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Post by ironbite on May 6, 2009 1:59:55 GMT -5
Can we send him to Mexico then ban him from the US?
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Post by Nutcase on May 6, 2009 2:05:11 GMT -5
See, freedom of speech is nice an all, but when you say something, you should be held accountable for it too. It's called Responsabillity. I think most people can agree that Fred Phelps is a hate-filled bigot, but at what point on a continuum from ‘acceptable speech’ to ‘unacceptable speech’ does Phelps officially become unacceptable? Does a person’s speech have to be, say, unpopular with 90% of the population before it’s considered a public nuisance for which the speaker must be “accountable”? How about 85%? Or 60%? And when a person’s speech becomes sufficiently unacceptable, what form does this accountability take – fines or/and imprisonment? And how are ‘the people’ polled to determine whether an unpopular speaker has exceeded his limit and must then be censured? And where does he go for appeal? Would these common decency standards, with their attendant reliance upon public goodwill towards the speaker, also apply to people with other unpopular ideas? Could gay rights advocates, or civil rights activists, or suffragists, have once been shut down by the very rules some people would apply to the hate-speech of Fred Phelps now? If you try to shut down some speech, you endanger it all. This is why Britain and Canada (where I live) should stick to barring dangerous criminals from crossing the border rather than expending any effort to prevent visitation by a merely annoying, self-aggrandizing popinjay like Phelps. Oh, no; he almost never claims to spread his hate in the ‘guise of love.’ And his honesty, when compared to other preachers who try to sugar-coat their festering hatred by claiming to love gays while loathing gayness, makes him far less offensive to me than they are. What kind of action would you expect them to take? Be careful here, because the rules you make now could come back and bite you in the ass later on. No.
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Post by clockworkgirl21 on May 6, 2009 4:20:36 GMT -5
I sort of feel sorry for Fred Phelps. I seriously think he's gay, but he's in such denial, he's for killing gays because he wants to kill that part of himself. He's still an asshole, but he has horrible mental problems.
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Post by dasfuchs on May 6, 2009 6:36:27 GMT -5
I think he's gone far beyond inappropriate when he and his group hit funerals and cause more grief and cause anger and rage in people there. He's ruining what is supposed to be an already tragic moment and making it worse
What they deem acceptable to them. I may not like it, but i can't stop them from doing it. No one said i can't try to escape it, but, the fact that people will only take so much shit is pretty obvious
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Post by atheiess on May 6, 2009 8:09:48 GMT -5
With the exception of Phelps himself, I'm not convinced anyone in that church is bad, per se - just really, really fucked up. And he's dragging those people down with him. Almost everyone who is a member of Phelp's church is a direct family member of his. His congregation is about 60 people, and I think maybe 8 of them aren't related to him. His daughter was also on the banned list too. He has a bunch of kids, but not all of them belong to the church. Some of them speak out again him and the rest of their family on our local news sometimes. It's really interesting to hear their perspective if you ever get the chance. Having seen Phelps and his league of crazies in action personally I can tell you I have no sympathy for his followers. They are just as hateful as he is.
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Pyena
Full Member
Just Doing It To Get Attention
Posts: 108
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Post by Pyena on May 6, 2009 9:15:44 GMT -5
I sort of feel sorry for Fred Phelps. I seriously think he's gay, but he's in such denial, he's for killing gays because he wants to kill that part of himself. He's still an asshole, but he has horrible mental problems. I feel sorry for him too, kind of, but somehow I don't think he's gay. I get the impression that it's more of an anger issue. Like he's just this really angry, hateful person who needs an outlet for his rage now that the kids are big enough to hit back.
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Post by CtraK on May 6, 2009 11:50:50 GMT -5
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Post by Nutcase on May 6, 2009 12:49:11 GMT -5
I think he's gone far beyond inappropriate when he and his group hit funerals and cause more grief and cause anger and rage in people there. He's ruining what is supposed to be an already tragic moment and making it worse/ Those common decency standards I mentioned would not have been sufficient to stop him from protesting near - not at; his peeps are outside on a public thoroughfare - a variety of funerals. With the exception of Kansas, where Phelps lives, the states where he picketed were slow to make laws against funeral protests. One could almost say they were...um...dragging their feet. It was only when Phelps expanded his picketing activities from the funerals of gays and AIDS victims to those of service members (and eventually disaster and murder victims) that various law-makers finally started, y'know, making laws. In fact - and here's a fun Phelps story for ya - Ol' Fred was on speaking terms with both Al Gore and Bill Clinton, and he had won several awards for his work in civil rights litigation, and...AND...he was belting out sermons on teh ebil gays, all at the same time, in the late 1980s. So apparently, his anti-gay rhetoric, even at funerals, had also been acceptable enough for the vast majority of people to ignore - until he set his sights on "normal folks" and even "heroes." Did the basic definition of decency change that fast, or are the standards you advocate merely applied hypocritically by law-makers and the public at large?
