First Amendment even shields Westboro Baptist Church
Lewis DiuguidThe First Amendment in the Bill of Rights covers myriad sins, and the Westboro Baptist Church ministers and congregation should be forever thankful.
The Topeka group known nationally for protesting military funerals with anti-gay signs and chants has been outted on a new White House website. A petition on the site has picked up more than 275,000 signatures asking the federal government to “legally recognize” the church as a hate group, The Kansas City Star reports.
Certainly the infamous church qualifies because of its loud and TV-hungry anti-homosexual efforts all over the country. The church had even planned anti-gay pickets at the funeral of the slain principal of Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., but thank goodness counterprotesters scotched that.
The signatures on the White House petition seeking to label the church a hate group will likely go nowhere. But it is important that decent people show that they won’t tolerate the Westboro Baptist Church’s actions.
The sin of free speech, after all, has to answer to the holy blessings of consequences.
Matt Henry
4 months, 3 weeks agoOkay, I’m confused. If they qualify as a “hate group” but they would still be protected by the first amendment for their “sins” then what have they done to justify a hate group classification? They have done nothing criminal to qualify (that I know of). And if they don’t “qualify”, exactly what consequences other than a clearly-defined list of people who don’t like them are they going to suffer? Do they not already realize that basically the whole country is against them but they don’t care?
Don’t get me wrong; if there is a loose definition of a hate group out there, I don’t know how Westboro wouldn’t qualify, and I absolutely love the steps that communities have taken to limit the spread of their awfulness. But since they are generally law-abiding, what is the point of even the talk of “hate group” classification other than an attempt to have a chilling effect on free, albeit contemptible, speech? Maybe this is exactly the sort of thing that free-speech advocates have always warned about with regards to hate-crime legislation.
Matt Henry
4 months, 3 weeks agoOr as a last thought, do we classify “hate groups” before they do anything illegal so that when and if they do we can hit them harder? Does that give anyone else pause about a chilling effect on speech? If a group similar to the Klan popped up that was similarly awful in their views and statements but never broke the law should they be classified as a hate group? What about the Black Panthers and their hate for “cracker babies”?
This “hate group” stuff freaks me out…
JR Beillenhouser
4 months, 3 weeks agoToday, they classify them as a hate group. Tomorrow, they say they forfeit first amendment rights because they are a hate group. The next day, they say any group you are in is a hate group, and voila, they have shut down any speech they want to shut down.
Slippery slope, but one a lot of progressives, want to travel down.
Mark Hastert
4 months, 3 weeks agoHate speech, bigotry, burning flags all abhorrent yet protected. The first exception to the first amendment won’t be the last….