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Anonymous Goes After GodHatesFags.com
An anonymous reader writes "Anonymous is now recognised as a serious force to be taken seriously, but its activities aren't confined to mass global protests, as the Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka, Kansas, is discovering, according to p2pnet. Says the Examiner, 'Fred Phelps' Westboro Baptist Church is infamous for their "Love Crusades," obnoxious displays of insensitivity and homophobia at the funerals of fallen American soldiers. The controversial if monotone message of the "Love Crusade" seems to be to blame everything that is wrong in the world on homosexuality. The crusades are part of a hate-based mission started in Kansas by the WBC and Fred Phelps.' In an open letter on AnonNews, 'We, the collective super-consciousness known as ANONYMOUS – the Voice of Free Speech & the Advocate of the People – have long heard you issue your venomous statements of hatred, and we have witnessed your flagrant and absurd displays of inimitable bigotry and intolerant fanaticism,' says Anonymous, stating 'Should you ignore this warning, you will meet with the vicious retaliatory arm of ANONYMOUS.'"
I smell a conflict of interest.
Viable Slashdot alternatives: https://pipedot.org/ and http://soylentnews.org/
These tactics sound like hate meets hate.
Wouldn't praying for them in a spirit of love work better?
It would either make Phelps & Co. see The Light or at the very least it would annoy the Hell out of them.
Either way society wins.
Unfortunately, your contemporary wackjob zealot obtains his morals from a questionable understanding of iron age writings about a sociopathic tribal deity; but often shows an otherwise modern understanding of things like computers and small arms...
Tactically, Westboro is a bit better target than just saying "hey! let's DDOS Amazon.com!"
Do I condone all their techniques? No. But it seems they've come to realize multi-billion dollar corporations are a bit too big to attack for them. Not that I pity Westboro at all (hypocritical demon warshipers)...
"Anonymous is now recognised as a serious force to be taken seriously..."
C'mon, "a serious force to be taken seriously?" Who wrote that?
Is there anything ironic about the self-appointed "voice of free speech" trying to bully an admittedly annoying and vocal cult into silence?
The average mental age on the Internet is at least 13 and the 85th percentile is at least 15.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
The Westboro Baptist Church fills an odd role where they're so extreme and, possibly more problematically, rude, that they have very little support. Will damaging them in some way actually change anything? Even people way on the right already dissociate themselves from them, and they have basically no actual influence on anything.
It's sort of the same with Actual Nazis imo. I'm worried about a certain kind of intolerant right-wing strain in the U.S., but I think Westboro types and swastika-flag-waving types are mostly distractions and not where the real problems lie; the right-wingers who aren't actively shooting themselves in the foot like those two groups do are bigger problems.
It'd go the other way too. Say you were a conservative worried about leftism in the U.S. You could attack the Communist Party USA, but would that be a good use of your time? They're a sideshow.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
I thought they'd banned advertising smoking?
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
WestBoro Baptist Church is just a media whore stirring up trouble to provoke a reaction. Whoever claims to speak for anonymous is the same. "anonymous" is just a group of people, in the loosest sense of the term, with no leadership or agenda. You can not declare a warning from something you have no control over. As the wikileaks DDOS attacks have shown us, most of them barely even qualify as script kiddies, and are ridiculously easy to catch. There are some that know enough to do SQL injection attacks, or brute force passwords (or use the built in password reset) but super hackers they are not. The mainstream media is laughable in how clueless they are about it. They can't seem to understand that the internet makes it possible to have a group with common goals who is coordinated through group-think instead of a firm leadership. There is no monolithic entity, no membership, no initiation ritual or brotherhood. It's a loose group whose actions are dictated by a herd mentality.
Not that I really care one way or the other, but shouldn't people who are "The Voice of Free Speech" not really make threats upon other groups use of free speech?
I didn't take the time to look into any of their claims against whoever they are accusing of whatever today.
After reading about the pillar of fire by night and a pillar of smoke by day, I think there may be some truth to this web site's name.
A medical question:
If each cigarette you smoke takes 5 minutes off of your life, but you are an eternal being, how does that work?
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
WE ARE ANONYMOUS, VOICE OF FREE SPEECH. OBEY US OR BE SILENCED.
Only twats as self-important as they obviously are could write this sort of thing and not even realize what they're saying. Or perhaps they do realize and just think that they're so great that their hypocrisy doesn't matter. I believe we've seen this sort of thing in history before. It starts with a religion and ends with lots of dead people. But hey, maybe this time it will be awesome.
