Souther Baptist Church Covered Up Massive Sex Abuse Scandal has been added as a related post - related requested by newtboy.

it's funny that the westboro baptist church viewed as so outrageous and obviously stupid as to not even be worth mocking and now, over a decade later, bob is like "no, no, they have a point".

why does this community continue to tolerate this level of bigotry as if it was a disagreement over ice cream flavours?

Let me guess, another from the college level advanced creative writing class for seniors in high school being presented by her as a normal everyday class book (and hinting it’s in 4th grade classes).

If you’re upset a senior in high school might be voluntarily exposed to this material in his college prep class, you need to move into the Westboro Baptist Church compound and hate sex and freedom along with them, leave the public out of your puritanical shariah insanity.

You get worse language on prime time broadcast tv, WAY worse on say, Howard Stern, or Jersey Shore…this is maybe pg 13+ content, not xxx….and guaranteed not required reading. Get a grip.

No, but you must be.
Baby murder gets the death penalty in Texas. This law calls for civil penalties, not even a parking ticket. It's an infraction of a regulation other citizens can profit from enforcing, not murder in any way shape or form, by Texas law.

You gave me the definition!!! ROTFLMFAHS!!!!
" Definition
Murder: the unlawful premeditated killing of one HUMAN BEING by another"
But you intentionally ignore the fact that the unborn aren't yet people. You can't murder non people. I've pointed this out repeatedly. It seems you must have the illiteracy problem along with your reality problem.

It's true, I WOULD and HAVE defended infanticide, especially historically, but I absolutely have not mentioned it before now in this thread. Supporting abortion is not defending murder by any accepted definition of those words, you have to skew the definitions of human beings and the definition of murder before your position makes sense. Duh. I expect your verbal SAT score was awful, you have a tenuous grasp of English.

According to the bible, yep, not people. Sorry. Try reading it and interpreting what's actually there instead of having someone do it for you.

So, you are advocating Baptist Sharia law.

America has legalized abortions in every state by law because the majority wants it. Don't like it, fuck right off. As easy as that, but your ilk didn't fuck off, you prefer end runs around the constitution and the destruction of codified rights and using legal trickery and convolutions to enact laws that are knowingly unconstitutional but will effectively end abortions before the legal process can invalidate them by bankrupting providers. Anything BUT fucking right off. Take your own advice first, maybe.

Again, the majority in Texas don't want this, didn't vote for it, and absolutely don't want the consequences....which is an exodus of multi national corporations who won't support this nonsense with their wallets.

The majority of Americans are Christians, and a large majority want abortion to be legal and easy to access. Your logic is fatally flawed, being Christian doesn't mean you're anti abortion any more than it means you're anti murder, in fact it means you're more likely to support and defend murder, the bible prescribes it for almost any infraction from actual murder to mowing your lawn on Sunday. The bible says nearly nothing about abortion, what little it does say indicates it's not a crime. Holy fuck, learn your own religion before trying to impose it on others!

Texas was already teetering on the brink of bankruptcy, no doubt the backlash for this move will push them hard over the edge. I already cancelled my trip there, and won't be buying any Texas made products. I'm not alone.
Enjoy!

That goes for Biden and America too, right? Don't like Biden, get out, easy as that, right? The difference being a majority DID vote for Biden.

That's the first way you're incorrect. A majority voted for representatives who voted for it, but the majority of voters, 54%-42%, don't want to go this far. It was not a referendum. The people didn't ask for and don't want this.

It's an obvious legal overreach, and will be overturned in time, but in the meantime, millions of women will have their autonomy, their authority over their own bodies, stripped from them, many will pay with their lives, and many huge companies are reconsidering moving or even existing in Texas because of this Baptist sharia law attack on women's rights over even their own bodies.

I suggest a sex strike in Texas until it's repealed. If they don't want a baby right now, women would be insane to have even protected intercourse.

I suggested my brother in Austin turn in the highway department for maintaining roads that facilitate transporting women to have abortions and claim his $10k bounty before the state goes bankrupt.

Texas still has "blue laws" restricting the sale of not just alcohol but other non necessities on Sundays. Enacted in 1961 and largely repealed in the 80's, you still cannot buy liquor at a store on Sundays, and car dealerships must close one weekend day. This was their way of forcing the Southern Baptist religious beliefs of the ruling class on everyone.

Edit: I grew up there in the 70’s when you could only buy food or medicine on Sundays, and some groceries and pharmacies closed.

