Fred Phelps Is The Leader Of The Westboro Baptist Church

When someone thinks of a religious person, they think of someone who is kind and caring. Well, this is not the case for Frederick Douglass. According to Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, a religious slave master is the worse kind of master. In Douglass’ narrative, there are examples of religious slave owners being delusional, hypocritical, and mean. Throughout his narrative, Frederick Douglass states many incidents with religious slave owners.

protested a vacuum store for selling Swedish vacuums after the Swedish gov't arrested a preacher for hate speech (Crowe 2009).

In Snyder v. Phelps, dissenting Justice Samuel Alito likened the protests of the Westboro Baptist Church members to fighting words and of a personal character, and thus not protected speech. The majority disagreed and stated that the protester's speech was not personal but public, and that local laws which can shield funeral attendees from protesters are adequate for protecting those in times of emotional

Not affiliated with any southern baptist or general baptist churches, the thirty-nine member (The Journal) Westboro Baptist Church is primarily known for its continued protest against the LGBT community, the Catholic Church, and the military (Wikipedia). The westboro Baptist Church’s first public service was held on November 27, 1955(Wikipedia). This was the first time the church publicly condemned the world. Most recently the Westboro Baptist Church have agreed with the shooting at the Pulse Night Club in Orlando, Florida stating that God sent Omar Mateen to kill the gays because “God hates fags.” While other churches preach about loving one another as god has loved them, the westboro

As the march was going on with the veterans, bricks were being thrown at the marchers and gas was used. Some were killed during their march which was not expected to happen. No matter

The Westboro Baptist Church is a group that has been in the spotlight for the last two decades because of their unusual tactic of picketing at soldier’s funerals. The act is motivated by the notion that America’s moral are being corrupted by their acceptance of homosexuality. The act of picketing of soldier’s funerals according to the group is motivated by the fact that it is a time when mourners are emotionally vulnerable and they think of their mortality. They believe that by picketing in soldier’s funerals their message is stronger. However, this tactic has caused much consternation from both the public and the government. In the interest of the public, state legislatures have enacted laws against the actions of the Westboro Baptist Church. The landmark case of Snyder v. Phelps would have been the deciding factor against the group, but the Supreme Court held in favor of the group because their actions were protected by the First Amendment. This then would present the notion that the First Amendment trumped public interest in the decision. However, that is not the case because the case was an IIED case among others, it was a personal one. As long as the group coordinates with public authorities and does not break laws, then their acts are nothing more than nuisances that should not get in the way of celebrating the life of the dead.

This book Pray the Gay Away by Bernadetta C. Barton discusses about certain areas in the United States called Bible Belts were they have made absolutely no progress in securing rights for gay people. They lag behind the rest of nation were people are accepting homosexuality (Pray the Gay Away 15). Barton argues that in small towns were Christian institutions serve as a foundation for both passive and active homophobia in these areas (Pray the Gay Away 19). This article is related to the play because the two dominant religions discussed in the play was Judaism and Mormonism and both religions strongly oppose homosexuality and this lead to homophobic attitudes and themes within the play.

Funeral protests have been an issue for years. During this most recent war, as soldiers were coming home to be laid to rest, Westboro Baptist Church made headlines by protesting at the funerals of fallen soldiers. During the services, members of the church would gather outside of many of the military funerals waving signs that had offensive messages on them such as, “God Hates You”, and “Thank God for Dead Soldiers”. The members of this church believe that the death of the soldiers is God’s punishment for the tolerance of homosexuality in the United States. Last year the U.S, Supreme Court ruled that the First Amendment protects these groups and any others who

The Westboro Baptist Church (WBC) is known for their obscene protests where they display signs that discriminate towards homosexuals. Although the members of the WBC considered themselves a part of an actual church, the church mainly consists of the family members of its founder, Fred Phelps (Clay, 2016). The church holds beliefs that are similar to Calvinism, a denomination of Christianity. Similar to the Calvinists, the members of the church believe that they are a part of an elect group of people that God has chosen to be his own (Clay, 2016). Because they are a part of God’s elect, they feel they must speak against the homosexuality that is present in America and in other places of the world. They travel around the world protesting and shouting hurtful phrases that cause people to

In the beginning of this article, Rosenbaum relies on the appeal of emotion, pathos, to persuade his audience to agree with his claim. He tries to achieve this by telling a story of a church group picketing the funeral of a gay marine. He states, “The Supreme Court upheld the right of a church group opposed to gays serving in the military to picket the funeral of a dead marine with signs that read ‘God Hates Fags’ ” (Rosenbaum). This event caused an uproar and disrupted the peace of a marines’ funeral. Many people began to question the limits of free speech because of this. How can people use hateful speech such as

Twenty-four-year-old Daniel Zamudio was walking through a park in Santiago, Chile, when four men appeared and began to burn Daniel with cigarettes and beat him with rocks and glass bottles, injuring him in various ways (Saul). The men used the broken glass to cut off a part of his ear, as well as, cut swastikas into his skin because Zumudio was gay (Saul). Less than a month later, Daniel Zamudio passed away due to this violent hate crime (Saul). Although only few instances of homophobic crimes are reported, FBI statistics show that attacks on the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, transsexual, queer, questioning, intersex, asexual, ally, and pansexual (LGBT+) community, such as the Orlando gay nightclub shooting, are one of the common occurrences, right behind racial attacks (Saul). LGBT people have made outstanding progress on their goal to reach equality. For example, same-sex couples now have the right to adopt children in all the states of America and thanks to President Obama, federal workers cannot be discriminated upon sexual orientation or gender identity (Clinton). Although the LGBT+ community has civil rights that should be protected, due to society’s narrow-mindedness, the LGBT+ community gets treated as second class citizens.

The most substantial of these legal proceedings involving Westboro Baptist Church is the case of Snyder v. Phelps. In 2006, Albert Snyder sued the Phelps family on several counts, namely intrusion and intentional infliction of emotional distress.[6] Snyder’s son, Matthew, died in combat in Iraq and was brought home to Maryland for his funeral processions. Westboro Baptist Church decided to make an example of the fallen soldier, posting an article titled “The Burden of Marine Lance Cpl. Matthew Snyder” on their website. In this piece, they made multiple defamatory remarks about Matthew, such as saying that he was “raised for the devil”.[7] Westboro Baptist Church then traveled to Maryland and protested at Matthew’s funeral. The group carried

In light of the recent election putting a man with questionable morality in the powerful seat of President, many in the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender community are fearful of the repercussions this will cause. According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, “867 cases of hateful harassment or intimidation [were reported] in the United States in the 10 days after the November 8 election”, and swastikas adorned people’s cars and homes in angry graffiti, accompanying words such as “white power” and “fag”, “he she” and “die” (Yan). While the American legal system has come a long way in granting the homosexual community their natural rights, the present climate gives many a fear that things will go back to the way they were before, with homosexuals being oppressed and persecuted for simply loving who they love.

The Phelps family belongs to a church, called Westboro, which is known to frequently picket funerals, and has done

We all know that terrorists who claim to be part of ISSIS have some beliefs that may sound strange for us as a western society; one of them is believed that gay people are evil. In fact many witnesses of the massacre said that the gun shooter had said words against