Wow! Just wow! Anyone with enough homophobia to register a domain like that, and put up that website. Really needs to be taken to a bath house, and left there for a couple of days.
If I were God, wouldn't I protect my churches from acts of me?
When two groups of retards attack each other, no one wins...
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
The Westboro Baptist Church lives off suing people for infringing on their right to free speech, assembly, etc. If the IRC and 4chan douche bags attack them, then WBC isn't going to have anyone to sue, but will try and waste capital in their attempt.
And yes, they have computers, website, businesses associated with them, so there is crap for anonymous to attack.
...and I cherish the First Amendment above all the others.... ...but just this once....I'm gonna be spending all my time looking in another direction.
And -Damn you to Hell- Fred Phelps, and your inbred collection of Olympic class haters, for pushing me to this hypocrisy.
"A microprocessor... is a terrible thing to waste." --
GeneralEmergency
Pardon me for saying so, but why in hell would Anonymous give PR to this weird little cult? Apart from being grossly disgusting they seem fairly few and harmless and their sole power is the outraged press they garner.
They're the kind of religious nuts you can't reason with because they see everything as proof they are right. Hell, isn't this the same creeps that wanted to show up in the funeral of that 9yo girl that got shot? I think these people are going for martyrdom and hoping someone will open fire on them. I'd be tempted.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Phelps and his gang of Christianist assholes are in the business of provoking angry responses to their hellish displays that Phelps' gang will claim in court violated their rights or damaged them. To blackmail their targets, usually municipalities with the ability to pay, into settling the lawsuit and paying off Phelps rather than pay the extensive legal fees and possibly damages. That's why Phelps' gang is pumped full of lawyers trained at "Liberty" "University", the Christian crusade madrassa.
In this fight, it's Anonymous that's on the side of the angels.
--
make install -not war
Or it's an image thing. Remember, Anonymous has had several attacks against major US corporations attributed to them. Their presentation in the media is certainly not favorable to Anonymous. Now, where does Westboro "church "protest at? The funerals of dead soldiers, dishonoring them and pissing off their families, basically pissing off anyone who's ever known a soldier or just supports the soldiers. So, what better way to get back something of a favorable reputation than to go after people that pretty much everyone agrees needs to shut up and go away?
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
Exactly. It seems that the WIkileaks coverage has inflated someone's head to grotesque proportions. Anonymous isn't an "advocate of the people" or "the voice of free speech". Quite the contrary. Anonymous has fucked around with largely random people for years and is a poster boy for the abuse of free speech, quite possibly engaging in activities that will make politicians call for further limitations to free speech. Anonymous is...well, Anonymous. They're a huge group of people who spend too much time on the internet and have engaged in a wide variety of activities, from protesting Scientology to DDoSing Wikileaks to a multitude of lower-profile activities, like screwing people over the internet as hard as possible just for the lulz. And "super-consciousness"? Gimme a fucking break.
You know, I hadn't even heard about that website until Anonymous vowed to take it down.
Supporter of the +1 Over Dramatic mod option. In memory of apk.
Sorry, but you are wrong.
When two groups of retards attack each other, everyone wins...
If I were God, wouldn't I protect my churches from acts of me?
Isn't it ironic that "The Voice of Free Speech" would tell another group that if they don't shut up, they will have their free speech DDOSed off the face of the earth?
C'mon, Anonymous, I don't like the tactics of the Westboro people any better than you do, but you either believe in free speech or you don't. If you don't, and you want to go ahead and DDOS them, fine, but let's be consistent.
Of course, DDOSing them won't stop them from shoving up at funerals and inflicting pain on innocent, grieving families. It might make you feel like you're Doing Something, but you won't be, really.
Worse, I doubt anonymous cares about Fred Phelps. heh
Anonymous must fundamentally be about the lolz. You're welcome to credit anonymous if you get even bigger lolz by inciting Fred Phelps. Yet, I'm not sure that's possible, meaning any normal reaction will already involve lolz. Don't let me stop you from trying! Just please make sure your shit is actually funny before you take on the anonymous label.
