Last night, a good friend had the unfortunate experience of trying to get a straight answer out of me after I'd partaken a healthy dose of Excedrin PM; this poor person learned I can still manage to ramble, even if only half my brain is awake, and last night, I wouldn't have given the awake part of my brain that much credit.
The question had to do with Fred Phelps and the Westboro Baptist Church, and if he and band of batshit crazies should have the right to do what they are doing. My poor amigo ended up with the whole constitutional slippery slope argument, and whether Phelps' right to the freedoms of religion, speech and assembly could be considered an infringement on a grieving family's legal right to privacy, and if his actions could be considered a means to incite violence. Wasn't really what was asked, but that was the answer given.
So here's the straight answer - I don't think he should be protected. I think he and the rest of that group should be run out of the country, but I'm not sure I want to give up any of my freedoms to shut that asshole up.
But this leads me to another question.
I have had more than a few discussions with my more fundamentalist counterparts about Fred Phelps; inevitably, I get the same answer: Well, Fred Phelps isn't a real Christian.
I hear this same statement about other people/groups as well; Mormons aren't real Christians, Catholics aren't real Christians, Protestants aren't real Christians, Jehovah's Witnesses aren't real Christians...
So who, exactly, is the real Christian?
That's the problem with Christianity, and most religion as a whole; everyone thinks his version is the real version and the only version everyone else should be adhering to. That's the problem when you base your beliefs on a book that is full of myths, contradictions and half-truths; anyone and everyone can find something to justify his personal belief as God's absolute truth, and that includes Phelps. All Fred Phelps had to do was pull 6 verses out of the Bible, and he had the entire platform for his ministry. That's right; there are only 6 verses in the entire Bible about homosexuality (as opposed to 200+ regarding heterosexuality, so obviously we need much more supervision), and he has taken those 6 verses and created a crusade of hate, which he has paraded back and forth across the country.
I get very tired of hearing, "Well, God says...", because if you read five pages more, you'll find God said something entirely different. Even the first two chapters of Genesis are nothing more than absolute contradictions. Take the theory of Sodom and Gomorrah, which has long been the trumpeting point against gay people, is contradicted in a passage in Eze 16:49-50, which states very clearly that these two cities were destroyed because they lacked hospitality and were haughty, caring more for themselves than for others. While the Bible says thou shalt not kill, that rule doesn't apply to everyone. You shalt not commit adultery, but without adultery, we would have only had 6 tribes of Israel, instead of 12. The truth of the matter is that the Bible itself does not practice what it preaches, if you can figure out what it is really preaching at all.
The reason for this is that the Bible wasn't written in one time frame by one person; it was written over centuries by many different authors who each had his own agenda and belief system, and many of its stories are borrowed myths from even more ancient civilizations. Genesis doesn't agree, the gospels don't agree, the story of Lot is beyond description...even the final version we have today was created by men who had a specific idea of what they wanted Christianity to be (which is why we have the trinity). Even the Bibles used in the varying areas of faith are different, because everything in it is subject to interpretation, but that doesn't stop people from grabbing it, holding it aloft, and declaring they know without a doubt they are God's chosen spokespeople.
And that is how we ended up with Fred Phelps.
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