The White House says it can’t fulfill a request to deem a group that protests at soldiers’ funerals a hate group. But it says President Barack Obama believes such actions are reprehensible.
The Obama administration is responding to petitions through the White House website to label the Westboro Baptist Church a hate group and revoke its tax-exempt status. Almost 700,000 people signed five related petitions.
The group claims when American troops die, it’s God’s punishment for America tolerating homosexuality and abortion.
The White House says the federal government doesn’t maintain a list of hate groups. But it’s releasing a map showing where the petition-signers come from. The map shows high density in Kansas, where the Westboro group is based, and Connecticut, where church members threatened to picket Newtown victims’ funerals.
(AP)
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7 Responses
Freedom of speech and religion applies to these lunatics as well as all others in the US. As crazy and hateful as those wackos from Westboro are they are entitled to their rights.
Simple. Just get the IRS to label them conservative.
Should the government be subsidizing hate groups (via tax deductions) ?
(see poster in Article picture)
Since when can the President, or the Federal government for that matter, designate someone as a “hate group.” Just asking the questions suggests someone who got an “F” in civics.
WAIT!
The JDL and Kahana Chai are officially designated by the U.S. as hate groups. And these guys can’t be?
There are some details missing from this article. One detail is whether the White House has authority to designate any group as a “hate group.” The second detail is the significance, if any, of a governmental designation that a particular group is a “hate group.”
The headline of the article seems to imply that the White House failed to carry out some duty or exercise some authority with respect to hate and the hateful Westboro Baptist Church, but the article fails to identify any such authority or any consequences to the public or to Westboro for such “failure.”
No. 5: What is the basis for your statement about an official US designation of the JDL (Jewish Defense League?) and Kahane Chai as hate groups?
nfgo3 – with the moderators permission, I’m pristine the link that officially the JDL was outlaws in the US as a hate group.
http://www.adl.org/mobilehatesymbols/t-symbol-14.html