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The infamous Westboro Baptist Church cult, en route to Washington D.C., made time Tuesday morning for a pit stop outside of the school I attended as a teen: North Hagerstown High, in Hagerstown, Maryland. Eight protesters and their children stood across the street from school grounds during the opening hours of the school day, waving the signs they’ve become notorious for: “Pray for Dead Children,” “Your Pastor Is a Whore,” and, of course, the classic: “God Hates Fags.”
About two hundred counter-protesters showed up too, as well as the Freedom Riders, a group of motorcyclists who obstruct Westboro’s chanting with the noise of their engines. Although the cult’s presence outside of schools is basically harmless, this group has done a great deal of good for the families of dead soldiers whose funerals Westboro has protested.
About half of the counter-protesters attended out of genuine outrage or sadness. This perplexed me: why legitimize such people? Since Westboro is a cult, it should be mocked, I figured, not argued with. There seemed to be a consensus amongst the religious believers that I interviewed: the event served as an excellent way to demonstrate the loving nature of their religion, especially when juxtaposed with fanatics. Raymond S. of Hagerstown attended to “stick up for Christianity…they give a bad name to the Bible.” Rae F., also of Hagerstown, agreed: “That’s not my Bible…we as Christians have been passive for too long and it’s time to stand up.” They were there, they said, to spread their message to anyone who might wrongly think that Westboro represents a legitimate strain of Christianity. “If they want attention, we’re gonna give it to them!” said student Amber R.
Half of the counter-protesters were there for, as Jennie H. of Frederick put it, “the lulz” — an Internet slang term for off-color humor. They understood the no-stakes nature of the event (well, unless those stakes were used to hold up signs) and their signs included mocking phrases such as “Eat Mor Chikin,” “Hi Mom,” “Jesus Died For Our Signs,” and, most amusingly, a lengthy discourse about the life of a giant pink rabbit. The man holding that sign, adorned as the rabbit himself, explained his presence thus: “If they’re going to do this, I might as well take advantage of it and get some self-promotion in.” That’s the spirit! PlasticFarm.com is the rabbit man’s website.
The scene itself was kept in perfect order. I parked at a grocery store down the street, since the school itself — which was in “modified lockdown mode” thanks to the hoopla — was blocked off. About a dozen policemen monitored the street, the road serving as a strict line of demarcation between Westboro and others. Much to my chagrin, no one was permitted to speak with the cult members: they were kept strictly separated from journalists and counter-protesters. And like clockwork, at 8:45, they were shuffled out of the area as quickly and efficiently as they came in, driving away without incident. As they left, I was overcome with the sense that the event, in the final analysis, was rather…boring.
“Party’s over,” I said, looking at a friend. The event came and went, just like that. Nuts walk around with tacky signs for thirty minutes, everyone whips themselves into a frenzy, and then we all go home. All in all, it was a very successful morning for everyone in attendance.
The Westboro protest
The counter-rally
The Freedom Riders come roaring in
God Bless America.
And that is how you handle speech like that of Westboro, with counter speech, not lawsuits and censorship!
Yes, it is all so simple, isn’t it, Cato? I wonder why the blacks didn’t do the same with the Klan in the south in the 1930′s and 40′s?
Westboro is even more bizarre than the KKK in its ideology, but it’s perfectly within its rights to do what it does. The KKK was not.
Yes, it is all so simple, isn’t it, Cato? I wonder why the blacks didn’t do the same with the Klan in the south in the 1930’s and 40’s?
Umm, because blacks were being killed by the Klan, the Westboro Baptist Church was simply protesting. Two very different agendas.
Nice point Saladdin.
I don’t think the idea of speech countering other speech was just shouting over someone so they can’t be heard.. that’s really not any better than (or very different from) the govt preventing people from speaking the wrong things. I think the idea is that you fight bad arguments with good arguments. That doesn’t really apply here as Westboro and its detractors do brawl argumentatively all the time, and the protests are to grab attention not really to make an argument.
I’m gonna be very interested in the “Phelps case”, as it is heard and adjudicated by the Supremes. While the case hinges mainly on whether desecrating someone else’s funeral is protected under free speech, or crosses the “fire/crowded theatre” or “libel/malicious intent” lines of speech so vile, pointless, wrong that the state can regulate it, it also raises a huge question from a libertarian perspective:
Let’s say I’m the manager of Rose Hills or Forest Lawn, and I tell my guards to “lock the gates” when I see the Phelps Tour of Hate coming — or just “put ‘em out”, Judge Judy-style, for creating a disturbance/inappropriate behaviour.