Texas has a LONG history of legislating religious "morality", from it's inception through today. They love to talk about their freedoms, but you really only have the freedom to follow their narrow definition of morality. These morality laws always effect the poor far more than the wealthy, often completely exempting the well off....for example, you can buy an expensive mixed drink to go from a bar, restaurant, or hotel...they even have drive through bars...on Sunday morning in Texas, but you cannot buy a cheap bottle in a liquor store to pour your own. This is typical.

Your video, Foo Fighters Troll Westboro Baptist Church Protest, has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

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On her debut album for Philips, Nina Simone in Concert (1964), for the first time she addressed racial inequality in the United States in the song "Mississippi Goddam". This was her response to the June 12, 1963, murder of Medgar Evers and the September 15, 1963, bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, that killed four young black girls and partly blinded a fifth. She said that the song was "like throwing ten bullets back at them", becoming one of many other protest songs written by Simone. The song was released as a single, and it was boycotted in some[vague] southern states.[31][32] Promotional copies were smashed by a Carolina radio station and returned to Philips.[33] She later recalled how "Mississippi Goddam" was her "first civil rights song" and that the song came to her "in a rush of fury, hatred and determination". The song challenged the belief that race relations could change gradually and called for more immediate developments: "me and my people are just about due". It was a key moment in her path to Civil Rights activism.[34] "Old Jim Crow", on the same album, addressed the Jim Crow laws. After "Mississippi Goddam", a civil rights message was the norm in Simone's recordings and became part of her concerts.

Kinda gonna disagree with you here.

I like sorting nuts by nuttiness. I expect murder rates to follow from the combination of nuttiness and number of members. I'm not aware of murders out of the Westboro Baptists(yet at least). Plenty of murderers though have claimed generic christianity though. I still class Westboro as less tolerable than generic christianity.

Going back to the video, this crowd is pretty far over on the nutcase scale.

That just sounds an awful lot like two wrongs making a right.

Claiming an established well defined name for your group/association, and then proceeding to define your group as something completely different is BAD communication. That is an objective fact, not something that varies depending upon your subjective POV. Whether that bad communication also has some morality attached to it sounds more like what your addressing, which is something I was saying nothing about.

Having groups like Westboro Baptists claiming to be either Christian or Baptist is like you said much the same. Morality wise, infinitely worse. Communication wise they might arguably be more accurate, although their words and actions look nothing like the Christ they claim to follow, I do understand that their group at least claims to truly believe in and follow their God. Secular Satanists apparently neither worship nor even believe in the existence of Satan, making the moniker more misleading. Their push for religious neutrality/separation of church and state however place them as far superior morally. Again, these examples are laden with my opinion regarding morality.

Morality aside though, you honestly can't say that claiming a name for your group with a strongly established meaning and definition isn't bad communication when your group shares neither the beliefs(grammar edit) nor practices of that established meaning and definition.

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Thought you would dig this https://videosift.com/video/Weightless-Jean-Baptiste-Chandelier

We don't stand for that kind of crap up here in Canada...

Jokes aside, we make exceptions to free speech and hate speech is something you CAN be prosecuted for. A teacher that was trying to teach holocaust denial was convicted for it:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_speech_in_Canada

My 2 cents, punching a nazi is more wrong because of the vigilante aspect of it than in an absolute moral sense. IMO the state should have laws about support for or membership with known criminal, terrorist or hate groups. Nazi's and KKK for starters, Westboro baptists and Saudi Wahabiism too depending on where society wants to draw the line. Morally though, I have no problems with declaring that debating merits of fascism and even mistreatment of Nazi germany historically is free speech and protected, but at the same time wearing a swastika on your arm or a pillow case on your head while marching in the streets to support your 'cause' should see you convicted and sentenced.

Very analogous to Westboro Baptist "church" stooges. They (ab)use their constitutionally protected rights to free speech to say the most offensive and provocative crap that they can come up with, specifically with the intention to incite a (violent) reaction against them. Why? Because pretty much the entire Phelps family are lawyers, and they know that they can generally win any assault case that they can provoke people into. All that hate they spew boils down to a stupid, petty moneymaking scam.

Is the Seattle Nazi that devious and cunning? I doubt it. Probably just a crazy / fucked up guy, as Maher said. That doesn't excuse his fuckwittery, but it does reinforce Maher's argument that punching the guy is NOT the best response.

Morello is awesome, with RATM and Audioslave, and now Prophets of Rage, etc. But he's dead wrong on this issue, and comes across as a bit of an "internet tough guy". Outside of just ignoring them, I kinda think the only way to one-up these people is to know the law, what constitutes assault etc., and essentially beat them at their own game (ie. provoke them into doing something to you). On the other hand, there's something to be said for using using passive-aggressive snark to mock / humiliate them in a nonviolent way, ala the Foo Fighters: