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Anonymous Hacks Westboro Baptist Church
elashish14 writes "The Westboro Baptist Church stated earlier this week that they would be picketing the funerals of the victims of Newtown Connecticut's tragic shooting in an effort to bring awareness to their hate messages. In response, the Anonymous hacker collective has hacked their website and posted the personal information of all of its members."
You didn't mention that thay hacked their website in real time, during a live radio interview. Now, that's an achievement.
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#\ @ ? Colonize Mars
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I've always held that anyone is free to speak their mind, even if I don't agree with what they're saying.
If Westboro Baptist Church was really planning to interfere with the tragedy that has happened at Newtown, they've sunk to a level so low that no reasonable Christian should want anything to do with them. Scum.
This is too far. I don't want to say any more to further dirty the pain the families and the trauma the survivors are going through.
I think you'll find that most reasonable Christians DON'T want anything to do with these clowns. A lot of people in my church are VERY conservative, and even they are appalled anytime one of the WBC crazies opens their mouth. Small sample size, yes. But I've found it to be true in other locations as well.
"So after all this, you make my case for me. To end this stalemate, you must die..."
We The People petition: Legally recognize westboro baptist church as a hate group
Bullshit. Picketing the funerals of kids is not illegal.
After some further reading the dispute is a little more complex.
aparantly someone had earlier hacked the WBC, claiming to be anonymous, but it really wasn't.
Anonymous refuted, and even apologized, and tried to explain this to WBC. WBC, didn't want to back down, and kept talking smack to anonymous, and kept provoking anonymous.
Today WBC found out what happened when you kick a sleeping bear.
They were not silenced for the speech, and the WBC does not "win", and this has nothing to do with their ongoing campaign against everything for tollerating gays.
This his what happens when the sped kid keeps picking a fight with the biggest kid in class, and he finally runs out of patience.
Burning a cross on a black man's lawn isn't free speech, it's trespassing. It isn't protected under any legal theory of free speech.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Free speech is not just speech you just like. It's any speech.
Wrong. The constitution only prevents government reprisals or discrimination against a speaker. Private citizens are under no such prohibition. Private citizens are free to punish speakers, that is what recent boycotts against Chick-fil-A were. All we can really say is that Anon is choosing to punish in an illegal manner.
Someone on Fark pointed out that the WBC aren't really haters, or even Christians, just a bunch of lawyers trying to make extortion money from the threat of (very carefully and legally) exercising their 1st Amendment rights:
http://www.fark.com/comments/7488418/81313473#c81313473
The appropriate response is actually to just organize counter-protests that block or drown out their feeble message, until hopefully they run out of money.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/03/04/AR2011030406330.html
But anytime someone actually blocks them illegally, they get to sue and collect some settlement and they get their payday.
I suppose the DDoS helps them bleed money as well, But probably not enough, esp. if they manage to catch and sue the perpetrators.
Lets keep in mind what The Westboro Baptist Church is and what they are say.
Firstly, they are a single family of lawyers lead by their patriarch Fred Phelps. They've garnered so much notoriety because they are lawyers and use their knowledge of the legal system to research and plan their events so they are barely within the legal limits of the locality they are in. This is not an organized church, it's almost entirely a single family and their ideology is dictated to them by a single man.
Secondly, the "speech" they are shouting at childrens funerals is specific. They want to remove the rights of others to speak, be free, or even live. They want homosexuality to be illegal and want to imprison of even kill those found committing homosexual acts.
There are limits to free speech in every country in the world. Including this one. The government may not be able to stop them from speaking, but the government also can not protect them from the repercussions of their hate speech. I find it rather surprising no ones burned their houses down yet.
Freedom of speech does not have to include permitting people to physically interrupt funerals.
I think there's a distinction between 'freedom of speech', and 'freedom to spread hate'. People don't always recognise the latter (which is why there are so many laws against hate speech).
In United States "laws against hate speech" are unconstitutional. There may be many laws against hate speech in other countries, but if you are talking about US, you are wrong.
You may be thinking of "inciting to violence speech", but pure hate speech (e.g., "[someone] should burn in hell") is not illegal.
See here - http://kanewj.com/wbc/
They are con men.
You do not have the right to say whatever you want. Hate speech or inciting violence are not protected. Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire, 1942.
"There are certain well-defined and narrowly limited classes of speech, the prevention and punishment of which have never been thought to raise any constitutional problem. These include the lewd and obscene, the profane, the libelous, and the insulting or "fighting" words those which by their very utterance inflict injury or tend to incite an immediate breach of the peace. It has been well observed that such utterances are no essential part of any exposition of ideas, and are of such slight social value as a step to truth that any benefit that may be derived from them is clearly outweighed by the social interest in order and morality."
And that was the unanimous opinion of the Supreme Court. So no, people did not die for us to have the freedom to hurt each other with hate speech.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
Westboro Baptist Church has nothing to do with Jesus, "zombie" or otherwise. You do realize that there is no Christian body of any size, anywhere, that supports them? That they are a standalone congregation of about 40 people, most of whom are related to Phelps, who make their living by stirring up controversy and suing for their civil right to do so?
Don't even consider them Chrsitians. It's a business scheme.
"He who would learn astronomy, and other recondite arts, let him go elsewhere. " -- John Calvin, commenting on Genesis 1
To be entirely accurate, WSBC isn't really a Christian church.
Now, because I can just hear the Atheist trolls firing up their "No True Scotsman fallacy" engines, Understand that WSBC is not a church in ANY traditional sense of the meaning other than they are a unified group and they have regular meetings. In that respect they are as much a church as your local NAMBLA affliate group.
If you look down the WSBC roster you will see that first of all, they are ALL related to one another either by marriage or by birth. It's basically the Phelps clan with some other family appendages.
Secondly, you may notice that all or nearly all of the Phelpses are LAWYERS. In fact, they are all very accomplished tort lawyers and/or law staff. When you look at their history you will see that they ALWAYS sue people that assault them, and they almost always win. They have made MILLIONS off of suing people that attack them for their repugnant views.
This is also how they manage to remain classified a church; They are based in a state where church classification rules are loose, and they utilize that and their status as lawyers to keep that classification. (Saves on taxes when the Church makes all the money.)
Then they go out and set up situations where they will likely be assaulted just to make money off of the poor righteous bastards that want to go after them. They keep the threat of violence reasonably low by filming everything and bringing women and children along as human shields, and then when one of them inevitably gets punched or shoved or pushed or gets a hangnail, they sue everyone there, especially any families that are involved in the events they are protesting at.
This is why I LOVE LOVE LOVE the Freedom Riders. Basically a motorcycle gang that specifically follows the WSBC around whenever they protest a soldier's funeral. they surround them and then block them from view with HUGE signs and American flags and drown them out with revving Harley Davidson motorcycles. They never touch anyone from WSBC, but they prevent them from causing any emotional harm to the families of dead soldiers. They've been so effective the Phelpses have nearly abandoned going after soldier's funerals.
This is why I say that the Phelpses are NOT a Christian church. They are just a bunch of dirty lawyers using hate and law to make money hand over fist. I suspect that they may very well believe at least some of the bile they spew, but it is FAR more about money than it is about faith. Frankly, if not for the fact that they seem to be so much about making money hand over fist I'd almost suspect they were an attempt to troll Christianity and tax law surrounding the churches.
Official Heretic from the "Church of Global Warming". Proven right thanks to whistle blowers. AGW = Flat Earth Theory
A source request? REALLY?
Official Heretic from the "Church of Global Warming". Proven right thanks to whistle blowers. AGW = Flat Earth Theory