Fire

Fred Phelps' (of god hates fags fame) people are coming to where I go to school. I don't really know why. Well I know what they are doing, but I don't really get it. I guess god hates Jews too.

I'm not offended by the fact that they are coming to the school I attend. That's irrelevant. It's just that I've been reminded of these people and what they believe and do after a long period of not giving them much thought.

Fuck these people, fuck every one of them. Fuck their religion, fuck their church (Westboro Baptist, from Kansas, just like Operation Rescue), fuck their families, fuck their Walmart lives.

They protested Matthew Shepard's funeral. Because he was gay. He had it coming, they are glad he is dead, and he is in their hell, they say. They protested his funeral, in front of his family. Yup.

Fuck people's liberal attitudes towards them. Sure, people are pissed, but they're going to hold a counter-protest. Oooh. Not that. That's what they want. They want attention. They live on it. They want people to yell at them and tell them they are wrong and how they are not welcome wherever they may be; it only emboldens them. These people thrive on the attention, however negative it may seem. They are sick.

Their sickness is not the type that can be adequately addressed through speech, the written word, or visual mediums. No, these people will only understand violence. That is their language. It is the unofficial language of America, for sure, and they have wholeheartedly embraced it.

As such, the people from the Westboro Baptist Church need to be addressed in the language they understand. Violence, self-defense, keeping the streets safe, keeping them clean, however you choose to construe it.

Are these people "the problem"? No. They are but a grotesque manifestation of the horrors of humanity and the belief system of this society. At the same time, they are a legitimate danger that needs to be addressed, and it will not happen through marches, holding signs, or yelling at them.

People like this need to be afraid to leave their homes. They operate with no fear. Hate groups in this country virtually need never fear retribution, and of course the fact that many politicians support them, whether explicitly or implicitly, and a good number of pigs populate their ranks goes a long way to see to this. They hide behind constitutional rights and the fact that no one legitimately fights them. People have fucking COUNTER-PROTESTS. Seriously? That's what's up? Damn.

"We have the right to say what we want," they say. Sure. But then the people to whom you are saying it have a right to defend themselves against you and your dirty work enforcers when you threaten them, whether the threat be implied or overt. If what you are saying has a history of concomitant violence (lynching black people, killing doctors, beating queer people), then you need to be kept in check and people have every fucking right to do this, through whatever means necessary. People need to realize that. No one needs to lay down and let these people run all over the rights that we all have to be safe. That is a much higher priority than free speech.

Protest and counter-protest are not the same. Their protest = profound bigotry, threatening language, inciting hate, giving strength to the people who go out and perform the actions that their words describe. Counter-protest = telling them that they are wrong. We need more than this. When they have what they are saying and doing coming back to them in kind, then we will see how strongly they still feel the need to say what they want.