Anti-gay church fined $10.9m
Back in April Louis Theroux presented a documentary on the controversial Kansas-based Westboro Baptist Church. For those who didn’t see it, it made very uncomfortable viewing. The following paragraph from the Wikipedia page sums up their beliefs very well:
“The church bases its work around the belief expressed by its best known slogan and the address of its primary website, “God hates fags”, and expresses the opinion, based on its Biblical interpretation, that nearly every tragedy in the world is linked to homosexuality – specifically society’s increasing tolerance and acceptance of gay, lesbian, and bisexual people. It maintains that God hates homosexuals above all other kinds of “sinners” and that homosexuality should be a capital crime.”
The church often target the US military in their campaigns, which according to them, highlights the increasing acceptance of homosexuals in the US.
There’s a delicate balance to be made between free speech and offence. To quote Orwell, “If liberty means anything, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear”.
I’m sure many of you will agree with that statement. You will also agree, I would hope, that invading - and cheering at - the funeral of a US marine, killed in Iraq last year, is way beyond “free speech”.
Today a jury ordered the Westboro Baptist Church to pay the family of US marine Matthew Synder $10.9m in compensation. Whilst the amount seems high (but how do you put a value on ‘emotional distress’?), it sends a clear message that behaviour like that will not be tolerated.
However, I fear it will only make the Church more determined in future.
November 1, 2007 at 8:30 am
No, there is no balance between free speech and offense - you should have no state protection against being offended. Free speech is not something you can have some of.
The invading the funeral bit is where their actions may (and I think should) be actionable - its at least trespass and if they didn’t leave when asked there’s good reason to be able to take action against them.
I’d also want their actions publicised as much as possible, they’re disgusting and I’m sure many on the ‘christian right’ would find them so too, a soldier who fought and died for his country and his family being disrespected like that…
November 1, 2007 at 8:43 am
Tristan Mills, there is a thing called “privacy”, and free speech doesn’t mean that one has the right to for instance invade other people’s homes in order to get their message through.
November 1, 2007 at 8:28 pm
Surely with the right to free speech comes the responsibility not to offend others?
November 2, 2007 at 9:07 am
You may be interested in seeing how a Methodist Pastor has reacted to these demonstrations - and incidently, the Westboro Bapist Church is not typical of Baptists!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-DZbix25Oy0
November 2, 2007 at 10:17 am
Freedom of Speech is something that from day one the American nation was founded upon. Lest we forget Abraham Lincoln, actually I’ll remind you in his speech:
Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.
But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate — we can not consecrate — we can not hallow — this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us — that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion — that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain — that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom — and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.
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A nation concieved in Liberty, by the people, for the people.
No one should shout around about racism, or hatred to gays, or say bad things to one another but have you all forgotten the Nazis? Have you all forgotten the KKK? Oswald Mosely and the Blackshirts? Need I go on? One small Church in Kansas - the bible belt of the United States - should not be given the publication that you give it.
On any given day 100s of people die from shootings, knifeings, and other crimes. On any given day funerals may well have hecklers. Only as the funeral was for a soldier did it get press coverage. What about the homosexual who got killed just for being gay and no one attended his funeral? What about those killed in wars gone by and put in unnamed graves?
While thinking of such things, why don’t you just get on a plane to Kansas and see if Dorothy can’t click her little red shoes while you wish away all the bad people and Churches you don’t like and ways of life you know nothing of.
Shame that you can’t and that you’re all - all talk and no action.