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Beyond Belief? Nope, USA Today.
One of our regular readers sent this link from the Guardian newspaper in the UK—an article about extreme religious fanatics threatening to demonstrate at the funeral of the little girl killed in Arizona. The fanatics don’t like Catholics. Brian Williams had the report on NBC Nightly News, also. Here’s the link.
To describe the Westboro Baptist Church as “anti-gay and anti-Catholic” is a bit of an understatement. They’re cult fanatics who routinely protest at the funerals of soldiers and public figures, as well as at high school graduations and occasionally at universities (they’ve come to my own twice in the past two years). And they make lots of money suing municipalities for infringing on their right to freedom of speech.
For anyone who is curious, there is a full documentary produced by the BBC on Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hmIr9P-vkSQ (Press the red button on the bottom of the video to get rid of the text bubbles).
After the Supreme Court ruled that the WBC could protest at soldiers’ funerals, I remember getting into some rather interesting debates with my friends. There were effectively two positions. The first was that freedom of speech is absolute. The second was that a grieving family should have a right to privacy, especially when the deceased died serving their country in the military. Because of the Supreme Court decision, it would seem that such a position would require amending the Constitution. I’d be curious to hear what readers think about this issue.