If otoh you're just looking for some good ol' internet vigilantly action, may I humbly suggest Muskegon MI Prosecutor Tony Tague. Our dear public servant Tony has clearly got a full plate what with a serial killer on the loose in his town. Yet, he find ample time to prosecute a youtube comedian for tasteless editing. Yes, that right, he's sending some poor kid with a guitar up the creek for 20 years over bad taste in editing.
I'd never call harassing Tony Tague, or the parents that put him up to it, an Anonymous action, well no epic here, maybe if the kid was a funner singer, but meh. I'm confident however that many people feel rather annoyed by grandstanding prosecutors and retarded paranoid parents. And clearly this prosecution goes beyond the pale. So here's your chance to vent some frustration and take a stand against stupidity. Just call Tony Tague's office tell his secretary what an ass hat he is for abusing due process like this.
I'm sure they'll be posting the complaining parent's telephone numbers all over /b/ too, but honestly I doubt America's breeders will gain any collective intelligence just because some get bitch slapped by /b/, something awful, etc.
The Christian religion has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world. -- Bertrand Russell
Anonymous wasn't DDoSing Wikileaks.
But... the future refused to change.
You used the critical word: rude. Their message is ugly but protected as free speech. It is the deliberate bad manners exhibited by Westboro that is unforgiveable!
I thought they were just in it for the lawsuits anyway.
If they have anyone technically competent around it would be trivial for them to identify and sue participants in a DDOS, ADDING to their cash flow.
You've just demonstrated a severe lack of knowledge about the basics of DDoS operations. It is most assuredly not trivial, especially when tens of thousands of compromised machines owned by people who are barely aware of the location of the power switch are involved. Even assuming a handful of folks were stupid enough to carry this out in a manner that were to permit their apprehension, there are probably going to be jurisdictional issues to contend with (likely crossing national borders), coupled with the age old adage that "you can't get blood out of a stone." In other words, good luck identifying any actual willful participant, and good luck getting any money out of said person should you manage to drag him into court.
tl;dr version == Ha, good luck with that.
512 MB RAM, 20 GB disk, 200 GB transfer, five datacenters. $19.95/month.
Thank you. Back in the day "Anonymous" ment something. Now it's a buzzword used to represent any random group of idiots.
Anonymous is an advocate of free speech, if I read their website correctly. Yet they are threatening to take action against an organization whose "speech" and actions they do not approve. Which means, Anonymous is philosophically no better than the organization whose speech and actions they do not approve. Which means that Anonymous does not advocate free speech: Anonymous advocates free speech ONLY for those organizations and causes of which it approves. But I'm only an old codger who believes in free speech for EVERYONE, even if I do not approve of their agendas or ideas.
Way to go, ANONYMOUS, way to pick the tough battle, to go against the grain and stand up against the weight of public opinion.
Almost everyone hates the Westboro Baptist Church. It's easy, and also cowardly, to attack people whose beliefs are repugnant to the majority. But it takes true bravery to stand by and respect their right to say repugnant things.
I wonder how long it will be before some Anonymous fan decides to kill a few people to prove a point.
Anonymous has called down the police on their own members before.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/4chan#Threats_of_violence
They want lulz, not a body count.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
What this coward says seem to make sense. But can be easily shown its cowardly nature by changing the names a bit.
Is there anything ironic about the self-appointed "guardians of freedom" trying to bully slavers out of existence? No, there absolutely IS NOT.
Only people that prefer for nothing ever to be done about anything because they are scared shitless of ever having to take a stand try to find silly excuses like this.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Over time the homosexual is no different than women. At first they enjoy sex, then they learn that they are able to use sex to get what they want, then they find that they get stuck in situations where they no longer wish to have sex with someone (or feel obligated to be directed to have sex with someone else), but they need to continue to do it because their director/partner has significant control over their social and financial lives.
Damn I sure wish your mom had been celibate.
We got enough bullets, there is room for one more at the well. No cigarettes though, you guys hate fags.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
No it doesn't. It only takes the cowards way out. "Oh I believe in free speech as some kind of right to say absolutely anything anywhere to anyone so I never have to take a stand for what I believe in because it might upset someone so I can sit safely at home feeling good at myself while filth roams the street".
Bravery is fighting for what you believe, not rolling over on your back for everyone with some hate speech.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Sorry, but you are wrong.
When two groups of retards attack each other, everyone wins...
Yes, but we're not talking about Digg versus Reddit, right now.
When was that exactly? How is this any different from four years ago, when a group of Anonymous took Hal Turner's website down because of racist speech?