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Post by dantesvirgil on May 6, 2009 13:06:40 GMT -5
Oh there is no doubt that law-makers can be hypocritical and that the majority of people may not be interested in something until it directly affects them. That doesn't necessarily mean, though, that it isn't worth pursuing because the majority of people behave in stupid and hypocritical ways, right?
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Post by Sigmaleph on May 6, 2009 13:26:46 GMT -5
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Post by Thejebusfire on May 6, 2009 13:31:21 GMT -5
I sort of feel sorry for Fred Phelps. I seriously think he's gay, but he's in such denial, he's for killing gays because he wants to kill that part of himself. He's still an asshole, but he has horrible mental problems. I feel sorry for him too, kind of, but somehow I don't think he's gay. I get the impression that it's more of an anger issue. Like he's just this really angry, hateful person who needs an outlet for his rage now that the kids are big enough to hit back. That is it. He has a rage problem. Some of his sane children can atest to that.
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Post by Tiger on May 6, 2009 15:32:15 GMT -5
On a seperate note, would freedom of expression allow me to whack Phelps in the jaw as a show of my despise for the guy? United States v. O'brien ruled that freedom of speech does not permit you to break laws established for legitimate reasons as a form of protest. I think most people can agree that Fred Phelps is a hate-filled bigot, but at what point on a continuum from ‘acceptable speech’ to ‘unacceptable speech’ does Phelps officially become unacceptable? Does a person’s speech have to be, say, unpopular with 90% of the population before it’s considered a public nuisance for which the speaker must be “accountable”? How about 85%? Or 60%? And when a person’s speech becomes sufficiently unacceptable, what form does this accountability take – fines or/and imprisonment? Britain's justification for the ban: (emphasis mine) Also, from earlier in the thread: It's one thing to imprison people for saying things you don't like. It's another thing entirely to tell foreign hate-mongers to go back where they came from.
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Post by Nutcase on May 6, 2009 20:39:54 GMT -5
Oh there is no doubt that law-makers can be hypocritical and that the majority of people may not be interested in something until it directly affects them. That doesn't necessarily mean, though, that it isn't worth pursuing because the majority of people behave in stupid and hypocritical ways, right? Maybe, except that such people can no longer rightly appeal to community (or common) decency standards as their guide for what is acceptable and what isn't. According to their own standard - or at least according to what they were willing to tolerate - funeral picketing was okay for nearly a decade. Then it wasn't, not because those people suddenly felt the hot burn of conscience for having allowed and perhaps even condoned picketing at the funerals of gays and AIDS victims, but because Phelps and his crew began picking on people who mattered. As proof, I offer the Patriot Guard Riders. There's nothing wrong with what they do, but I have to wonder why, with all their rhetoric about allowing people to grieve in peace, they only offer their services at military funerals.Some families are entitled to 'protection,' but others - the families of gays and people who died of AIDS, for example - are still pretty much on their own. In other words, this vaunted standard...isn't. And the very second we - and by 'we', I mean anyone who professes to love freedom - allow the goal-posts to be moved based solely on the popularity of certain speakers (or their targets), and yet still call this protean thing a standard, we endanger all speech. We make all speech to conform with majority whim.
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Post by Nutcase on May 6, 2009 20:45:16 GMT -5
Two things: 1) Of course the British government can ban whoever it wants. That doesn't mean the justification is any good, though. 2) People with unpopular opinions should in no way be blamed if counter-protesters can't demonstrate at least an equal amount of self-control.
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Post by Tiger on May 6, 2009 20:51:40 GMT -5
1) Of course the British government can ban whoever it wants. That doesn't mean the justification is any good, though. Duly noted. This is a preventative measure, not punishment or blame.
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