A Dead Marine, Free Speech and A Sense Of Decency

By Ed Raymond
Staff Writer

I was not particularly surprised when the Supreme Court voted to uphold the free speech rights of the Westboro Baptist “Church” of Topeka, Kansas to picket individuals, groups and organizations with their vulgar, shocking and offensive signs such as “God Hates Gays,” “Thank God For Dead Soldiers,” “God Hates Fags,” “No Fags In Heaven,” “Thank God For IEDs”and even a song titled “God Hates The World,” an adaption of Michael Jackson’s song “We Are The World” used for many charity drives. When 29 miners died in a West Virginia Massey coal mine they quickly put out a new sign of hate: “God Hates Miners.”

The Supreme Court case was about the picketing of the funeral on March 10, 2006 of Marine Lance Corporal Matthew Snyder who was killed in Iraq. The Snyder family had sued the Reverend Fred Phelps and Westboro Baptist Church (WBC) for defamation, invasion of privacy, and intentional infliction of emotional distress. Among the many charges of the WBC were these three: Matthew had been raised by his parents “ to serve the Devil,” his parents had taught him to “defy his Creator, to divorce, and to commit adultery” and they had raised him to be a Catholic.

There were two things about the 8-1 vote of the Court that surprised me: Conservative Catholic Justice Samuel Alito was the only dissenting justice, and the “liberal” members of the Court, Stephen Breyer, Elena Kagan, Sonia Sotomayor and Ruth Bader Ginsburg, voted with the likes of Antonin Scalia, his shadow Clarence Thomas, Chief Justice John Roberts and Anthony Kennedy to reject the plea of the Snyders to bury their son in peace. The WBC is monitored constantly by the Anti-Defamation league (Jewish) and the Southern Poverty Law Center as a hate group. We must remember that only one Catholic of the six on the Court voted for the Snyders over the “Reverend” Fred Phelps. It is perhaps more natural for the three Jews on the Court to vote for a liberal interpretation of “free” speech.

“Have You No Sense Of Decency, Sir, At Long Last?”

After reading some of Chief Justice John Roberts’s tortured, rambling, and sometimes pyschobabblic majority opinion of the WBC’s insane, reprehensible, despicable and vicious “America Is Doomed” rantings, I thought of Army Chief Counsel Joseph Welch’s response to the insane, reprehensible, despicable and vicious rantings of Senator Joe McCarthy during the Army-McCarthy hearings when he was attacking the character of Fred Fisher, a lawyer who had once worked for the National Lawyers Guild, a group that had rather weak links to a few Communists. McCarthy, while looking for “over 200 Communists in the State Department,” often insulted and tried to humiliate witnesses he called before his committee. After McCarthy told Army Signal Corp General Ralph Zwicker he “was not fit to wear the uniform of the United States,” Army Attorney Joe Welch exploded: “Until this moment, Senator, I think I never gauged your cruelty or recklessness…Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last?  Have you left no sense of decency?” The crowd in the hearing room cheered and applauded. Welch’s questions were the end of McCarthy’s attacks, and marked the end of McCarthy’s political career. He died shortly after.

There is nothing redeeming about the “religious” rantings of the head of the WBC. In fact, Phelps even teaches hate in Sunday School. The British, who have denied the WBC from ever entering Great Britain to protest at funerals, taped two of Phelps granddaughters explaining they were members of the “elect,”  that no one outside of the WBC would ever enter Heaven because “everyone else in the world would die horribly and burn in Hell.”   

Phelps and his 70 followers say they are “Primitive Baptists” who believe in predestination, the idea that God has already selected those who will be selected for Heaven. Everyone else is doomed to Hell. What is “redeeming” about that? The eight members of the Court who voted for Phelps were horribly wrong in determining he had free speech rights. He was not only yelling “Fire! Fire!” in the theater, he was screaming “Fire! Fire!’” from every street corner in the land. After all, the British do have more experience with free speech rights than we do.                                   

Why Should We Listen To Snake Worshipping Cults And Those Who Examine Chicken Guts For Guidance?

Do you think the following groups should be awarded free speech rights?

1.  Eden Prairie High School represents a wealthy suburban Minneapolis ghetto. Hopkins High School is from a very poor ghetto of Minneapolis with many minority students. About two weeks ago as the Hopkins basketball team took the floor against Eden Prairie in the wealthy ghetto, Eden Prairie students chanted “FOOD STAMPS! FOOD STAMPS!”  And yelled “NIGGER! NIGGER!” at the black players. So, not only did they yell a socioeconomic slur about money, they screamed a term used only by slaveholders and racist ignoramuses. Do you think our Supreme Court should grant free speech rights to Eden Prairie students?

2. In early February Minnesota Gopher fans chanted “F––k You!” chants at the opposing team as the Gophers lost again. Do you think our Supreme Court should grant free speech rights to Gopher fans?

3. The Boston-based Church of Euthanasia is primarily opposed to anti-abortion Christian activists because of their belief the earth has an unsustainable population. They use one commandment only: “Thou shall not procreate.” They have four principles: suicide, abortion, cannibalism, and sodomy. Some of their more mild slogans: “Eat A Queer Fetus For Jesus,” “Save the Planet, Kill Yourself!” “I Want To Join A Suicide Cult!”  Their Websites contain many instructions on how to commit suicide. Do You think our Supreme Court should grant free speech rights to this “church?”

4.  We give a tax exemption to the Maradonian Church named after an Argentine football player.
The church was started in 1998 and has spread to 60 countries and claims 80,000 members. They worship his jersey number– #10.  Should the IRS continue its tax exemption?

