Tag Archives: Westboro Baptist Church

To Smite or Not to Smite Westboro, That is the Question


Posted by Omnipotent Poobah
SMITE THEM GOD, SMITE THEM - Westboro's God Hates Fags campaign is an embarrassment to humanity. Yet they have the right to make idiots of themselves. Even if we do want to smack them down.

SMITE THEM GOD, SMITE THEM - Westboro's God Hates Fags campaign is an embarrassment to humanity. Yet they have the right to make idiots of themselves...even if we do want to smack them down.

There are few things as repugnant as Westboro Baptist’s “God Hates Fags” screeds at military funerals. It’s an understandable impulse to want to thump these yahoos to within an inch of their putrid lives, but if you do, expect to do some time in the pokey. Free speech is allowed, violence isn’t.

The Supreme Court will soon hear the question of whether free speech protections cover Westboro’s lunatic fringing. It’ll be interesting to see how it goes.

Cases like this pose a constitutional dilemma. For the most part – save the whole “shouting fire in a crowded theatre” question – I favor letting people say what they want. Free speech doesn’t mean free to anyone I don’t think is stupid, rude, or just plain wrong. It means free…for everyone…even if they are ignorant pootieheads.

Defending the Rights of the Asshatted
I recently defended the right of gay rights opponents to say what they want and received some not unexpected fallout for my trouble. Several commenters took a zero-tolerance line – they said it’s never OK to oppose anything as important as gay rights…period. However, you could just as easily turn that around to say it’s never OK for Republicans to speak either. No matter how much I fantasize about stopping their unending, infernal chants of NO it would be clearly unconstitutional and just plain wrong. The offense in Westboro’s case owes a lot to where you and your opponents stand.

The Constitution presupposes there is someone on either side who is rational and feels as strongly about others’ rights as they do their own. It assumes these people will speak and not poke each other in the nose. It assumes that words don’t cause permanent damage regardless of how insulting and wrong you may feel they are.

But cases like the Westboro Association of Pinheads’ picketing the funerals of innocent, grieving bystanders who have nothing to do with their “issue” seems to go a step farther. Is this the point where the right of grieving families and friends should be protected from a group if nimrods who have no respect for others? After all, my general rule is that exercising your right is OK as long as you don’t impinge on someone else’s right to exercise theirs. Not respecting their rights takes you one step closer to their values, not farther away.

GOD, ARE YOU LISTENING? - God needs a better PR person on Earth. Fred Phelps and his ilk are damaging God's brand.

GOD, ARE YOU LISTENING? - God needs a better PR person on Earth. Fred Phelps and his ilk are damaging God's brand.

The Slippery Slope
My first impulse is to squash them like the vermin they are. However, in the back of my mind I keep hearing a constitutional voice whispering that depriving Westboro of their idiotic fun may be the first in a series of slip slides down a mucky slope.

Who gets to make these decisions? What are the criteria? How much does asshatery cost per pound when compared with the cost of individual freedom? It’s too simple to just say STFU and be done with it. As clear-cut as it may appear, it’s anything but.

As with many issues, there isn’t a good black and white answer and I don’t profess to have one. At the end of the day, the Supremes will make a decision. In all likelihood, Congress will pass more legislation and the Supremes will have to retest the new version of Constitutional right and wrong. No doubt, this question will come back up repeatedly, if for no other reason than the Westboro loons are unlikely to stop until their God snatches up the last of them and casts them into a lake of fire. This is the juncture between the letter of the law and its common sense application.

The whole sordid affair makes me long to go back to my original thought and thump the stupid bastards to within an inch of their crapulent lives.

But that’s not Constitutional either.

Related articles

Reblog this post [with Zemanta]

Religion as a Foreign Concept


Posted by Omnipotent Poobah
RIGHT RELIGION OR RELIGIOUS RIGHT? - Using religion as part of the US foreign policy toolkit is a good idea in a world full of religion as long as we guard against attempts to introduce religion into our own government.

