Nail This Phelps Asshole

I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it. -Voltaire (not a direct quote, but a summation of his thoughts written by others)

Yeah, fuck Voltaire. Why in the fuck would you defend someone who says something you disagree with? You've got a side to defend -- help them. Defend to the death, whatever. I've got some masturbating I need to do.

I think of this whenever there are stories of odious, evil people saying obnoxious, hurtful things and saying, "Well, it's free speech!" One of these people is Fred Phelps, head of this crazy, sick Westboro Baptist Church. He and his followers, all of whom are family, go around to military funerals and make fun of them, saying they died because America hasn't done enough against homosexuality. I guess. Yeah, how Phelps and his demented offspring make the case that God is punishing soldiers, and soldiers only, for our country because of sexual orientation tolerance remains beyond the logic of any decent man. And I have no idea why they want to protest a funeral.

And yet, because of this fucked-up thinking, they have gone around these ceremonies and ridiculing them, absolutely reveling in their deaths with such venom. You could chalk it up as a bunch of crazy people, which they are, but the viciousness of their free speech, along with the fact that they make this their full-time job, means somebody has to put a stop to it.

The only people who can do that, at least for the moment, is the Supreme Court. Albert Snyder, the father of his dead son, Matthew, is suing the Phelpses for defaming, invading the privacy of, and inflicting emotional distress on him when picketing at the memorial for his son four years ago.

Snyder won first, then the federal appellate court overturned the verdict. So Snyder appealed to the Supreme Court. By this account by the Associated Press, the Justices really want to nail Phelps, but don't think they can.

Yes, they can. Why? These guys are the same people who said businesses can spend as much as they want for political campaigns without people knowing who they are in the Citizens United case. Every decent individual in the country thinks that was a stupid idea, but the Supreme Court did it because it's the highest court in the nation. I ain't no constitutional scholar, but I think it's bullshit what the Supreme Court did in that case. I don't believe allowing corporations to spend money freely and without transparency is what the Framers of the Constitution had in mind. But the Court did it anyway.

So why not do apply that same flimsy, bendable call to get these Westboro assholes, too? It seems obvious that this Court will interpret the Constitution the way it wants to, however inaccurately the interpretation turns out to be. So I don't care that the Court doesn't know if they can help Snyder. They've done it once before to "save" conglomerates; do it again in order to finally stop these cruel, delusion motherfuckers once and for all.

I'll go one step further. I'm sick of thinking that these Justices will have to side with that bigot Phelps because the Bill of Rights guarantees free speech. Fuck that. If the Framers would believe that, fuck them.

And fuck the First Amendment. Seriously, fuck it! Cruel, evil men from the beginning of this nation have relied on that to spew hateful lies about innocent people, Phelps currently being the most egregious case. They wave free speech as this unassailable banner that we all wave together. And they all try and scare us with snowball tactics -- that if their free speech rights are limited or struck down, our free speech rights are next.

That's the line of thinking by the most obnoxious of advocacy groups, the ACLU, as well as, unfortunately, newspaper groups, both of whom have filed friends-of-the-court briefs in support of the Phelps and their assertion to their sick bile. This is why I can't stand the ACLU most of the time, and why I never became a newsman.

First of all, the First Amendment is not absolute. You can't yell "Fire!" in a crowded movie theater just because of free speech. And there are time, place and manner restrictions an authority can place on a protest or any other gathering. So why not do that here? Can't you set up a temporary rule that says, for example, that whenever there's a funeral going on you can't protest within, say, 20 miles of the ceremony? Why not, corporation-loving Supreme Court?

Moreover -- and this is the point I really want to make, even though I probably won't articulate it well -- I truly resent alarmists telling me that my free speech rights are on the line whenever a Nazi group or white power group or these Westboro bastards. Nothing I say is anywhere close to the vile, mean shit these people spew out of their mouths. I talk about sex, masturbation, and sometimes poop. That's a hell of a lot different from hoping "fags" die, or saying that minorities are inferior to whites, or wishing that Jews need to be deported out of the country or shot.

My free speech is different from their free speech. My free speech isn't crazy. My free speech doesn't go out of its way to hurt people. My free speech doesn't lie. Those people, all they want to do is to hate, demean people, delight in other people's misery, make other people feel threatened, inferior, unsafe. Fuck those people. These people's supposed free speech rights need to be taken away from them for both the safety of certain members of society and, I think just as important, the civility of this country.

What, is civility not mentioned in the Constitution? As I said before, who cares? Somebody needs to stop these people, if only to reclaim a sense of decency. Now, the AP article states that, surprisingly, the conservative wing of the Court (Chief John Roberts, Samuel Alito and hateful archconservative Antonin Scalia) tried their damndest to get Phelps. But his side, represented by their daughter, appartenly was very effective, according to one reporter I saw reporting on it on Washington Week. Goddamn I hate it when these hatemonger pricks know how to use the First Amendment for their twisted purposes.

It looks like, if the Supreme Court strictly reads the Constitution, Phelps is going to get away with it and be free to impugn Mr. Snyder and other families of dead men and women service our armed forces and glorifying in their deaths because it's God's retribution. But please, Supreme Court, just this once, nail that son-of-a-bitch Phelps to his own goddamn delusional cross and let Snyder and all the other families Phelps and his followers stalked and mocked take them to court for what they did to them. Do it, for their sake, for my sake, for our country's sake. America will be fine with an iffy decision to shut down Phelps. And we'd be better off as a nation trying to do its best instead of one merely needing to do what is the law.