Nothing on snopes yet.
I don’t see anything admirable or funny about the notion of using violence to stop people from saying things we don’t like. Why is the WBC’s good opinion so important to people anyway? It’s beyond me why people get so worked up about what idiots and trolls say. Letting the people like Fred Phelps get to you at all is dignifying an opinion that should be beneath contempt.
I think working with mentally ill people has given me some perspective on how to emotionally respond to speech. It’s not uncommon in my field to work with clients who will say outrageous things to try to get reactions from people - over the top racist things, grotesque sexual things, etc. After a while it goes in one ear and out the other. You stop seeing the content of the speech as relevant and just recognize its cause and motivation. You regard it impersonally. Getting upset about it becomes absurd, immature, a waste of time, and puts you on the same level as them. It’s like arguing with a 5 year old. You ignore the content of the speech, and set parameters on behavior. When they realize you don’t give a shit what they’re saying and aren’t going to take the bait, they generally give up on it.
Taking the WBC’s bait is giving them exactly what they want. They are chumming the water and we are the fish. See the chum for what it is. There are few people whose opinion I care less about that Fred Phelps. I see him as a child trying to get negative attention. Actually getting upset about him would make me as childish as he is.
As long as the WBC isn’t breaking any laws or truly disrupting funerals (which they are careful not to do, despite a lot of popular conceptions), they should simply be ignored. Not only is it the most mature response to them, it’s the response they hate the most.
Wow, I agree with Dio here. Disagree with them? Fine. Violence? False arrest? Unlawful detainment? No, those don’t go over so well with me.
One way to look at it is this - How would you feel if there were a group of militantly pro-gay people out there who protested the funerals of anti-gays, or people they deemed not pro-gay enough? Then you take that group and picture a small town deciding they weren’t going to put up with any of their shenanigans at the funeral of one of their local own, so they beat one up, hit others with trumped up charges, and used vehicles to detain yet others? Would that town be lauded as heroic?
Sometimes people behave in such vile and hateful ways that they deserve an asskicking. I can think of things I said in the bad old days for which, in retrospect, I should have gotten my jaw broken for.
I am dubious of the veracity of this story, but I can entirely understand why people would want to kick WBC’s ass. They are deliberately inflicting emotional pain on vulnerable people, and while violence isn’t the ideal way to respond to them, the impulse is only human.
I think back in 2002 or 2003, they protested at the Harvey Milk High School (a school primarily for LGBT youth) in the East Village.
They’re engaging in speech. Only speech. You think that it is sometimes ok to respond to speech with physical violence? Who decides which speech justifies breaking someone’s jaw?
I don’t buy that they’re inflicting emotional pain on the bereaved, by the way. They don’t disrupt funerals and they don’t make personal or direct statements to the bereaved. Not that there would be any law against it if they did (barring physical threats, or stalking).
Yup, you’re quite correct, and I wouldn’t do it. That said, I still like the idea.
I’m boarding Dio’s bus on this one. First of all, I’m not yet convinced that it really happened. Second, if it did, it reflects poorly on those that did it/let it happen. Third, this is playing right into the Phelpses’ hands.
Thanks for that info.
I know **Dio **and others on that side of the issue are right but then I look as Westboro as nearly as awful as the KKK & Neo-Nazis and I cannot condemn people disturbing their protest. I would never go as far as supporting violence but I was part of and still proud of a counter KKK demonstration as a 17 year old. I see no reason not to be able to shout them down and bring signs insulting to them or better yet supporting those they are protesting. I think Westboro probably crosses the line from protest and assembly and free speech into hate speech and should not actually be allowed to do as they do.
It is ass? 
I wrote that I said things in my youth that would have justified breaking my jaw, not that I’m willing to break someone else’s jaw over words. I’ll concede that breaking a bone is needless hyperbole, though; I’d have been wiser to write something like a punch in the schnozz.
Bereaved persons are quite vulnerable. There are things that persons of character simply do not do to them. Back when I was a retail sales manager, I was rightly reamed by the store manager for not taking into account the fact that one of my employees had just lost her father in dealing with her.
Pardon me? 
I doubt that anyone disagrees that the Phelpses are not of admirable character. That’s not really the point.
I am fully willing to be “less than perfect” and applaud any actions taken against Phelps and his ilk by anybody. Is it wrong to feel this way? probably. Is it hypocritical? Certainly. I really don’t care. To Hell with them all.
Here’s my two cent take on Free Speech.
You can be the biggest ass you want in what you think or feel and it should be legal (barring stuff like classified info, privacy stuff, slander, libel, stuff like that). Basically, there is no such thing as a “thought crime”.
How much of an ass society will allow you to be in public in HOW you disseminate that point of view is a different issue and it is IMO fine for lines to drawn.
In other words, you don’t believe in freedom of speech, then, as opposed to freedom of thought.
If you claim to have said things that justify someone physically assaulting you, then it follows that you do feel there are things one can say that justify being assaulted. To borrow Dio’s text, “that it is sometimes ok to respond to speech with physical violence.”
I think that’s one of the reason we have courts, and they won’t let me be a Judge.
Yes, you could put it that way. I think “speech” can be limited (though I certainly want those limits to be more on the we barely do it side rather than we do it will nilly side). To put a finer point on it, I don’t think the more literal “speech” aspect of the freedom is or should be absolute without any limits. Keep in mind in todays world there’s a dozen different ways to get your crazy assed ideas spread far and wide and discussed/considered/ridiculed.
No, it doesn’t. My standards for myself (now) are higher tha my standards for other people. I can forgive (or at least understand) why people may choose to do actions I forbid for myself.