I try to be big minded about our freedoms and understand that my freedoms must allow others I disagree with to say their thing.
But seriously. This bunch takes asshole to a new level.
As someone noted on Reddit (where I picked up the story) these guys must have a death wish if they follow through on this.
There are lots of people I disagree with to one degree or another but people like this bewilder me. It is utterly alien to my mind how some people can be this warped. Truly I think one could argue these people are insane in a literal, medically defined, way.
Given they are religious, devoutly so it seems, all I can say is there is a special place in Hell reserved for them.
I just can’t get worked up about them. Their message is so clearly and completely ridiculous that i can’t take them seriously; they seem almost like a parody of evil, like the Saddam Hussein character in the South Park movie.
What they thrive on is the attention they get. There’s never more than a couple of dozen of them at any of the events they picket, so if the media stopped blowing their influence out of all proportion, most people would be able to simply forget they existed. I understand that people attending funerals are rather more emotionally vulnerable than usual, but the best response to these fuckers is to just ignore them, not go off on them or commit acts of violence or retribution.
Would you say that if you were burying your young child and they were standing on the side spouting invective?
Free speech is fine but there are times and places for various types of speech. If not legally then certainly as a social matter.
Would you go to a funeral of some young woman you once dated that cheated on you and tell the parents what a cunt and whore you thought she was while at the funeral? I hope not. Technically you are free to do so but that doesn’t mean you should. If you want to tell people that pick another venue.
They aren’t typically graveside. They usually just hang around outside the cemeteries, but I would ignore them. Why on earth would I give a shit what they said or thought? I am incapable of taking them seriously, and would still not be justified in committing a crime against them in any case.
My understanding is that their real motivation in doing things like this is to provoke assaults which will allow them to sue for damages – that a lot of their income comes from filing lawsuits and getting settlements. They want people to attack them or try to vandalize their property. That’s their goal. These are trolls. You kill trolls by starving them. Assaulting them, or even acknowledging their existence is feeding them.
If your wife, inconsolable with grief at your daughter’s funeral, was being antagonized and further distressed at these folk would you care? Not to mention other attendees. Would you just tell them they are being unreasonable to be upset hearing the trolls spout vile things?
That all may well be true but they cause real harm with their activities. You can go all Ghandi on them but it is a lot to expect of people in these situations.
You may be able to be Zen about it but you are ignoring reality if you think everyone else will regardless if you think they should be.
Agree with the “meh” crowd here. They’re so over-the-top stoooopid, that it wouldn’t bother me a bit. Plus, they are careful to obey the law and stay away from the actual grave by the legally required distance. For example, the guy whose case went to the SCOTUS didn’t even know they had been there until after the funeral when he saw them on the TV news. They didn’t actually interrupt the funeral services.
A) I am dubious of people’s claims here that they’d be so “meh” about it if it actually happened to them. One of those things that from afar you shrug but when it happens to you, when you are deeply in grief over someone very close to you that you lost, that you’d be so relaxed about it.
B) Even if you are relaxed about it would you care if your wife or parents or other children were being visibly upset about it? If they were evincing obvious distress over it would that not bother you?
And yeah, distance can make a difference. If they stayed in their back yard at home and protested a funeral in Alaska who cares?
My sense is they try to be as intrusive as possible while being scrupulous to follow the law. If they can find a place to legally stand within 20 feet of the ceremony that’s where they’ll go. Other places they’ll be well out of earshot.
How far away would they have to stand for them to be able to picket? Or, are you saying they should not be able to voice their views anywhere?
Further… so a guy standing on a street corner yelling for people to actually riot would not be a clearer case of incitement to riot? Of is it that you couldn’t think of that case?
I hate this argument, and it pops up in all sorts of contexts on this board.
It’s basically saying, “Oh yeah? Well what if you weren’t thinking rationally!” Well, who cares what an irrational person thinks? We shouldn’t base policy on the emotions of hysterical people.
More specifically, it isn’t a response to the point that the Westboro people are acting within the law. Nobody is saying that emotionally vulnerable people might not be affected by the actions of the Church, just that there are reasons for allowing it anyway, or that those actions shouldn’t drive other parties to violence.
Society is an exercise in balancing one person’s rights against another. They often conflict.
Free Speech is not an absolute right. It is circumscribed in many ways. Slander is punishable. Yelling “Fire!” in a crowded theater when there is not fire is punishable. You do not have free speech in my house (well, you can say what you want but I can kick you out for saying it). Hell, they have even made “free speech” zones when people want to protest the President to be sure they are well out of the way (and for the record I despise that this has been allowed but it has been deemed kosher by the courts).
I do not care what the irrational person thinks and they can sit in their back yard and mumble about it till pigs fly for all I care.
However, when their speech starts affecting me a conflict of interest arises. Free speech is admired and revered but it is not absolute. At some point your free speech can go too far. We can quibble where the line should be drawn.
I doubt you’d be intellectual about it in an emotionally charged atmosphere where someone you cared for deeply was being buried and these folk were spewing their hatred at you.
But I dunno…maybe you are a saint. God bless you if you are. The rest of us mere mortals however are not so lucky.