On the one hand — it’s my private property (the cemetary); I should have the right to expel whomever I want if they engage in inappropriateness.
BUT — on the other — a cemetary is a *de facto* public place (unlike say, a members-only country club). I (quite rightly) cannot put Alex out because he’s Jewish, or deny funerals to blacks and Latinos, or tell the Buddhist he cannot leave (tasteful, small) food items or safely burn incense at his ancestral graves. If I put Rev. Phelps out of my de facto open-to-the-public place, am I oppressing his free-speech rights and right to assembly?
Paging Sir Alex — which side are you on? Be very interested to hear.
Those yahoos are fun for adults to yap about but I’d be most interested to know what becomes of their kids in twenty years. I bet they turn out like most kids of fundamentalists, either rebellious or fanatical.
Telly, no, Cemetaries are not defacto public places, there are plenty of private cemetaries. You can’t barge into an indoor Mausoleum, and any private cemetary can deny funeral services to anyone. The Catholic church has cemetaries for only Catholics in church courtyards for example.
I have no right to trespass on Church property and they can deny me entrance if they saw fit.
Actually WBC lost when they simply didn’t argue on absolute free speech claims. Apparently they went after the public figure issue. My gracious, with a lawyer that incompetent, I think WBC will lose a winnable case.
OTH, maybe the justices will ignore her seeming ignorance of the 1st amendment and vote for them on Constitutional grounds (even though she didn’t utilize them.)
It’s sort of funny to read a story like this. Westboro protests are such a mainstay of my area that we hardly even think about them anymore. Its a strange organization. Some things people might not know about them. They have a compound in Topeka Kansas in which they have purchased all the homes in a particular area of a block. It is walled off with a large fence, and they fly an American flag upside down everyday.
Several members of the family are no longer with the family. Any child who does not conform to the family is excommunicated and barred from any connection to anyone in the church ever again. One of his sons wrote an apology to the city of Topeka for his father.
Easton sez: “Cemetaries are not defacto public places, there are plenty of private cemetaries. You can’t barge into an indoor Mausoleum, and any private cemetary can deny funeral services to anyone. The Catholic church has cemetaries for only Catholics in church courtyards for example.
I have no right to trespass on Church property and they can deny me entrance if they saw fit.”
This is true in theory — and certainly a Catholic cemetary doesn’t have to bury a Protestant, or a Jewish cemetary a Christian, etc. But I mean — you’d have to be beyond “Michael Scott” from “The Office” in obtuseness if you were a funeral director and you *allowed&* the Phelps crew to come on to your land — as they often do – and desecrate the funeral of someone who paid $5-10,000 to you to say goodbye to their loved one. Unless of course — they were *scared* that Phelps would sue them (and win.)
Even aside from the private-property argument — even Barry Goldwater would allow that a city has the right to make some minimum municipal codes (eg, noise pollution) — and many cities / states have in fact tried to pass laws/ordinances that would prevent people from standing on the “public” sidewalk to heckle, hoot, holler, and hate on someone’s funeral. But Phelps has made a career (check his Wikipedia) of filing suits against such cities under so-called “civil rights” grounds and violations. So who wins the Libertarian argument — the city trying to protect its people from what might be called “emotional graffiti” — or the hate protestor exercising his “free speech”?
Privately owned cemetaries are, ahem, PRIVATE property and federal free speech protections shouldn’t apply there.
That said, as long as Phelps and his flock refrain from tresspassing on private property, and keep to rhetoric, I see no reason to interfere with their protests. They are obviously not apt for rational debate (is it really necessary to say that?) so trying to engage them is as pointless, and wrong, as trying to get the courts to violate their first amendment rights and shut them up, as many lefties and militaristic superpatriots no doubt want to do.
I think the only reasonable hope that Phelps and other Christianists will fade from the American cultural scene is an outbreak of sectarian violence among them. Max Blumenthal, in his “Republican Gomorrah” (a book admirable in it aims but riddled with factual errors) detailed the plot of a disgruntled Liberty University student, Mark David Uhl, who was planning a violent attack against Phelps and Co. in retaliation for a protest they planned to hold outside Jerry Falwell’s funeral.
