LGBTQ+ Rights and America

US Government orders insurers to provide equal coverage to gay married couples.

Fred Phelps "on the brink of death".

Good fucking riddance you wanker. Is it too early to start gravedancing? I think not.◊

edited 16th Mar '14 2:25:21 PM by Achaemenid

You know, I kept seeing news articles about that guy and thinking "isn't it kind of in bad taste to celebrate someones death?"

I didn't realize who he was when I thought that.

Much as I hate the guy I disagree with the people that feel it's justifiable to protest his funeral. Let his family have their minute of mourning. They're still people too despite what they have done.

Moreover, protesting at his funeral is exactly the kind of mean-spirited action that keeps a Cycle of Revenge going.

Wait, they kicked him out of his own church? Why did that happen? :p

Also good riddance. People who are 1000x better human beings than Phelps die every day, I'm not going to shed a tear for such a hateful bigot.

edited 16th Mar '14 4:03:50 PM by Talby

No. You avoid something like that when you want to try and come to a compromise. Phelps was a hateful bigot whose little clan of hateful bigots caused great distress and emotional harm to the parents of LGBT people, America's war dead, and decent people generally. Imagine what grieving families must have felt to see his tribe outside the funerals of their children. How can you be concerned about a cycle of revenge? He doesn't deserve the consideration that would make turning the other cheek a worthwhile action. He doesn't deserve even a foot in the door of the "polite conversation" clubhouse; he deserves for ridicule and vitriol to follow him wherever he goes - even into the afterlife, if there is one.

Drano does not compromise with the gunk in your plughole.

edited 16th Mar '14 4:10:41 PM by Achaemenid

There's something to be said for being the bigger man

There's this thing called hypocrisy. You don't want to find yourself doing the thing. It hurts your point.

Compromise: Everyone stands outside the funeral holding signs that say "Sorry for your loss" and "Rest in Peace".

Doing something you're against doesn't make it wrong.

But of course, doing something you're against doesn't make it right either.

Behaviors and thoughts are two different things. People speak out against a lot of things they truly believe are bad, and do them anyway. Bad self-control or inadvertence or something, but they still believe themselves.

Talking bad about a guy who talked bad about a LOT of people might be hypocritical, but it's not without reason.

There is a difference between "I don't like this person because of 'perfectly legitimate reasons that will totally convince anyone that doesn't already buy into them'" and "I don't like this person because they did this, this and this and said that."

It's not hypocritical, any more then hitting someone in self defense because they hit you first is hypocritical. It's an appropriate and understandable response.

It would be hypocritical if we complained about protesting funerals, and then went and protested someone's funeral who had done nothing to deserve it.

I was gonna be the bad guy here and say that if any of Phelps' countless victims wanted to pay him in kind for his deeds against them, I had no desire to tell them they shouldn't. It's good to know I'm not alone in feeling this way.

It's not really self defense if you hit someone just because they hit you first—it's retribution.

Or revenge. :p Self defense is hitting someone after they hit you so they'll stop hitting you.

As for protesting funerals, hypocrisy would be protesting protesting at innocent people's funerals, and then doing it yourself.

Semantics are lame.

@talby- self defense is different. That's "i'm being attacked and my only option is to put an end to said attack"

this isn't the same situation.

of course, someone wants to counter protest as bad as he did, well that their right. but then they're pretty much a classic example of He Who Fights Monsters

edited 16th Mar '14 4:59:45 PM by Joesolo

I have to agree with this position on Phelps' death. And that's all I have to say about that.

My perspective on this is that you can protest his funeral if you want to but it will probably hurt people's ability to sympathize with LGBT rights supporters if they turn around and do the same thing Phelps did. Hypocrisy doesn't help your case.

I cannot help but be reminded of the reaction following Margaret Thatcher's death, when all the bien-pensants earnestly told us that it was wrong not to feel sad at her passing and that we should all really band together and support her family - by which, of course, the government meant "support the establishment". I also remember that the people who were saying this were mainly middle-class and English. In other words, those who weren't affected by her legacy; the people who didn't have family left bereft by her brutal economic policy, the people who didn't have to take care of that family, and the people who didn't have to live in the desolation she left behind her. I don't think anyone who hasn't been targeted by Phelps has a right to condemn those who were. Do you want to tell the people whose lives he tried to ruin not to protest? I don't. And I won't.

After all Fred Phelps has done to some of the most vulnerable people in America, I think those people have an absolute right, should they wish to exercise it, to pay him with his own coin, and I think the idea that they are somehow "stooping to his level" is an disgraceful moral equivalency: what war widows have they harassed? What kid's murder have the celebrated? What anti-semitism have they displayed? When have they rejoiced in the crippling and maiming of soldiers?◊

How anyone can be a morally serious person and try to place those who make the choice to protest Fred Phelps' funeral and Phelps on the same level astonishes me. Hypocrisy my arse.

Feel free to stand on the moral high-ground if you want, but the view of Fred Phelps getting the shit kicked out of him is better from down here.

As for his disowning by the church; as far as I'm concerned it's a hell entirely of his own making. He made his bed. Now he can lie in it.

Birthday card pish! Almost every significant political movement has had, at least in part, some basis in hatred. Some things deserve to be hated - no, more than that, it is a moral requirement to hate some things. I hate intolerance. I hate bigotry. I hate fascism. I hate prejudice and racism and irrationality and snobbery and people who set up tallies of how long Matthew Shepard has "burned in hell". And I'm proud to do so.

edited 16th Mar '14 5:24:49 PM by Achaemenid

Forget Phelps. He's gone, or as close to it as matters. What's important is the legacy of hate he leaves behind, and you can't combat that by hating in return. It does nobody any good.

If it feels cathartic to get in some digs at him, that's your choice to make.

edited 16th Mar '14 5:24:15 PM by Fighteer

@ach- "How anyone can be a morally serious person and try to place those who make the choice to protest Fred Phelps' funeral and Phelps on the same level astonishes me. "

A funeral protest is a funeral protest. the only people you're affecting are the dead person's family. Your not proving him wrong. Your not accomplishing anything. It's just straight up revenge, and not even against the man himself. It accomplishes nothing. If you want to be vengeful, by all means it's your right, but don't go expecting to be cheered on by people.

I'm not saying you have to mourn his passing and can't feel happy that he's gone. I'm saying that something as crass as protesting his funeral is just wrong and makes the entire LGBT rights movement look like a bunch of hypocrites. It does no one any good in the long run.

Can I get an explanation for this statement? You are on the same level because you're doing the same damn thing. Do it if it makes you feel happy but I don't see how you can be offended if people judge you for it. No matter how rotten a person is in life their family deserves to have a chance to mourn the passing of a loved one. If anything not protesting back might be what it takes to wake his family up. If you do then you're acknowledging what the church thinks of you and they have no reason to stop.

edited 16th Mar '14 5:26:26 PM by Kostya

If there are people who are going to start hating LGBT people just because someone is inevitably going to protest at Phelps' funeral...maybe we're better off without their support. They sound to me like fickle people who aren't worth catering to.

edited 16th Mar '14 5:31:58 PM by Morgikit

Like I said, do whatever you want. I'm just pointing out that not everyone feels the same way you do about this so don't be shocked if some people disagree.