Who shares in the blame?

IronDuke

Ancient Mariner
I recently had this put to me, and to be honest I don't know where I stand on it:

Average American Christians should be accountable for Fred Phelps inasmuch as average Muslims are to blame for Osama bin Laden.

For you Euros who don't know who Fred Phelps is, he's the guy who runs the Westboro Baptist Church. He pickets at funerals of homosexuals and dead soldiers, saying "God hates fags!" and such tripe. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westboro_Baptist_Church Click the Wiki link for more information.

My initial gut reaction is to say that nobody should be accountable for another person's beliefs and actions, but I think they have a moral responsibility to SPEAK OUT against hate and evil being done in their name.

Anyone else have thoughts on this, or is bin Laden the new Godwin?
 
You're exactly right, Duke. Average Xians are not accountable for Phelps, nor average Muslims for bin Laden.

But both Phelps and bin Laden are people who took extreme fundamentalist interpretations of their religions, and twisted them into visions of hate. And they had to learn those extreme fundamentalist viewpoints from someone. I read the Wikipedia article on bin Laden a couple of weeks ago, and I recall it names the teachers who planted the seeds of perverted Islamism in his brain.

So there are some Xians who share a bit of the blame for Phelps and his ilk: the teachers of intolerance who helped Phelps develop into a first-class asshole. But only a bit of the blame, as you still have to lay 99% of it on Phelps himself. He alone is responsible for his vile actions.

As for speaking out against Phelps - I have mixed feelings about that. I think he's mostly an attention whore, and acknowledging him in any way only helps him, even if that way is protest. The negative publicity only seems to encourage him.
 
SinisterMinisterX said:
So there are some Xians who share a bit of the blame for Phelps and his ilk: the teachers of intolerance who helped Phelps develop into a first-class asshole. But only a bit of the blame, as you still have to lay 99% of it on Phelps himself. He alone is responsible for his vile actions.

As for speaking out against Phelps - I have mixed feelings about that. I think he's mostly an attention whore, and acknowledging him in any way only helps him, even if that way is protest. The negative publicity only seems to encourage him.

I'm still waiting for Phelps and bin Laden to be caught on tape givin each other BJ's in a San Francisco bath house.  :lol:


However, I wonder if the bin Ladens and Phelps's of the world would vanish if the so-called "silent majority" of Christians in the US and Muslims in the Mid East stood up and said "No! You do not speak for us. You are perverting the thing we hold most dear!"


(It's something Jebus would've done, so probably not....especialy for the Xians)
 
A few years back, I read F*** P*****'s website.  I was about to make a post on it somewhere (either here or some other board, I don't remember), but then I read a statement of his on the site where he said that any attention -especially of those who think what he says is disgusting- is exactly what he wants. Ever since, I am ignoring him, and asking anyone who puts up a link to his website anywhere, to remove it.
 
As I remember properly, there was a post made here, and you killed the links in it.
 
Wrong, you killed them as per my request. I wasn't a moderator yet, back then.
 
Let's hope he won't see this and feel his being noticed again  :innocent:
but seriously he's one serious jerk, and stems all the hatred he has to gays and lashing it on everything, from America for allowing gay marriages
to gay pride to gay funerals, he should learn to respect that they are simply people, they lead good lives, and he's just an ignorant little attention whore with severe homophobia.
 
People like him always amaze me.  The people that defend his right to picket and enjoy his freedom of speech are the people that he is 'out to get'.  Nothing is more frustrating to me, than to see people abusing their rights, just because they have them.  At some point, they have to realize that just because i 'can' do something doesn't mean that I 'should' do something. 
 
Ah, dear old Fred Phelps. SMX and Perun, you are both probably right in saying that he's an attention whore. Reason I say this is because during November of last year he staged a protest against homosexuals in Boston and I went along with a group of friends to protest his protest. Needless to say he never showed up in the areas he was supposed to, and when we asked the police they didn't seem surprised that he wasn't anywhere to be seen. Basically he succeeded in getting a bunch of gays and allies out on the Boston streets at 6 am. However, we did hold a dance party in Copley square. :)
 
Phelps is really really old, remember.  Shirley Roper-Phelps is the real criminal currently, Fred has become more of a figurehead for the WBC.  Honestly, I do agree that he is best ignored.
 
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