Yesterday, America lost a legend. Fred Phelps made a name out of himself by blatantly displaying hatred and prejudice by attacking the people who fought for his right to be hateful in the first place. For those of you who don’t know, Fred Phelps was considered the leader of the “Westboro Baptist Church”, a hate group church from Kansas who become notorious for picketing military funerals to show God’s message for America: that all of the bad things that have happened are signs that we should not be moving forward with gay rights. This group has gone all around the country spreading their message and even teaching our children hate speech before they’re even able to read the signs they’re holding. The right to do so was upheld by the Supreme Court under the 1st amendment, a controversial decision that has enabled the group to go even further with their message, protesting schools and universities and even threatening to protest the funerals of the victims of the Sandy Hook Massacre.
Upon finding out about the death of Fred Phelps, social media has buzzed about how glad they are that this guy is gone and can no longer pillage the world with his blatant hate speech. However, unfortunately for us the Supreme Court still upheld the right of the church to spread their message of hate and prejudice across the country. The only way to stop this is to convince the Supreme Court to overturn their decision because hate speech should not be protected under the 1st amendment. In addition, I will never say that I am glad that somebody is dead. I am glad that Fred Phelps is on his way to Hell and that the WBC has one less member to spread hate God’s message to the sinful masses. However, death should not be wished upon anyone, considering the fact that somebody will miss him. It’s not the majority of America, but somebody will. Another reaction to Fred Phelp’s death is that everyone should picket the funeral of Fred Phelps, in order to give the church a taste of their own medicine. While I love karma and I understand the idea of giving these guys a taste of your own medicine, consider why everybody hates the Westboro Baptist Church. It’s not just their prejduced message, or the brainwashing of children that has made everyone angry. It’s the fact that the church was invading people’s private funerals and choosing the worst time possible to spread their message of hate. If we decide to do the same thing to the Westboro Baptist Church, aren’t we just stooping down to their level? When it comes to gay rights, the country is split on whether or not they support it. But almost everybody hates the idea of choosing a funeral to spread their message, and almost everyone objects going to someone’s funerals and telling a group of mourning people that someone’s death was awesome. The Westboro Baptist Church deserves absolutely no respect, but lets prove that we are better than this group by leaving the funeral alone.
In the end, Fred Phelps death gives the world more than it takes away. However, lets consider the fact that we are better than this group and that we have basic human decency. Let’s show this group why we’re better than them by leaving the funeral alone. Hate speech is awful, but if we don’t fight it with hate speech, in the end it’s the Westboro Baptist Church that looks bad.
Politics with Ashley 