5. The Creativity Movement is a white-supremacist church which advocates the goal of populating the entire world with whites. It states that blacks are deadly enemies and that the most dangerous people on the face of the earth are Jews. Another goal is to completely destroy all Jews and banish Jewish thought. Should this church be tax exempt and should the Supreme Court grant free speech rights to this group?

6.  The Body of Christ is a small church opposed to “seven systems” of mainstream society: education, government, banking, religion, medicine, science and entertainment. Children of this group have died of malnutrition because the adults were waiting for word from God to feed them. They believe the world will erupt in violence at any moment and that they alone will be saved. Should this church be tax exempt like WBC and should the Supreme Court grant free speech rights to this group?

7. Remember Heaven’s Gate, whose 39 members committed suicide in 2007 wearing black jumpsuits and Nike tennis shoes, with black armbands reading “Heaven’s Gate Away Team”? They were supposed to be picked up by a spaceship and taken to a comet carrying Jesus. The founder Applewhite claimed he had arrived on earth on a UFO. They were tax exempt before they all died in their bunks. I wonder if the Supreme Court would have given them free speech rights.

At the present time we have 335,000 religious congregations in the U.S.: 300,000 Protestant, 22,000 Catholic and about 13,000 non-Christian. We also have about 38,000 cults and small groups claiming to be religious. They take advantage of our bizarre tax exemption rules and our crazy free speech court decisions. One of the worst Court decisions was the Buckley v. Valeo stating that money equals “free speech.” For those who have less than $56 billion, do you think you have the same access to politicians as Bill Gates does?

(If you wish to know more about Phelps and WBC you may want to contact the following WBC Websites: http://www.godhatesamerica.com, http://www.GodHatesFags.com, JewsKilledJesus.com,
BeastObama.com, GodHatesTheMedia.com, PriestsRapeBoys.com, GodHatesSweden.com, GodHatesIndia.com, and GodHatesTheWorld.com. I would not do research in one sitting. This is real sick stuff.)

Alito: “Free And Open Debate Is Not A License For A Vicious Verbal Assault”

Chief Justice John Roberts in his majority opinion wrote: “Speech on public issues cannot be restricted simply because it is upsetting or arouses contempt…Speech is powerful. It can stir people to action, move them to tears of both joy and sorrow, and—as it did here—inflict great pain…”

Normally you won’t be at your young son’s funeral, and if you are, it is your obligation to react cooly to malevolent strangers who are doing their best to add injury to injury. (What nonsense is this?!!)  Why allow a party “to inflict great pain” on one family in one of the most private actions of their lives? The Snyders lost a son who was defending our free speech. Why permit the family to be used to promote a vicious religious and political diatribe while they are conducting a private family affair? The father Albert Snyder testified: “They turned this funeral into a media circus…They wanted their message heard…My son should have been buried with dignity, not with a bunch of clowns outside.” After the Court decision Snyder said: “My first thought was eight judges don’t have the common sense God gave a goat. We found out today we can no longer bury our dead in this country with dignity.” I concur and sign on in agreement with his decision.

What Is Redeeming About These “Religious” Thoughts And Actions Of The Reverend Fred Phelps and His Church?

When an American soldier allegedly flushed a copy of the Koran down a toilet at Gitmo, Phelps responded: “So what if our guys flushed a copy of the Koran down a toilet? We hope they did…Mohammed was a demon-possessed whoremonger and pedophile who contrived a 300-page work of Satanic fiction…Like America’s whoremonger and pedophile wangled his own hokey Book of Mormon!”

While protesting Pope Benedict’s visit to New York, Phelps referred to Catholic priests as “Draculas” who sucked semen out of male children’s genitals like vampires suck blood. He called the Pope “The Godfather of Pedophiles” and the “Pervert Pope.” Later he described the Roman Catholic Church as “the largest, most well-funded and organized pedophile group in the history of man.”
He also described Jews as being “drowned in sodomite semen. American taxpayers are financing this unholy monument (the Holocaust Museum) to Jewish mendacity and greed and to filthy fag lust. Homosexuals and Jews dominated Nazi Germany…God has smitten Jews with a certain unique madness.”

When a pastor in Sweden was prosecuted for being critical of homosexuality, Phelps and his band of haters picketed a Topeka hardware store because it sold Swedish vacuum cleaners!

And President Barack Obama is the Anti-Christ according to Phelps.
I think the only way to bring sanity back to religious thought and practices in this country is to take away the tax exemptions of all churches. Why should other believers and non-believers pay your property taxes, your police and fire protection, your street-cleaning and snowplowing anyway?  Pay your taxes like everyone else does. Then propagandize from the pulpit if you desire.

It has become quite evident that the Snyder decision is more about judges gibbering legal prattle than judges grabbing the perverted, vile Phelps by his white collar and saying: ”Have you no decency?” This decision ranks with the United States v. Stevens case a year ago when the court allowed the continued sale of a video showing kittens being crushed to death by the high-heeled spiked shoes of a dominatrix because it was “free expression.” In a balanced society she would have been jailed for animal cruelty. No wonder high school kids in Eden Prairie yell “Food Stamps!” and “Nigger!” They think they can say anything to hurt and degrade because the Supreme Court said it was OK.

I like the way France handles hate speech. They learned about hate during the Holocaust. When Christian Dior fashion designer John Galliano used a racial insult in attacking a woman sitting next to him in a bar recently, he committed a crime under French law. His attack: “Dirty Jewish face, you should be dead. Your boots are of the lowest quality, your thighs are of the lowest quality. You are so ugly I don’t want to see you. I am John Galliano!”  He was immediately fired and might serve jail time.  Incidentally, the woman was not Jewish.

Questions and comments: .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)