RIGHT RELIGION OR RELIGIOUS RIGHT? - Using indigenous religions as part of the US foreign policy toolkit is necessary as long as we resist attempts to introduce religion into our own government.

A new study from the Chicago Council on Foreign Affairs says US foreign policy is being weakened by a strong focus on, “uncompromising western secularism”. A religion-neutral foreign policy is a tough sell in a secular America, but it’s essential if we are to deal with countries that are, or near, total theocracies. And even as an atheist, I can see they’re right.

Dealing with countries like Iran, Afghanistan, and Israel without accounting for the intertwining of government and religion is a recipe for disaster. The past two administrations have made some headway on beefing up this component of foreign policy and should be commended by the religious and atheists alike. However, foreign policy is supposed to help advance the nation’s goals – goals that according to the US Constitution should be free and open, unlike the goals of a theocracy like Iran.

But as with most things, there’s a slippery slope that must be tread lightly to avoid even worse problems than simply having religion as part of the foreign policy mix. Although the Council is comprised of all major faiths, much of the public, many in Congress, and the administrations themselves focus almost exclusively on Christian religious principles. In essence, they use Christianity as a synonym for religion.

Using religion as a tool to solve global comfilcts involving theocracies doesn't have to be incompatible with our own separation of church and state.

Using religion as a tool to solve global conflicts involving theocracies doesn't have to be incompatible with our own separation of church and state.

For example, Bill Clinton’s nominee for Ambassador to the Netherlands was kiboshed in Congress because he was gay, a frequent Christian strawman and grounds Christians ofttimes use to defeat anything they can reasonably or unreasonably pull into the Christian moral sphere. Even liberals were pleased by the last administration’s efforts to increase AIDS funding to Africa, but not so pleased when the aid went only to countries that promised not to do abortions. That restriction, driven by religious beliefs, deprived many of treatment on a continent rife with the disease and weakened, what was at the core, a good policy?

It’s not as though religions don’t already have some experience with mixing different religions, particularly in dictatorships. Christians work hard to convert the masses, whether they be Islamic, Buddhist, or simply another variation of Christianity than their own. Some of the target flock may go along; others may just rise up and create a Christian martyr. This is the slippery slope in action.

For our foreign policy to best succeed, we all need to understand the role religion plays in many cultures. We need to make sure religion, to the extent it makes sense, is not just a way to transmit Christian ideals to non-Christian nations. We need to understand that not all Muslims are crazies dressed in Brooks Brothers’ suicide suits any more than not all Christians are like the screed screaming Westboro Baptist Church crowd. The issue here is not which religion to use in our policy; it is the freedom for diplomats and the countries they serve in to use the religion at hand to accomplish America’s goals.

Goals like the freedom to practice or not practice religion as you please.

Related articles by Zemanta

Reblog this post [with Zemanta]

Randomness: God Stuff Style


Posted by Omnipotent Poobah
A NIGHT TO LAST FOREVER - And I though my 1973 electric blue, crushed velvet tux was something special.

A NIGHT TO LAST FOREVER - And I though my 1973 electric blue, crushed velvet tux was something special.

God Stuff

Proof  Capitalists Don’t Know What the Hell They’re Doing

  • Makers said there was even a dutch oven cooking method involving diners putting the pouches in their anal cavities.
  • Somehow, this commercial doesn’t make me want to go out and have someone jab me a zillion times with a sharp-ass needle.
  • I wonder if you could take this off your taxes?
  • I’m thinking these won’t sell well in the projects where they have ample supplies of rats anyway.
  • It’s the perfect gift for that special someone who has all the perception of your average tree stump.
  • A Right to Life group unveils “proof” that God wants you to carry your unborn child by tying him to your vagina with yarn.

Crime Waves of the Moronic

There Are a Billion Stories on the Naked Internet…These are Only 14 of Them

Robot: From the Czech Word Robata

  • Sure, it’s a bit crude, but if it gets you the tickets, “what the hell?”
  • We may not being going to the moon, but by God, Rosie the Robot is within our grasp!
  • If these are the visions of the future I don’t want to go on. I already got burned by that whole Jetson’s flying car thing.
  • The robot firefighter was a good idea except for the materials they used to make it.

