Why is westboro baptist church

Between and , WBC focused much of its attention on picketing Jewish institutions around the country, from Israeli consulates to synagogues to Jewish community centers. Numerous states and localities have passed laws creating buffer zones to keep protestors at a distance from funerals, and limit protests for several hours before and after the services. There are also federal laws curtailing protests at funerals.

The law includes a provision requiring protestors to remain a certain distance from a military funeral and also bans protests two hours before and after a service. WBC has challenged a number of these laws. In , WBC filed a lawsuit questioning the constitutionality of a Nebraska law banning protests at funerals within feet of the service, starting one hour prior to the event until two hours after the event ends.

In , a federal district court sided with Nebraska in the case, and in November , the U. WBC has a robust social media presence and maintains numerous websites, Facebook pages and Twitter accounts. The group continues its regular picketing campaign, protesting various events and institutions around the country. Many of the group's targets seem chosen at random: the church picketed a concert by young Canadian pop star Justin Bieber because he was not using his fame to promote God.

Shirley Phelps-Roper, who is a frequent protester and one of Fred Phelps' children, will sometimes wear American flags hanging from her pants while protesting, so that they scrape against the ground as she walks. She has allowed her children to step on an American flag during protests. The WBC uses tactics like these to win media attention and spread its message. Children in the Phelps family are raised in the church's beliefs, and their upbringing offers them few opportunities to integrate into mainstream society.

It is common to see young children from the Phelps family at WBC pickets, often holding the group's hateful signs. These children casually use the words "f--" and "dyke" in interviews, and the older children report having no close friends at school. The Phelps family raises its children to hold hateful and upsetting views, and to believe that all people not in WBC will go to hell. The tenets of WBC are so strict that no other churches are taken to be legitimate. The children quickly grow alienated in school and in society, leading them to build relationships almost exclusively within the family.

This helps to explain why nine of Fred Phelps' 13 children have remained members of the church. Fred Phelps and his small congregation provide WBC's funding; the group neither solicits nor accepts outside donations.

In addition to this income, the church makes money by winning or settling civil lawsuits involving the church. During the s, the group sued Topeka multiple times for failing to provide sufficient protection during its protests.

Because the Phelps family represents WBC in court, they can put the fees they win towards supporting the church. As of , several WBC members worked for the state , providing an additional income stream.

Margie Phelps was even awarded "Kansas Correctional Association Employee of the Quarter" in late — this despite her arrest at a protest at a dedication ceremony for the Brown v. Board of Education Historical Site in Topeka. Abigail Phelps, another Westboro activist, worked in the staff development office for Kansas' Juvenile Justice Authority.

In February , Prison Legal News , which monitors human-rights abuses within America's prison system, filed an ethics complaint with Kansas legal officials against Shirley Phelps-Roper. WBC has no official affiliation with mainstream Baptist organizations. While WBC members have protested at Jewish institutions over the years, such institutions were not a m ajor focus for the group until April Since then, WBC has targeted dozens of Jewish institutions around the country, from Israeli consulates to synagogues to Jewish community centers, distributing anti-Semitic fliers to announce planned protests at these sites.

WBC has also been sending volumes in some cases dozens over the course of a week of faxes and emails with anti-Semitic and anti - gay messages to various Jewish institutions and individuals. In addition, in April , the group began mailing a virulently anti - Semitic DVD to Jewish organizations and leaders. Other WBC targets include schools the group deems to be accep ting of homosexuality; Catholic, Lutheran, and other Christian denominations that WBC feels are heretical; and funerals for people murdered or killed in accidents like plane crashes and for American soldiers killed in Iraq and Afghanistan, a tactic the gro up started in Additionally, the group has tried to stage protests in foreign countries.

British government officials barred the group from entering the country. The group made it to Canada in August , where they picketed the funeral of a young man who was the victim of a brutal murder on a Greyhound bus, which was national news in that country.

Authorities there reportedly tried to prevent the group from entering their country, but the WBC claims it was able to evade Canadian border patrol agents to stage the protest. For this reason, the group directs its efforts at events that have attracted heavy news coverage, like the deaths of soldiers killed in wars or the victims of well-publicized accidents, or at venues, such as high schools, which are likely to generate large counter-protests and community outrage.

