Even lunatics have rights
Opinion from a Western Voices reader
Forget the Church of Satan. If the Devil had a church, it would be something like the Westboro Baptist Church, nationally famous for their provocative protests against the rampant http://www.wvwnews.net/story.php?id=2254 agenda. With picket signs celebrating the death of US soldiers as the Wrath of God on a degenerate America that legalizes and even celebrates the homosexual “lifestyle,” Westboro Baptists appear at funerals of slain servicemembers and other victims of tragedy to, so they claim, prophetically warn America about its impending doom. But their effect is the opposite of what they intend.
Westboro Baptist’s “God Hates Fags” campaign is so well known because the mainstream media lovingly pushes it, publicizes it and follows its every move. After all, the media is foursquare behind the drive to atomize America, http://www.wvwnews.net/story.php?id=2549 is made to look “mainstream.” We see the same logic at work when massive attention is paid to similarly wacko groups around the issue of immigration and anything else having to do with race, and it’s no surprise to find that many such groups are led or financed by their supposed enemies.
The “God Hates Fags” campaign allows leftists and liberals to claim a moral high ground, often getting so bent out of shape by the spectacle of the Westboro Baptists picketing and jeering outside funerals that they sound as self righteous as the Westboro Baptists themselves, even quoting scripture chapter and verse and making moralistic theological http://www.wvwnews.net/story.php?id=2155 in a pod.
And those same censorious partisans of political correctness, who flout the will of the people and push http://www.wvwnews.net/story.php?id=644 they are.
In fact, Topeka’s Westboro Baptist is a tiny organization made up almost exclusively of members of the Phelps extended family. Apart from their view on homosexuals (which were shared by most people until fairly recently), their other views are monotonously conventional: witness the photograph above, evidence of their stance on interracial marriage, which they share not only with most churches today, but with the ruling elite they claim are leading America straight to hell. The WBC even has a “wigger” rap video, and quote scripture which they claim denounces “racism.”
Professional witch hunting “watchdog” groups, who profit from “finding” and “exposing” (and often constructing fake) politically incorrect dissent, have searched high and low to be able to put other “hatreds” on the charge sheet of the Westboro Baptists, all to no avail. In fact, in feeling that the Illuminati are in league with the Jesuits and the Moose Lodge for nefarious ends, the Westboro Baptists, who have been part of an Israeli fundraising campaign, are no more extreme than other “Christian Zionist” http://www.wvwnews.net/story.php?id=4025.
Westboro Baptist scores an own goal on behalf of its supposed enemies, but the issues are so serious that they effect us all. Which is why we should be concerned about some new developments with their group and, at least at heart, come to their defense, DESPITE them and the damage they do to the cause they claim to defend. Because the Westboro Baptists are about to be liquidated by a devious legal stratagem that threatens all dissidents in America.
While those who control the media are loath to kill the goose laying the golden propaganda egg, the Westboro Baptists have seriously ticked off a lot of ordinary people, who are unaware of the purpose to which the Phelpsian fanatics are put. Indeed, the desired effect of all the free coverage, intended to emotionally stampede people into embracing the “gay agenda,” has really only stoked extreme hatred among ordinary people against a group that so arrogantly violates the sanctity of funerals and shared grief. Among the funereal targets of the Phelps crew: numerous Iraq/Afghan war dead, the five little Amish girls killed in a school shooting rampage (calling them “whores” who are “burning in hell”), and child victims of accidents.
The understandable effect of this behavior of the Westboro Baptists has developed in some places into a dangerous mob mentality, a problem America has had, off and on, since the days of the Salem witches. What usually happens is an unpopular group, scapegoated by a demagogue or by demagogic media, is victimized by larger society, spurred on by righteous indignation, and often supported by government. Historical victims are countless, among them the Quakers of colonial days, Revolutionary War Loyalists, the Shakers at the height of the Revolution and War of 1812, the Mormons, Southerners, Germans, Japanese and Italians, Communists, the Branch Davidians and, today, those labelled “racists.” In these witch hunts, not only is reason suspended, but justifications are made to circumvent the law and abrogate constitutional guarantees, usually in the name of some “emergency.” We have seen similar behavior recently, with the government itself as the mob, with such atrocities as the Patriot Act, the http://www.wvwnews.net/story.php?id=4045 and various other measures, among them highly questionable prosecutions, carried out in the heat of passion in the “emergency” of the “war on terror.”
Mark Twain captured the phenomenon of the American mob mind in Huckleberry Finn: “The pitifulest thing out is a mob; that’s what an army is–a mob; they don’t fight with courage that’s born in them, but with courage that’s borrowed from their mass, and from their officers. But a mob without any MAN at the head of it is BENEATH pitifulness.”
The Westboro Baptists are about to be made victims of a headless mob, using a court. The Baptists have long been subjected to selective arrest, on grounds that could be called petty harassment, but now they may be victimized by losing a lawsuit characterized by some as a private “strategic lawsuit against public participation.” Such SLAPP suits aim to bankrupt and neutralize dissident groups or persons using some legal pretext in pursuit of the real goal of silencing the target. These SLAPP suits amount in practice to theft under the color of law. Often the victim is so unpopular that people who would otherwise condemn such actions and the precedents they set excuse them because the target is so odious.
A man named Albert Snyder sued the Westboro Baptist Church after they picketed the 2006 funeral of his son, Marine Lance Cpl. Matthew A. Snyder, who had died in a vehicle accident in Anbar province, Iraq. The senior Snyder’s pain was clear: “They turned this funeral into a media circus and they wanted to hurt my family,” he said. “They wanted their message heard and they didn’t care who they stepped over. My son should have been buried with dignity, not with a bunch of clowns outside.” Snyder filed a complaint alleging “intentional infliction of emotional distress” as well as “invasion of privacy,” which church members defended on First Amendment freedom of speech grounds. There was little surprise when the defendants lost and were assessed a penalty of $8 million. An appeals court lowered the penalty to a total of $5 million.
In the latest news, a federal judge in Maryland approved liens on the Westboro Baptist Church sanctuary and a business owned by the Phelps family, meaning the property will be sold if an outstanding appeal fails, as it will. The Phelps operation will then face bankruptcy, but the defendants will still have to pay the $2.1 million in punitive damages awarded by the jury, and which federal bankruptcy law doesn’t allow them to default on.
So we have the spectacle of a church being bankrupted and destroyed because their political and social beliefs have provoked a mob mentality and are unfashionable for those civil libertarians who under other circumstances would be expected to defend them. One doesn’t have to agree with the tactics or beliefs of the Westboro Baptist Church to see how dangerous this is for anyone who holds opinions that are deemed to be unpopular or dangerous to the status quo.
Suppression of dissidents is very common in America under color of law. Unreasonable legal actions are launched, groups are forced to “pay for” police protection, or are “investigated” by special interest groups, the media or the police on bogus grounds. As America continues to balkanize we should all expect increased repression, and see the targeting of anyone for their beliefs is a threat to us all.