The Jiggly Bits

  • As soon as David Vitter heard the news, he immediately reacted by saying, “What’s up with this ban? Former bestiality practitioners will immediately join NAMBLA and start abusing the youngsters of America.”
  • It’s a great Valentine Day promotion, but act now – reservations are going fast.
  • Fer god sakes Melvin, get your mind out of the gutter table saw. Not Safe For Work
  • Patrick Swazye returns from the grave to film this unique sequel to his hit movie, Ghost.
  • “Oh, I say. Could you pul-eeze keep the noise down just a smidge. It is interfering with my science project.”

Made in Japan

  • Audiences loved the machines until they found out they were all props from the Broadway play Starlight Express.
  • Taxi! Taxi!

Related articles


Conspiracy Theories Are the New Cottage Industry


Posted by Omnipotent Poobah
SHH, MUM'S THE WOID - From a tiny ACORN a million conspiracies will grow.

SHH, MUM'S THE WOID - From a tiny ACORN a million conspiracies will grow.

Ahh, memories. It’s the time of year when every media outlet on planet Earth has a look back over the last year, or in this year’s case, the last decade. My vote for the best is HuffPo‘s 12 Weirdest Right-Wing Conspiracies of 2009 – although their Sex Tapes of the Past Decade was right up there too. I’m a sucker for a dirty Kim Kardashian tape.

Surprisingly, Team Arianna could constrain themselves to only 12 conspiracies for the entire decade! That’s great restraint when facing a tsunami of crackpots like we’ve seen lately.

It seems conspiracy theories have become a cottage industry for the new millennium. People like Glenn Beck, Michele Bachmann, and Orly Taitz are making entire careers of trying to out-loon one another.

The Lean, Mean, Rumor-Mongering Queen
My personal favorite is Bachmann who’s a lean, mean, rumor-mongering queen. She out-looned Glenn Beck at least once by declaring the census may be a tool to send you straight to a WWII style internment camp. Even Glenn blanched.

She’s no amateur rumor queen though. As far back as 1993 Michele was conjuring up pro-quality addle-brained fictions, like trying to ban the Disney film Aladdin because it promoted witchcraft and paganism. At a school board meeting about her demands, it seems Michele got a little testy, asking the other school board members, “Are you going to question my integrity?” shortly before resigning.

No Michele, they were questioning your sanity. We all believe your integrity is intact because no one could make up such far-fetched shite without truly believing it.

The Million Man Muttonheads
Possibly the biggest conspiracy theory of the year came from birther Orly Taitz and the Million Man Muttonheads of the lunatic fringe. Ignoring the voluminous evidence supporting Obama’s legal birthplace, they just just keep a’comin’ with howls of “Give us the birth certificate!”. He did you morons, dozens of times over.

These Energizer Bunnies from the likes of the Westboro Baptist Church and Insane Asylum even introduced side-plots like Obama’s “indoctrination” speech to kids and his alleged card-carrying membership in the Jihadist Muslim Country Club.

And what bag of conspiracy nuts would be complete without Sarah Palin? Take it from her, Obama is going to personally off her dear old grandma and turn us all into Commies. If that wasn’t enough, those crafty Democrats (oopsie, Bushies) were going to abolish Christianity by removing the “In God We Trust” claptrap from the edge of redesigned coins. However, fellow nutcases Glenn Beck and Michele Bachmann saw a quite different monetary plot.

Yep, 2009 – indeed the entire decade – were banner years for wing-nuttery. Every imbecile with a stray thought crossing their synapses got their 15 minutes of fame and more. The whole thing would’ve been comical had it not been for the fact the stories were true. They say there’s a fine line between genius and madness.

And clearly, these people crossed that line.

Related articles
Reblog this post [with Zemanta]