The group also announces plans to picket at locations abroad many in locations WBC is not likely to b e to travel to, such as Sri Lanka, or cannot travel to, such as Great Britain, where the government has formally banned members of the group from entering in the hopes of generating foreign press coverage.

Anytime we get the word out there that we are a doomed country - a doomed generation it's a good thing. The group quickly gained national media attention for the practice and, to date, 41 states and the federal government have enacted legislation that attempts to limit it.

The constitutionality of these laws, on both freedom of speech and freedom of religion grounds, has been challenged in four states, with mixed results. However, in December of that year WBC won a preliminary injunction prohibiting the state of Missouri from enforcing its law. In addition, in October , a federal jury in Baltimore, Maryland, found members of the WBC guilty of violating a right to privacy and intentionally inflicting emotional distress against the family of Matthew Snyder, a Marine who was killed in Iraq in In September , a federal appeals court threw out the verdict entirely.

On March 2, the Supreme Court ruled 8 - 1 in favor of the WBC, stressing that the group was protected by the First Amendment and its free speech rights to debate public issues.

The Court also noted that the WBC had obeyed directions from local officials, maintained a distance from the church where the Snyder funeral was held, and did not disrupt the funeral service. Another case revolved around charges for flag desecration made against Shirley Phelps-Roper in Nebraska in June In February , a Nebraska state judge denied her challenge to the constitutionality of the flag desecration law.

At the end of December , Phelps-Roper filed a federal lawsuit against more than a dozen Nebraska state officials, including the governor, attorney general, and judg es involved in the ongoing flag desecration case. Her lawsuit challenges a number of state and city laws, among them those that deal with flag desecration and funeral pickets. Phelps-Roper alleges that these laws infringed upon her right to free speech and are being applied in a discriminatory fashion.

Two months later, in September, a federal judge overturned the Nebraska law. Before it began picketing the funerals of soldiers, the Westboro Baptist Church WBC was best known for picketing the funerals of gay people or those they perceived to be gay. All else about Matt is trivial and irrelevant. While the WBC has picketed the gay community at hundreds of events nationwide, most of the individuals the church has targeted are not homosexual.

In , nine Federal court judges filed a disciplinary complaint charging him and six of his family members, all attorneys, with making false accusations against them. The Phelps family fought the complaint but lost and, in , Fred Phelps agreed to not practice law in Federal court in exchange for the Federal judges allowing the other members of his family to continue practicing in Federal court.

The rest of the people who claim to be Jews aren't, and they are nothing more than typical, impenitent sinners, who have no Lamb. As evidence of their apostacy [sic], the vast majority of Jews support fags.

Of course, there are Jews who still believe Gods l aw, but most of them have even departed from that. Yes, the Jews killed the Lord Jesus Now they're carrying water for the fags; that's what they do best: sin in God's face every day, with unprec edented and disproportionate amounts of sodomy, fornication, adultery, abortion and idolatry!

God hates these dark - hearted rebellious disobedient Jews. Every day since not most every day, not every day except ba d weather, not most days, but EVERY DAY , WBC has stood on those same sidewalks to remind you of your crimes and hatred, and that God will avenge our blood, which cries to him from that ground Gen His Christ-rejecting, God-hating Jew blood bubbled to the surface. Yes, like his boss [John] Kerry, Clark is a Jew. Jews killed the Lord Jesus, and their own prophets, and have persecuted us; and they please not God, and are contrary to all men; for bidding us to speak to the Gentiles that they might be saved, to fill up their sins always; for the wrath is come upon them to the uttermost.

WBC buys trees for Israel. WBC prays for the peace of Jerusalem. American taxpayers are financing this unholy monument to Jewish mendacity and greed and to filthy fag lust Homosexuals and Jews dominated Nazi Germany The Jews now wander the earth despised, smitten with moral a nd spiritual blindness by a divine judicial stroke And god has smitten Jews with a certain unique madness, whereby they are an astonishment of heart, a proverb, and a byword the butt of jokes and ridicule among all peoples whither the Lord has driven and scattered them Jews, thus perverted, out of all proportion to their numbers energize the militant sodomite agenda The American Jews are the real Nazis misusers and abusers of governmental power who hate God and the rule of law.