Dilbert RSS feed
For the life of me I cannot comprehend why people do this sort of thing.
The solution when your chosen religion conflicts with your lifestyle and biology is not to try and reinterpret and redefine that religion's beliefs to align with yours, it's to stop believing in that religion and choose another (or none at all).
The motivations of women who wish to be ordained as priests are similarly mystifying.
There is no such thing as "the abuse of free speech". The whole concept of protecting speech is to ensure that speech you don't like is protected.
This all said, I wish anonymous the best of luck, though still believe that nothing short of a good rifle will ever shut the WBC up.
"linux is just DOS with a UNIX like syntax" -- Galactic Dominator (944134)
So shouting "FIRE!" in a crowded theater, screaming death threats, and publishing blatantly libelous material as though it were fact is protected as free speech? That's news to me.
i look forward to his proclaiming "4chan: land of the sodomite damned!" it may be the first time his judgment is received enthusiastically.
"They were pure niggers." – Noam Chomsky
"Change their minds"? "Make it clear that WBC protests won't work"? They're professional trolls, and if you're not offended by what they say, and you've got deep enough pockets to be worth a lawsuit, they'll come up with something that'll offend you too, so you can attack them and violate their civil rights and lose in court. They're not trying to convert you, they're trying to piss you off. They don't actually care how you feel about gays, God, or America's Brave Troops - those are merely popular enough topics to get people to fight over so that town councils will try to run them out of town in ways that are slam-dunk unconstitutional interference with free speech.
"Shame them"? A couple of the kids have left the family business, or never gotten into it, but Fred and at least one daughter don't seem susceptible to shame.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
I'm not so sure. If I disagree with constructivist logicians (very roughly, mathematicians who don't let you say "not not X is X"), I don't throw out all logical reasoning--I just allow proof by contradiction and go on my merry way. The opposite also holds. If I'm a constructivist, I just have to make sure your proofs didn't use the forbidden rules before I accept them.
In a sense splits in religion are the same. They didn't want to throw everything out, so they just excised pieces and went on their merry way. To assume your religion has to be 100% consistent for you to believe in it is tempting, but ultimately silly. It's unclear if number theory itself is consistent, and that's probably the best shot we humans have at a nontrivial consistent set of beliefs.
Well anyone misses one or forty three characters.
I'm sure you won't appreciate the irony that none of the people who actually DDoSed Wikileaks got persecuted. They, *they* are the real defenders of free speech, the people attacking Wikileaks, the corporations suffocating it's lifelines, pressing Wikileaks to shut up and retire. They are the real victims.
I also feel for the poor victims of anonymous, those righteous Scientologists harassing ex-members for talking and suing anyone who discloses their religious text, and the poor church ministers who are having their free hate speech disturbed. They are the real victims, our prayers and our hearts are with them!
God bless America!
But... the future refused to change.
"We, the collective super-consciousness known as ANONYMOUS - the Voice of Free Speech & the Advocate of the People"
This right here is a joke. Anonymous are crusaders against Freedom of Speech. Anyone who doesn't agree with them is targeted by their minions of script kiddies. Not only do anonymous attack anyone they don't agree with but they are also absolute cowards. I don't agree with the Westbro Baptist Church but I have allot of respect for them voicing their opinions and beliefs without hiding behind their keyboard; although that's where any respect stops.
The WBC may be a bunch of assholes but they have as much right to Free Speech as anyone else.
An SQL query goes to a bar, walks up to a table and asks, "Mind if I join you?"
The WBC are definitely not loons. They're barrators with a money stream that looks like this:
1. Select a sign guaranteed to offend people in a 100% legal fashion, and chant carefully worded slogans trolling for a reaction.
2. Receive reaction in the form of ??? (a punch in the nose, or a city council bannination, either works)
3. File lawsuits and profit !!!
What anonymous seems to be failing to understand is that they're just a bunch of amateurs, while the WBC are *professional trolls*. They make their living by trolling. They will not be stopped by other trolls, as they are simply too disciplined to fall for a troll. It's like trying to con a con-artist.
Some of the other God Hates $(foo) groups may be loonies who believe the hateful crap they're defecating on the world, but do not count the WBC in that group. There is actually little chance the WBC believes their own crap. They just substitute the value for $(foo) that looks like it will offend the local crowds the most.
