Last Sunday, Aug. 28th, on the way home from church, I passed by another local church near my home. Three guesses and the first two don’t count as to what local hate group was picketing there.
Of course it was the Westboro Baptist church, I live in Topeka!
One of their signs used the logo of Notre Dame, the pugnacious leprechaun, and instead of the words “Fighting Irish” it had “Raping Irish”. Hmmm, this seems like a clear cut case of copyright infringement to me, but how will Notre Dame ever know about it?
Unless, of course, yours truly decides to email them about it. In this day of Googling it wasn’t hard to find a contact email for the university. So I told them the exact time and location I saw the WBC picketing, described the sign, offered to get a picture if they wanted one, and gave my name and contact info.
The very next morning I had a reply from a Notre Dame spokesperson, thanking me for bring this to their attention. The spokesperson said “You can rest assured that we have not authorized the use of our logo for this vile purpose, and that we will be investigating.”
So now it remains to be seen if they contact either the WBC, the church that was being picketed, or myself again. Maybe the email was just a pat on the head and nothing will actually come of it. But I’d like to think that the WBC gets stung over this, in some way, shape or form.
Dammit, Baker. I despise Notre Dame. Especially during football season. And now I might have to say something nice about them…if and only if they stick it to WBC.
Meh. I hope they get a huge judgement, but still go 0-11 in football.
Yes, I’d love to see a huge judgement, but my best guess is that they will send the WBC a letter asking them to cease and desist, the WBC will comply*, and that will be that.
*After all, they have so many other signs, and a limited number of group members to carry them.
I was under the impression the that WBC always stays just this side of legal. I’m going to assume they did their homework on copyright infringement and are probably in the clear.
Eh. Don’t get me wrong, I despise the Westboro Baptist Church - but absent additional facts, it certainly sounds like they’re using the Notre Dame logo for satirical purposes (albeit incredibly assinine satire). They’re playing on the Notre Dame logo and slogan to engage in social/political commentary - that’s the essence of satire, and satire is almost always (indeed, I believe always) fair use.
I hope Notre Dame doesn’t act on this - much as I detest the WBC, I find it even more distasteful when litigation (or the threat of it) is used to curb unpopular speech. You may say, and I’d agree, that the WBC’s speech richly deserves to be unpopular - but when we allow legal impediments to unpopular speech, we set ourselves up for the wretched day when a bit of unpopular speech that actually has merit gets banned or sued out of existence or what have you. Warding off that day is worth enduring a thousand Westboro Baptist Church demonstrations.
There are several lawyers in the Phelps clan - one of them even got to argue in front of the Supreme Court on one of their cases. Which brought me as close as I ever could to envying a Phelps …
3¢ says the church was Catholic. Everyone knows all Irish are Catholic, and it being a Catholic church, there *must *be Irish in the congregation. Maybe the whole congregation is Irish :eek:, those impious, non-Baptist, death-wafer-eatingHEATHENS!
It’s a natural progression, if you’re fucking crazy.
Nope, they picket a lot of the Catholic churches, but the one they were at is Congregationalist. They’ve often been at my church(I’m Episcopalian) but weren’t last Sunday.
My father and I have a joke about the WBC. See, they split up to cover more places on Sunday mornings. Some groups have only half a dozen, others get a big crew. So we’ll call each other after church(dad and I differ in denomination) and say “Did you get the B-team or the varsity?”
It wasn’t about Notre Dame really, the leprechaun sign was actually one of their smaller signs. One of the big ones said"Your pastor rapes little children!"
Hmm, I wonder if “God hates fags” can be copyrighted or trademarked. (or whatever the proper legal term is)
It would be great if one could sue them every time they used that vile sign. And also endlessly halarious if some one other than the WBC trademaked that phrase.
According to their website they hold services at noon on Sundays, Central Time. That’s after most other churches have finished.
But they do publish a notice in the “Special Notices” section of the local newspaper, saying they have religious events every day from 7:00AM to 3:00PM. I think this is done to make it more difficult for folks to picket at the WBC. The local anti-picketing ordinance says you have to be a certain distance away from church property for a half hour before to a half hour after published, scheduled service times.
Back when I was attending one church, and helping another hold signs to counter the Phelps, they noticed me at both places and called me the church whore, “because I couldn’t decide where I wanted to do my spiritual fornication”
