Westboro Baptist Church Preaches

Facts: Fred Phelps is the leader of the Westboro Baptist Church which is considered to be extremist. Phelps and his followers believe that God punishes those who are tolerant of homosexuality. Since, the United States has a high tolerance of homosexuality, they believe that the United States is damned. The military also has recently become more accepting of homosexuals in their ranks, thus the Westboro Baptist Church pickets many military funerals.

The most substantial of these legal proceedings involving Westboro Baptist Church is the case of Snyder v. Phelps. In 2006, Albert Snyder sued the Phelps family on several counts, namely intrusion and intentional infliction of emotional distress.[6] Snyder’s son, Matthew, died in combat in Iraq and was brought home to Maryland for his funeral processions. Westboro Baptist Church decided to make an example of the fallen soldier, posting an article titled “The Burden of Marine Lance Cpl. Matthew Snyder” on their website. In this piece, they made multiple defamatory remarks about Matthew, such as saying that he was “raised for the devil”.[7] Westboro Baptist Church then traveled to Maryland and protested at Matthew’s funeral. The group carried

In 2006, Matthew Snyder, a Marine Corporal was killed during combat in Iraq. Snyder’s family had made funeral arrangements at a Catholic church in their hometown of Westminster, Maryland. The time and location of this service was made public by local newspapers, thus being easily accessible by the public. Fred Phelps, the founder of Westboro Baptist Church located in Topeka, Kansas, was made aware of this service and chose to travel to Maryland to picket it with his two daughters and four grandchildren. The members of the WBC believe that God will forever despise and punish the United States for its lenience towards homosexuality, especially within the military. In order to ensure that their beliefs be known, Phelps and his members frequently

The Westboro Baptist Church is a group that has been in the spotlight for the last two decades because of their unusual tactic of picketing at soldier’s funerals. The act is motivated by the notion that America’s moral are being corrupted by their acceptance of homosexuality. The act of picketing of soldier’s funerals according to the group is motivated by the fact that it is a time when mourners are emotionally vulnerable and they think of their mortality. They believe that by picketing in soldier’s funerals their message is stronger. However, this tactic has caused much consternation from both the public and the government. In the interest of the public, state legislatures have enacted laws against the actions of the Westboro Baptist Church. The landmark case of Snyder v. Phelps would have been the deciding factor against the group, but the Supreme Court held in favor of the group because their actions were protected by the First Amendment. This then would present the notion that the First Amendment trumped public interest in the decision. However, that is not the case because the case was an IIED case among others, it was a personal one. As long as the group coordinates with public authorities and does not break laws, then their acts are nothing more than nuisances that should not get in the way of celebrating the life of the dead.

In 2013, the hate group planned to picket the memorial of Sgt. Stefan Smith, a Third Infantry Division soldier killed in Afghanistan a month before. As word spread of Westboro’s plans, community members launched a Facebook group organizing a counter-protest. The group drew nearly two thousand supporters who planned “to create a human barrier/shield

When asking people what they think about the word “Baptists” they immediately think about people who go to church or judgmental/hypocritical people, but those labels are false (Zhein Survey). However, according to the Westboro Baptist Church website, they do judge people who are not only of the LGBT group, they also judge Orthodox Christians, Muslims, Jews, politicians and even American Soldiers. Because this church has a large amount of “success” they are able to get their hate speech out around the United States (and maybe even other countries) to offend those who were listed or those who believe those listed are okay in what they are doing.

Since its inception the Westboro Baptist Church has expressed an agenda of fanatical Baptism where they promote homophobia, anti-Semitism, and the message that God hates everyone but the WBC.

There website is titled "God Hates Fags." The website says, "The only true Nazis in this world are fags. They want to force you by law to support their filth, and they want to shut you up by law when they hate what you say.” The Westboro Baptist Church is an independent church that is not affiliated with any denomination. They believe that they have the truth and that you must be a member of their church to be saved. There known for their protests against homosexuality and anything/anyone they feel support homosexuality. The Westboro Baptist Church is well known for picketing places and events they see support homosexuality or Jews. This includes actual gay and lesbian events, churches and organizations they feel don’t refuse to accept homosexuality sufficiently and the funerals of soldiers. They picket soldier’s funerals because they believe they fought in a war caused by America’s tolerance for

The Westboro Baptist Church (WBC) is known for their obscene protests where they display signs that discriminate towards homosexuals. Although the members of the WBC considered themselves a part of an actual church, the church mainly consists of the family members of its founder, Fred Phelps (Clay, 2016). The church holds beliefs that are similar to Calvinism, a denomination of Christianity. Similar to the Calvinists, the members of the church believe that they are a part of an elect group of people that God has chosen to be his own (Clay, 2016). Because they are a part of God’s elect, they feel they must speak against the homosexuality that is present in America and in other places of the world. They travel around the world protesting and shouting hurtful phrases that cause people to

Though all protests may not result in violent activities, they are still able to leave a detrimental effect on society, as protests may violate people’s rights, especially the right to privacy. A specific example of one’s right to privacy being violated by protests is the Westboro Baptist Church, which is known for its anti-gay protests at military funerals (Anti- Defamation League 2013). Although these protests are peaceful a majority of the time, they disrupt military funerals and infringe on the grieving family’s right to privacy. More specifically, those who are mourning the loss of a loved one expect to do this in private, not with protesters rioting in the background, disrupting the secluded funeral. Eventually, limitations were placed on these unconstitutional protests stating that protesters must be a certain distance from the funeral and can only protest two hours before and after the funeral (The Huffington Post 2016) . Though some may believe both the right to petition and assemble should be unlimited, this case demonstrates that these rights must be restricted in order to protect the contradiction of others’ right to

In the beginning of this article, Rosenbaum relies on the appeal of emotion, pathos, to persuade his audience to agree with his claim. He tries to achieve this by telling a story of a church group picketing the funeral of a gay marine. He states, “The Supreme Court upheld the right of a church group opposed to gays serving in the military to picket the funeral of a dead marine with signs that read ‘God Hates Fags’ ” (Rosenbaum). This event caused an uproar and disrupted the peace of a marines’ funeral. Many people began to question the limits of free speech because of this. How can people use hateful speech such as

As a representative of the Westboro Baptist church, I would like to inform you that we have had one of our annual meetings to discuss the perceived problems in our community, and have come to a conclusion. Homosexuality is rampant in the streets, and other, much more dangerous religions are beginning to appear in our homeland, threatening the entire population. Therefore, we must take action.

The Phelps family belongs to a church, called Westboro, which is known to frequently picket funerals, and has done

My essay is about Televangelist preachers who live in multimillion dollar houses and ride in multimillion dollar jets paid for by the donations and tithes of their church members. I don’t know if my audience, which is my teacher, will agree or disagree with my point of view but I hope my opinion is respected. I believe Televangelists are false preachers who prey on ignorant church members to exploit them to donate large sums of money.

For some people, categorizing Westboro Baptist Church as a fundamentalist group could be quite the stretch. Westboro Baptist Church of Topeka, Kansas, is a church that was founded by Fred Phelps in 1955. As previously mentioned, this group is known for their hate speeches and preaches against all form of sin such as homosexuality, adultery, divorced, and remarriage.4 These sins are listed in the bible and shouldn’t be committed but there are more sins in the bible that they are also ignoring such as: not feeding god’s children that are hungry, accepting a bribe, wearing the clothing of the opposite sex, not forgiving others, and gambling.