Wednesday, March 02, 2011

Jesus wept

Note - the dead gorilla post was an accidental publish from Formspring.

As you've probably heard, the Westboro Baptist Church won the right to picket the funerals of soldiers with their anti-gay hate speech. I believe that everyone should have a right to free speech and that if it doesn't apply to the unpopular it really doesn't exist at all, but several states also have laws making it illegal to launch a personal attack against someone, either physically or verbally. Asking the supreme court to allow people to be sued or treated as criminals because their views are so universally disliked was the wrong request, and they rightfully slapped that bitch down. Instead the politicians should have stuck with the "their actions cross the line and become a personal attack rather than merely an unpopular opinion" angle instead. There's no reasonable way you can argue that the dead soldier's family and friends will not be forcibly exposed to their opinion and no logical reason they wouldn't feel hurt by it when they do act at hospitals and cemetaries. Or if nothing else, they could say that using the Marines' "semper fi" motto in their hate speech was a violation of copyright law and then allow the marines to do a demonstration of their own, mainly on how they've been expertly trained to storm the beeches, secure an objective, and then wipe out a tiny Baptist church full of haters.

Of course I think the best measured response was in a previous story that I read that included a link to Westboro's site which had been hijacked and repointed to drop the user on a hardcore gay porn site. And now having said hardcore gay porn site (in fact, I said it twice) I shall further say Naughty Asian Schoolgirls, free Viagra, and ninja to further inflate the hits on today's post. Plus I will close with a bunny.

6 comments:

tiff said...

you are absolutely correct.

Anonymous said...

I can't believe people actually have the time and desire to stage such protests. Who cares anymore?
Let it be already.
Nice post Grant. You have a way with words. Here's to all the hits!

Captain Dumbass said...

I like the copyright infringement idea, they should go with that.

April said...

I do agree that WBC has the constitutional right to be giant douche bags. I do not agree with what the WBC does. And I think that some crazy unibomber guy should blow that place, and all it's members, the fuck up.

Jay said...

We all get forcibly exposed to other people's horrible and obnoxious opinions all the time.

Nobody cared when this same group was protesting Mr. Rogers' funeral. It only suddenly became an outrage when they protested soldier's funerals. In fact, it was hard to even get some on the right to criticize this group. By protesting the soldier's funerals they finally went too far I guess.

Unknown said...

I think your Marine idea has great merrits and will forward the idea to all the marines i know.