Westboro Baptist Church Protest

Thank heavens most of the media did not cover this. They are vile, ignorant people. It's bad enough they protest soldiers funerals, but now they were protesting Elizabeth Edwards death!

Where will all this end? I see the Supreme Court is hearing Snyder's case. Pray he wins the appeal. This is not freedom of speech, it's warped rabid hatred of Phelps' ideas of religion.

As one commented on the website, "What does the Baptist Convention think of this?" Another wrote "Why don't the Baptist Church speak out about this?" I'd like to know the reason why, too.

______________________________

Kansas-based Westboro Baptist Church will be dispatching members of its congregation to protest the funeral of Elizabeth Edwards this Saturday, CNN reports.

The church has generated controversy with its confrontational and offensive demonstrations. "God Hates Fags" has become an unofficial calling card of the group, a phrase they say the world "needs to hear more than it needs oxygen, water and bread." Another Westboro sign, "Thank God For Dead Soldiers," is frequently displayed at military funerals and has created its own share of outrage.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/12/09/elizabeth-edwards-funeral-westboro-baptist-church_n_794333.html

________________________________

Good for the counter-protestors:

Update, 5:15 p.m.

One of the Facebook pages organizing the counter protest went down for a few hours Friday afternoon. The Raleigh News & Observer reports that it apparently crashed after 20,000 people shared the invitation on Facebook. Facebook said it was looking into the matter.

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/blog-post/2010/11/westboro_church_meets_its_matc.html

______________________________________

On the Snyder case:

Sean E. Summers, who represents Snyder, set the tone with his first words to the justices.

"We're talking about a funeral," he said. "If context is ever going to matter, it has to matter in the context of a funeral. Mr. Snyder simply wanted to bury his son in a private, dignified manner."

Summers faced tough questioning from the justices about whether the funeral was actually disrupted by the protest, whether public speech could ever be curtailed because of the objections of the listener and, from Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, how a group could be sued for damages over actions that were lawful.

But even Ginsburg, the justice who was most skeptical of Summers' arguments, noted the unpleasantness of the group's actions.

"This is a case about exploiting a private family's grief and the question is: Why should the First Amendment tolerate exploiting this bereaved family when you have so many other forums for . . . getting across your message?" Ginsburg asked Margie J. Phelps, the founder's daughter, who was representing family members.

Phelps replied: "When I hear the language 'exploiting the bereavement,' I look for: What is the principle of law that comes from this court?"

She said that the court has set limits on what public places a person can visit to "deliver words as part of a public debate," and that as long as those are respected, "this notion of exploiting, it has no definition in a principle of law that would guide people as to when they could or could not."

Nearly all of the justices referred to the group's noxious practices; a sampling of the signs carried at Snyder's March 2006 funeral at St. John's Catholic Church in Westminster, Md., included "God Hates the USA/Thank God for 9/11," "Semper Fi Fags," "Thank God for Dead Soldiers" and "Priests Rape Boys."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/10/06/AR2010100603950.html?nav=emailpage