Given the right conditions, it only takes the slightest spark to ignite a wildfire, you know.
With all the populist anger and paranoia extant in the heartland, it seems only a matter of time before sectarian conflict envelops the Christianist cultural orbit.
“trying to get the courts to violate their first amendment rights and shut them up, as many lefties and militaristic superpatriots no doubt want to do.”
The extremes always converge in their hatred for our liberties. They’ve forgotten the foundations of our system: they want to hand control of speech rights to men, rather than laws, forgetting that when the winds change, the men in charge might not be so keen on wielding their power for Pure Virtue.
I’m neither condoning nor suggesting such, but I’ve often wondered how it is someone hasn’t taken a shot at these people. Or torched their church building. Or simply run them over while they are protesting.
There exists a level of restraint regarding this group that actually surprises me an awful lot.
Sir Alex sez: “they want to hand control of speech rights to men, rather than laws, forgetting that when the winds change, the men in charge might not be so keen on wielding their power for Pure Virtue.”
Probably the best, and saddest example of this, was when (despite fierce Tory opposition) Canada rebooted their Constitution in 1982, with “hate speech laws”, which left-wing provincial governors (most notably in British Columbia) began strenuously enforcing. In 1993, “Canada’s Pat Buchanan”, the late columnist Doug Collins, published an outrageous editorial called “SWINDLER’S List” — and was promptly sued for dissemenating hate propaganda.
Normally, most journalistic professionals (left or right) would be about as ready to defend someone denying the Holocaust (especially in such a deliberately gratuitous, disgraceful manner) as they would be to defend someone saying the “N-word”. But the implications of telling an award-winning, credentialed published-author journalist what he could/couldn’t say in a legit newspaper’s op-ed column (or what the newspaper could/couldn’t publish) were so chilling, the press in Canada lept to Collins’ defense. (And of course today, the biggest proponents of the “Hate Speech” laws in Canada are Muslims/Palestinians, who won’t tolerate anyone who supports the “genocidal hate speech” of the “Nazi War Criminal Ariel Sharon”, etc etc etc…) So sad….
One q for Alex, though — should Phelps have the “right” to come on (A) private property (eg, a cemetary) — or (B) on the sidewalk outside the cemetary — if the community has chosen to enact a code against disrupting funerals for reasons of taste and/or public safety (a la traffic laws).
They have the right to protest right outside of private property — but no, they do not have the right to protest on it. There is no such thing as a “de facto” public place: we have laws that demarcate such things. The relevant question, legally speaking, is: who decides what a ‘de facto’ public place is? It’s really best not to go there.
I used to live in Kansas and on the weekends (mainly) as I would drive to work, these cult members would stand on the corner on Wanamaker Road and yelled “Whore ” at the women who drove by. At the time I had 2 young girls and what kind of impressions would this have on them?
I used to live in Saudi Arabia where women (especially American woman) were treated badly but never would children be exposed to such hate. They are committing hate crimes and should be punished for them. This is no longer freedom of speech, where do you draw the line?
Alex: “There is no such thing as a “de facto” public place: we have laws that demarcate such things. The relevant question, legally speaking, is: who decides what a ‘de facto’ public place is? It’s really best not to go there.”
Well put — and there certainly should be an iron curtain between public/private property; but a lot of cemetary directors certainly seem afraid and intimidated that Phelps will sue them if they throw/lock him out. (On the other hand, too, if I had a loved one’s funeral disrupted by Phelps, and his cult even touched one toe past the entry gate at Rose Hills with them passively allowing it, I’d have their director in court for emotional distress and negligence faster than Judge Judy could say, “I don’t believe you, Cookie!”)
Fear is, of course, his stock and trade — as for the “best not to go there” — that’s why I’m watching this Supreme case so closely. It’s going to make new law, one way or the other. (God only knows which way it will go — as I’m sure you’d agree, even the Republican Supreme Court of 2005 has had an indifference to strictly construed “private property” rights — the vomitous “Kelo vs. New London” decision being exhibit A.)
I love the idea of counter protesters protecting people from the abuse of these nutjobs. The guy who’s suing Phelps in the case before the supreme court didn’t even know they were at his son’s funeral until he saw it on the news. Now that’s effective.