The Supreme Court has voted 8-1 Wednesday in favor of the Westboro Baptist Church, stating that the First Amendment protects the protesters from holding their highly offensive anti-American, and rabidly anti-semitic posters, outside military funerals.
According to an AP report, the decision upheld an appeals court ruling that threw out a $5 million judgment to the father of a dead Marine who sued church members after they picketed his son’s funeral.
Some facts about these crazies:
The Westboro Baptist Church (WBC) is an Independent Baptist church and hate group. It is located in a residential neighborhood on the west side of Topeka about three miles west of the Kansas State Capitol. It is headed by Fred Phelps and consists mostly of members of his large family; in 2007, it had 71 members.
Phelps and his family picket approximately six locations every day, including many in Topeka and some events farther afield. On Sundays, up to 15 churches may receive pickets. By their own count, WBC has conducted over 30,000 pickets, in all 50 states, in over 500 cities and towns. Their travel budget exceeds $200,000 annually. As of March 2009 the church claims to have participated in over 41,000 protests in over 650 cities since 1991.
The Wesboro Baptist Church recently protested outside a few synagogues in brooklyn, and were met with counter protests.
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14 Responses
PLEASE TAKE OFF THE DISGUSTING PICTURE DO YOU WANT YOU KIDS KNOWING SUCH WORDS!!!
of course if some passerby would be so outraged that they attacked the protestors, it would be up to a jury to decide the matter (and judges can’t overturn a verdict of acquittal in the American system)
The same supreme court upholds your right to stand outside the phelps home and protest too. If you are so outraged by this fringe group of loony tunes, give them a taste of their own medicine. Just be sure to do it legally. Personally, I think these clowns, are best ignored. They thrive on getting under your skin.
we should promote a wide open border policy, asia’s overflowing with people and technically the asians filled north and south america just a couple hundred years ago before europeans murdered them all. let indians and chinese move to topeka kansas and the less populated areas of the continents. its racist otherwise.
The US Justice System forever fascinates me. I wonder how many countries would allow such people to protest against their country with such outright hatred – in accordance with the constitution. Although I despise this hate-group and wish for their disintegration, I am once again proud of this country. This ruling favors all of us – observant Jews – who wish to practice religion in any way. I do, however, believe that with this group ignorance is bliss. They seek attention and want media coverage – the limelight gives them the nerve to act cowardly and spitefully – we ought to ignore them, for that will lead to their collapse.
Atta boy akuperma…nice to see you so predictably irresponsible. You still don’t understand the reach, breadth and importance of free speech in this country…and Akuperma, your words said at the wrong time and place could be construed as incitement…and incitement is NOT protected free speech.
I see! So First Amendment allows antisemitism. But First Amendment does not allow that guy to burn a Koran. I guess it had to do with using the wrong kind of matches? And he lost his job too, and cannot sue.
I agree we should be able to preach anything we want in this country.
We should be allowed to use nationalism to unite the country during weak economic times. We should restore the dignity of our nation. We should explain to the masses how the Jews caused the financial crisis (I can name tons of senior Jewish officials just starting with the Fed how about Greenspan and Bernanke, we do not even have to get to the investment banks or the three branches of Governments) and are destroying our economy. After all this policy worked great in Germany in the 1920s and early 1930s.
But I don’t understand YonasonW, isn’t what the Westboro Baptist Church doing INCITEMENT?! Isn’t their intention to be provocative?
#6 – I am not advocating such, but merely pointing out the behavior such as this “church” often leads to a breach of peace, which in the final analyis allows a jury to decide.
#7- The First amendment allows a guy to burn a Koran. It also allows his employer to fire him – it merely doesn’t allow the government to do anything (in his case his employer was a quasi-public agency acting in a private capacity) – it’s his employer’s right (if it is indeed held by the courts to be a private entity).
Get that picture off!!!
YourSister – The legal standard involves questioning whether their is an actual likelihood that the incitement will lead to violence. KKK rallies where people are all whipped up, and then go after Blacks or Jews physically is a real example from the case law. A few Nazis marching in Skokie might incite Jews, yours truly included, to distraction and fury…but not to violence. Similarly, these losers might incite to tears and rage peopl;e at the funerals…but not to violence.
The standard is problematic at times, in that the conduct of the incited crowd might change the permissibility of the speech involved. It has been a few years, but as I recall my Constitutional Law courses, the courts seek address this by grafting a reasonable expectation element onto the standard…cutting to the chase, hundreds of KKKers at a public cross burning rally might be “reasonably expected” to resort to violence when whipped up…contrary to the other examples.
#8, what are u saying? thats absurd, greenspan and bernanke are like angels! there isnt anyone on earth that could have done a better job than them.
the real issue is that these people are the exact same people that committed the holocaust and the pogroms, invaded jerusalem, enslaved the africans(plenty of dna evidence of exactly who did that), murdered every asian in north america, south america, and australia and have “colonized” every country on earth to oppress and brainwash them.
in my opinion the new genomic evidence indicates there may have been about 10,000 times more asians in the america’s than the english, and spanish text books told us there was. they own 100% of the archeology and anthropology industries and they try to cover it all up but because of their low intelligence is very obvious. (((IT NOW APPEARS THAT THESE CONTINENTS MAY HAVE HAD AS MANY PEOPLE AS WERE IN ASIA))). it should be looked into fast. theres official policy to erase every trace of the asians that were here. these westboro racists are picketing on indian graves. can we do something about it, they dont “own” a single thing at all.
#8 Greenspan even admitted he was wrong! Lol
As for the rest of your rant I have no idea what you are talking about.