John
You're falsely assuming that Christianity is some fixed set of beliefs, but it isn't. For 2000 years, Christianity has kept changing its dogma and beliefs for political, moral, and theological expediency, and for about a millennium before that, the Jews were doing the same. I mean, Paulus took an apocalyptic Jewish preacher ("the world is going to end within my lifetime; Jews, give away your possessions and obey Jewish law") and turned his message onto its head in order to create a new religion appealing to a wide audience.
For the simple reason that many men want to be ordained as priests: it is a quick-and-easy way to gain moral authority over others.
Christianity isn't a consistent set of beliefs, it's a symbol and placeholder that is (falsely) perceived to stand for morality and compassion in our society.
have they really won much, or even anything? all I've heard is of their being smacked down, including a huge judgment against them (although it was overturned). anyway, from their websites; videos; and the interview with Phelps' son (who left them at 18), I'm completely convinced they are serious loons. You are right though, from the way Phelps describes his take on "love thy neighbor," he considers it his duty to troll the world. Their theology is an extreme branch of Calvinism, but not unique to them.
as for anonymous, if scientology and everyone involved with HBGary haven't taken down anonymous yet, WBC has no chance. scientology has, for free, dozens of lawyer-believers of phelps' calibre or better, along with /much/ dirtier tactics, and they've scored almost no points.
"They were pure niggers." – Noam Chomsky
It's not a matter of what they say, it's where they say it at. And within that, the right to petition your government is completely within play.
for instance, you cannot enter my home and preach about my fish tank needing cleaned without my permission. You can however, stand on the court house steps and preach about needing to clean your fish tank. Now we have noise ordinances and laws about holding events and such. and that's a sovereign right of almost any political subdivision in any state.
Phelps has a case in front of the supreme court right now that deals with this specifically. The WBC is claiming that by serving as a soldier in a war, those fallen soldiers have placed themselves into the public spectrum. the counter argument is that these are private people and their disruption of a private event is not only criminal but tortuous and they own them money. Now most areas have more strict laws concerning the dead and most civil laws pertaining to them are construe liberally (in a literal sense) in favor of the grieving person(s).
If it's about a private event, the WBC is screwed and not allowed to disrupt it. If it's a public event, then there is a lot more they can get away with. But by all means, your right to free speech does not carry a right to be heard or a right to a place to be heard at. Except at public (read civil, not I can see you) event and places.
The bible saying homosexuality is a sin does not mean that God hates homosexuals. It says quite clearly in there that God loves everyone, including "fags" and even those crazy Westboro idiots, even if the rest of us don't. Fred Phelps has got his theology muddled up with his personal hatred of homosexuality, he sees a few passages in there where it says to avoid homosexual activity and in his own hypercalvinist way of thinking, that means that the people who commit these homosexual acts are forever damned to hell after taking others with them. The standard evangelical fundamentalist position however is just that sodomy is against Gods will and condoning it is rebellion from God. To an atheist these two positions sound similar, but in actual fact they are quite different. Mainstream evangelical gets upset with gay marriage, recognition of homosexual civil union, etc because it puts man's laws and Gods laws into contradiction, thus it represents rebellion from God. Phelpsian belief is that the homosexual him or herself is an abomination, not born as God's child but as something to pass through this world to hell, subhuman at best, demonic at worst. In most theologian's minds, this is not supported pretty much anywhere in scripture.
Thus, "God Hates Fags" is simply a biblical untruth. "God Loves Fags" does not represent Christian modernism, liberalism or any re-interpretation of scripture to follow one's own belief, in fact, it kind of sits with the whole "repent of your faggotry, God wants to save you!" line that fundimentalists have been pushing for decades.
When Argumentum ad Hominem falls short, try Argumentum ad Matrem
Sorry, but the Old Testament was probably written in the interval between 500 BCE and 800 BCE, solidly in the iron age. In fact, Tubal Cain in Genesis was reported as an "Artificer in iron", an anachronism as wide and glaring as steel swords and Middle Eastern plants and animals in the New World in TBOM, but anybody who thinks that it rained at a rate of six inches per minute on every square foot of the planet for 40 days straight isn't going to be put off by a little thing like consistency. You're confusing it with the time being written about -- Moses (if he lived at all and wasn't just a myth or legend being recalled by means of an oral tradition some 500-800 years after the fact) would have been dated at the very end of the Bronze Age in the Middle East (the Iron Age is usually dated at around 1200 BCE) , but the tribe that would one day become the Israelites didn't have writing (as far as archeology can tell) until 1000 BCE and didn't write the very first books of the Torah until much later (and then rewrote them after the Babylonian captivity, as it isn't clear that any of the original manuscripts survived).
