I’m making an exception to my rule about bad language and name-calling here, because there’s just no other thing I can manage to say about these people. They’re counter-demonstrators at a Veterans’ Day march this weekend, and they’re holding their nasty, free-speech-protected signs up at groups of veteran soldiers who are marching in pride of their country and the service they performed for it.
These are of the same group that’s going around demonstrating at soldiers’ funerals. The worst of the signs say, “Thank God for Maimed Soldiers” and “Soldiers Die, God Laughs”. This is their image of righteousness?
I don’t know whether this is the Westboro group, and they came from Kansas... or whether it’s an east-coast branch of their brainlessness. May they all go quickly to the Hell they believe in so vehemently.
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Men never commit evil so fully and joyfully as when they do it for religious convictions. -- Blaise Pascal
I distrust those people who know so well what God wants them to do because I notice it always coincides with their own desires. -- Susan B. Anthony
These people are particularly sick and hurtful and absurd, and it's too bad (and revealing?) that the Christians who follow a little more closely the teachings of Christ don't counter-demonstrate. Christians often say to me, thinking that I'm an atheist or against religion, I suppose, because of the religious right, how the extreme religious right doesn't represent *all* Christianity, but I don't see them really doing anything about it. Perhaps it's because people with fragile beliefs are very careful not to step on each others' fragile beliefs.
Well, Jim, who sometimes comments here, is the one who keeps me honest in that regard, reminding me whenever I stray too close to implying it, that the "religious right", the nutheads, the crazies... do not speak for all, or even for most Christians.
I like the title of this post...
I'd like to see a counter-demonstration carrying ironic and humorous signs that make fun of these people. Perhaps if we show them that no one takes them seriously, they'll knock it off.
I doubt it, but at least we can have a good laugh at their expense.
How about "Why did God make you such a prick?" (Or "vile asshead," if you prefer.)
Not very catchy, though.
They badly need to be ridiculed, by people who exercise their free speech more cleverly than I do. :-)
You could always show up wearing a t-shirt that says "I'm with stupid".
It's too bad you can't say something like, "Your god's an asshead."
I think because of the Christian influence, people tend to think there's one "god," and so if you criticize somebody's god, you're criticizing their god as well.
It's ridiculous -- people make god what they want him to be, like a sadistic homophobe or a loving father (I actually find the sadism far more believable than the loving father based on the suffering on this earth, but it's the idea that the anointed few can predict when and why he's sadistic that is truly absurd), but they don't recognize that they all have different gods... they seem to be afraid to separate themselves from "Christianity," maybe it's a sort of mass delusional appeal to authority. As long as I call myself a Christian, I can believe whatever I want about "god," and Christianity backs me up.
Grrr.
I like the "I'm with stupid" idea.
But I wouldn't want to say, "Your god's an asshead," any more than I'd want to say to a Scientologist, "Xenu and your space-aliens are assheads." Attacking a crazy belief as though it were real, and its principals directly attackable, is pointless.
I'd rather just say, "Your idea that the universe is run by an egotistical, sadistic homophobe is just a completely insane concept, and only an asshead could actually believe that!"
Which is what I think I've said.
Yes, it IS the Westboro Baptists. They don't have an 'East Coast Branch.' They are a group of somewhere between 100-200 people, half of whom are related to Fred Phelps.
They don't get new converts, there is some question whether they even want them. (There is a long-standing rumor that, in fact, they are not a religious group at all but a gigantic scam, that there purpose is to get people so mad that they will physically attack them, and that the group -- many of whom are lawyers -- will then sue them, and that this is the way they raise money.)
They are repugnant, yes -- and I'll give Christians credit, most of them view the Phelpses with the same disgust we do -- but they are also geniuses at getting publicity. It is a shame that they do force people to give them this amount of notice, but they do, and most of the people who write about them don't realize just how small a group they are, and remain.
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