Monday, September 3, 2007

Westboro Baptist Church talks back

My new little blog has come to the attention of Margie Phelps, daughter of Fred Phelps, the founder of the Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka, Kansas. You can read her comment to my post titled "A fate worse than hell" posted on August 29, 2007.

I guess she has a bot that scours the Internet for mentions of her congregation so she can rail against anyone publishing material she finds disagreeable. She must have a lot of time on her hands. Or maybe she just has a program that sends out the same flamboyant flame message to anyone who mentions WBC, filling in the appropriately juvenile nickname where appropriate.

Margie calls me "Patti the Pervert." That's cute... I like it. "PP" for short. I'm sure she just pissed herself giggling over that one.

I'm not going to argue with her. I'll just leave her vitriol up on my comments for all the world to see for themselves how over-the-top she is. I do want to say one thing though...

Margie says at least twice in her hellfire and brimstone diatribe against me that she couldn't care less what I think:

"As for the hatred that you and 9.9999999999% of the WORLD show us -- BIG FAT YAWN! You are an arrogant delusional fat assed fool if you think YOU can come up with some words that would move us."

and ...

"What in the WORLD would make you think we give a rat's ass about what any of you hell bound selfish mutts have to say?"


All I want to know is, if she really doesn't care what I have to say, what in the WORLD inspired her to spend her valuable time writing such a long and involved comment on my blog?? What would inspire her to write any comment at all if she really doesn't care what people like me think? (And does she really think only 9.9999....% of the world hates them? As rlpr, another commenter suggested, she probably meant 99%, but I'm not going to fix it for her.) Quite obviously, she does care what the world thinks about WBC, regardless how often or how loudly she may scream otherwise.

As for one of the other comments, I have one regret about my Fate Worse than Hell post. A comment by A. Martin of the blog Defending Westboro Baptist Church (aka The Right to Be Wrong) has quite rightly scolded me for my comment that I wished members of the WBC would go home and drink poisoned kool-aid. It was wrong of me to say that and I apologise, although I don't believe in revising history so I won't go back and edit it out of the post. This apology will have to suffice. While there is no excuse for wishing anyone to commit suicide, my only explanation is that I was writing that post while still under the influence of the shock I felt after watching the documentary I was commenting on. Proof that violent words beget violent words, I guess, but still no justification for saying what I did. I value calm and reason and I will refrain from making remarks like that in the future. Thank you, A. Martin.

3 comments:

oxartes said...

The vitriol that Margie Phelps pours on you belies her claim to believe in God, at least not the same God that I (an orthodox Jew) believe in. There is no excuse for her crude boorishness. Our Sages teach that, "Good manners preceeded the Torah", i.e. one shouldn't need divine revelation in order to know that you have to be polite, courteous, etc. The Phelpsies are consumed by hatred and are a destructive cult (i.e. the Moonies, David Koresh, Jim Jones, etc.). Please don't tar us (believing Jews, Christians, Muslims, etc.) with their brush!! My faith teaches me to be patient, tolerant & to learn from everyone & everybody. As somebody once said: "Impatience, intolerance and ignorance are the devil's footmen."

L'chaim!

Oxartes

Anonymous said...

Thank you. You're one of the few people I've responded to on this issue who actually gets what I'm trying to say.

I don't expect anyone to agree with my views, but I'm glad you see where I'm coming from as far as the issue of cruelty is concerned.

Anonymous said...

I believe rational people have the duty to stand against mindless bigotry and hate. It is one thing to be tolerant of excess, it is quite another to leave that excess uncountered.

Not only has Fred Phelps attacked his family, his community and his country and millions of gay Americans, he has now attacked the families of fallen soldiers attending funerals of their loved ones.

There is a reason the United States Government, as well as most of the separate states, have only recently had to pass laws limiting demonstrations at funerals. Few if any have ever sank so low as to use a funeral to gain some type of propaganda value for their "cause".

This issue isn't about freedom of speech, the Phelps are continuously spouting their bile in the public spotlight. This isn't, as someone wrote, about being "uncomfortable" with someone's offending speech.

Rather it is about simple human decency. It's about attacking parents on the worst day of their lives. It's about small children forever being imprinted by what the Phelps say and do at their parent's funeral. It's not about message, it's about hate.

Leave that to Westboro Baptist Church. Leave that to the chronic haters and malcontents; those so warped they believe they have the right to inflict severe emotional injury to further their claims. Leave that to the Phelps.

We should strive to lift up the families of the fallen, as we have done so many times in our past. We should hold our dead soldiers in honor, as they died in honor.

Let WBC forever spill their sophmoric bilge in public; but never, never let them disrupt funerals-any funeral.