However, I agree, that even at the Iron Age time of writing the moronic morality was so yesterday, just so Bronze Age...(sniff) rgb
Even when the experts all agree, they may well be mistaken. --- Bertrand Russell.
No. My point is simply that if you don't subscribe to all the beliefs of a particular religion, then you cannot say you belong to that religion.
It's like saying you're playing soccer, then decide that not using your hands is too hard/boring/whatever and pick the ball up.
Anything else is hypocrisy. You're just trying to get the supposed benefits and rights without having to deal with the consequences and responsibilities. Not only is it dishonest, but in the case where said beliefs are dramatically inconsistent (say, endangering your life), it's stupid as well.
And you sound like someone who wants to be in the club even though there are some of its rules you find distasteful and/or restrictive.
Natural == occurs in nature. That's all it is. It doesn't mean it's optimal, good for the individual or the species, or anything else. Homosexuality occurs in nature, therefore it's natural.
Eh? There's no intention in evolution. There's only genes that get passed on.
Here's the counterpoint to your very uneducated Darwinian argument:
A substantially (large) proportion of the human population (~10%) keeps popping out with this particular behavioral trait, i.e., homosexuality (there are others traits, but let's leave it at that.). Much to religious people's chagrin, it just doesn't seem to go away, as much as they pray and curse. It has been so for millenia.
Contrary to what you argued, instead of it being "unnatural" as you claimed, it would seem that there must be some Darwinian explanation for that trait to remain in the human population gene pool, because otherwise, if it weren't so, it would already have been eliminated, for precisely the reasons you pointed out.
Main difference between the BSD license and the GPL license: one is from California and the other is from Massachusetts
If you think the only raids that Anonymous has done were DDoSing people who refused to donate to Wikileaks, HBGary, and Scientology, then you know NOTHING about them. I posted to a lot of chan sites for a while (not just 4chan), and I saw PLENTY of raids unfolding. I have seen PLENTY of people who absolutely did not deserve it get screwed over by these guys. They aren't warriors for freedom or justice. They do it for the lulz, and that could mean going after some assholes or it could mean going after random people on Facebook and Youtube.
Actually, the bible doesn't say sodomy is against god's will. It says that God considers it a SIN. The original definition of sin was not that the act was evil (evil being an invention by the church as well as the personification of 'enemy'[satan] into the devil) but that the act could lead to undesirable effects.
I've seen a lot of Anons hacking into Facebook profiles so they can post scat porn and get reactions from the friends of said account. I remember some assholes from 7chan essentially hijacking a forum for epileptics and posting redirects to sites made with flashing lights and blaring noise, an act that did get covered by numerous media outlets. I've seen plenty of Anons going after people on Youtube that they felt were annoying. I've seen people get mercilessly raided who may have been dickish, but didn't deserve what they got, ie, Adam Goldstein. I've seen them DDoS minor news sites and blogs for simply making an article on them. The problem is, like you said, that Anonymous is so disparate that it's really impossible to label them as much of anything, but it's safe to say that one of their few uniting factors is the lulz, and unfortunately, too many think that lulz are boundless, and telling them otherwise makes you a moralfag. They certainly cannot be described as champions of the people and warriors for free speech, though.
"There is actually little chance the WBC believes their own crap."
You should listen to the interviews that Megan Phelps (Fred's granddaughter) has done with Kansas City alternative radio station KRBZ 96.5.
I live in Eastern Kansas and have had to deal with these idiots on occasion. They are genuinely nuts.
It comes back to interpretations. Religions are inspired by gods, but is filtered through man. In that mindset, that we can never truly "know" the mind of god, doubt can be introduced. Was the prohibition on gays and women priests part of God's divine revelation or was it a prejudice of the period that wormed its way in? To put it another way, were these commands from God or were they a result of the corruption of men? If they were a result of corruption, they need to be excised. That the prohibitions were a corruption, is the stance that the homosexual community has taken. The Bible has been "re-translated" and "reedited" many times with many agendas involved. I don't know about the women priests supporters.
Space Shuttle was a program that strapped humans to an explosion and tried to stab through the sky with fire and math