signs saying God loves everyone, even you.
While you are praying, perhaps you can ask for him to stop being hateful before he dies? Like when it would do some good?
There are just way too many spots in the New Testament where it says things like:
Don’t judge others
Don’t pretend to be better than others
Don’t show off when you are being righteous
and I think there are a few things along the lines of:
Love your enemies
God loves everyone
Maybe he reads a different version than I do.
More practice, less preach
Crap! I’m judging right now!
Well, first of all, i don’t expect too much doctrinal consistency from Phelps and his troop.
But this has always been a thorny issue for Calvinists. After all, if your salvation is not at all dependent upon your own actions, what are your motives to be a good person and obey God’s laws? Well, your motive is that God requires obedience, whether or not it brings salvation. Massachusetts Puritan John Cotton, in his famous “Treatise on the Covenant of Grace,” noted that, just because obeying God’s law would not determine the fate of your eternal soul, you were nonetheless obligated to be obedient.
The Puritans were interesting folk, because they were Calvinists, but they were also intelligent and intellectual people who couldn’t quite square their belief in predestination with their belief in human free will and human reason. The idea that rational man could have no influence over his own salvation, and that indeed he could never even be sure whether he was saved or damned, was very troubling to them, and their attempts to walk a line between faith and reason made them a rather anxious lot.
But then if I’m going to hell anyway, why bother? If I am doomed anyway, no matter what I do or don’t do, I may as well just go wild and have my “fun” while I can.
Yeah, I can see where they would have a concern, since it doesn’t seem to make much sense.
Apparently either whatever angel they still hath served or else some well placed death threats have made them cancel at least one of the picketings:
And if that were to happen he should be charged with stealing a bullet, and the family made to pay restitution.
Eh, Fred Phelps and his bunch are either mentally ill or daemon-possessed (this coming from a Christian who usually are skeptical of claims of daemonic possession).
Fred is 81 and that’s in Crazy Years which you’d think would add a decade or so, so he can’t last forever. I wonder if the family is going to continue to band together as a Crazy Roadside Cannibal Clan when he dies or if they’ll go their own ways and maybe let a couple of the younger generation have something remotely akin to normal lives. Shirley would seem the most likely successor in some ways, but Fred’s a misogynist who encourages wife beating so I doubt she would be.
His son Nate, an apostate from the group and born again atheist, is peddling a memoir. I hope it sells because if it’s at all well written- and no trouble getting ghost writers if Nate can’t write- it could be a great book.
Better Phelps on some radio station than picketing a young girl’s funeral. Yeah, it’s negotiation with an asshole, but sometimes it’s for the better, I say.
Unlike America we have laws against hate speech in Canada. These idiots could find themselves in some deep shit. And that’s exactly how I hope it works out, to tell you the truth.
Phelps is using the “outside world as the enemy” tactic to control his acolytes. He is a psychopath who must control his followers anyway he can.
Government have always used evil outsiders [rightly or wrongly] to convince us of the need for insulation. He is just using a very old and proven control method.
That’s something of a stretch