Free Phelps!
In 1999 Pastor Fred Phelps, the well known homophobic lunatic from Topeka, Kansas, travelled all the way to Ottawa just to burn a Canadian flag on the steps of our Supreme Court, to express God’s displeasure at the court’s ruling ordering Ontario to amend laws to include same-sex couples in the definition of spouse. As grand public gestures go, it was a hilarious miscalculation, and it reinforced my opinion that no-one does a better job of discrediting ideological lunatics than they can do themselves.
I was working in downtown Ottawa when Phelps and his crew arrived about two blocks from the Supreme court, and decided to wander over and take in the spectacle.
Phelps had pestered the RCMP for days before the visit, demanding a high level of security and an armed guard; he declared he had received more death threats and hate mail from Canadians than ever before in his entire ministerial career. When I got to the Supreme Court, however, the massed crowd of “fags and commies” Phelps had predicted was nowhere to be seen – just a very small crowd of uncomfortable-looking demonstrators there to support Phelps, and an equally small, equally uncomfortable looking crowd of gays, lesbians, and same-sex marriage supporters gathered some yards away.
Phelps arrived at the Supreme Court and swept up to the steps with his entourage, trying hard to look like an avenging Biblical Prophet. He was actually more reminiscent of particularly unpleasant vice-principle I once knew.
He delivered his message of God’s Damnation with high drama that was hilariously overpitched to the tiny, quiet crowd – imagine Hitler in full Nuremburg mode addressing a University Women’s Club picnic. His bodyguards did their best to look tough, determined, threatened AND threatening for the cameras, which just added to the surreal quality of the coverage each time a cameraman panned away from Phelp’s team of theatrical goons to the small gathering of polite onlookers.
The biggest problem he had was getting the Canadian flag to burn. He’d get a corner started, try to brandish it triumphantly for the cameras – and it would go out. Finally, with the help of a borrowed Bic, he managed to get it smoldering and held it aloft. His coterie of followers cheered. Oddly, his Canadian supporters didn’t.
That was it. No-one got very excited, except him. He was clearly appalled at the crowd’s lack of response, and the crowd…all of it, including “his” demonstrators, were clearly embarassed by him. He discovered that day that neither Canadian flags nor Canadian demonstrators catch fire as easily as American ones. Media coverage was amused, and best of all, Phelps had been shown up for the liar and hysteric he is.
This week Team Phelps, AKA the Westboro Baptist Church, was stopped at the border as they tried to enter Canada to picket Tim McLean’s funeral to let Canadians know that his decapitation was God’s response to Canadian policies “promoting” abortion, homosexuality and adultery.
While part of me is glad that the McLean family won’t have to endure these vile clowns, I personally think the Phelps of the world should be allowed to say what they want, just as Kathy Shaidle, Al Sharpton, Ezra Levant, and all the hate-spreading demagogues of the right and left should be allowed to say what they want. By their idiocy and their hatred shall ye know them. Give them mockery, not martyrdom.
It is also illegal to protest at a funeral. Maybe you can get the Conservatives to change the law so we can protest whenever a Canadian soldier casket is paraded down the Highway of Heroes.
What about my right to be protected from speech that makes me feel unsafe?
When Phelps came to Canada the first time, the Chretien government said that they couldn’t stop him at the border, while the current government was successfully able to do so. But there is a difference, here. Chretien couldn’t do anything because Phelps wasn’t doing anything illegal. It’s not illegal to burn a flag. It’s not illegal to protest in front of the Supreme Court of Canada. It’s not illegal to demonstrate on a public street.
However, it _is_ illegal to disrupt a solemn funeral service. The law is in the books and it hasn’t succumbed to a Charter challenge.
So the point of debate, here, is whether the law preventing demonstrations at funerals should be challenged or not. If it survives a Charter challenge, however, then the actions of preventing Phelps and his crew from entering Canada makes sense, whether or not you believe he does more damage to himself speaking than not. You’re not allowed to enter Canada or America if your purpose is to commit a crime.
So, should picketing funerals _be_ a crime?
“but exposure is the best weapon against them.”
Exposure, like as in set a drift in Arctic Ocean on an ice flow type of exposure? Can we make them wear silly Bermuda shorts and shirts as well, and maybe one of the stylish straw hats?
James, I’m not disputing the legality of the action taken. I’m disputing its effectiveness and its actual impact.
Is there any legality if KKKate of SDA decided to bring Nick Griffin of the British National Party to Delisle, Saskatchewan?
Hey, Bal,
In this case, I don’t see the gain. In the previous example, Phelps, if anything, helped push this country towards acceptance of same sex marriage, by tainting the opposition with an example of the rhetoric taken to its greatest extreme. What’s the gain here? That a bunch of religious, Jonestownesque crazies are a bunch of hateful kooks? But we already knew that.
So, I’d say, let’s do all we can within the legal framework to spare the family. And stopping them at the border to prevent their stated intention to defy a Canadian law sounds reasonable to me.
@Paladiea – Sorry, you have no such right.
Exactly, these idiots are to be mocked and satirized at every opportunity, now they can go back to America and start the “‘o woe is us, for er have been persecuted for our beliefs” gig.
They should have been allowed to cross the border so the family and the community could deal with them in an appropriate way.
Thing is, Stageleft, we’re also part of that community (the not-crazy community). Isn’t using our legal system also an appropriate response?
They should have been allowed to cross the border so the family and the community could deal with them in an appropriate way.
That’s not what I’m worried about. I’m worried about these extremists’ ability to command our sensationalist media’s attention with ease and chase substantive issues out of the public discussion.
Had they shown up, chances are the community would have dealt with them ably. Had they managed to provoke an incident (which is highly likely; their protests in the US routinely end up causing some type of disruption), our media and our attention would be focused on that, for at least a news cycle and possibly longer if there had been an incident the consequences of which required legal intervention.
We have enough of these people in our own country; we don’t need foreigners adding to it.
The media DID pick up on the story anyway. Separate issue.
And, as it turns out, it seems that the community DID deal with the issue effectively and appropriately.
The media DID pick up on the story anyway. Separate issue.
How is that a separate issue? How we understand the world, focus our attention and react to it is a function of the media. There is no point in splitting hairs over what are issues of individual and collective freedom and responsibility so long as we have a media that cannot, will not, make distinctions about what is really in the public interest.
I can just see it now…someone slaps one of the Phelps cultists really hard (and justifiably, as far as I would be concerned) and the rest of Canada has to endure a renewed and pointless debate about the limits of expression and the promotion of hatred.
Phelps and company don’t do what they do to propitiate a vengeful God. They do what they do because they’ve become adept at exploiting media. They provoke until they elicit a response, and they spin that response one of two ways: if banned, they are heroic, suffering martyrs, and if not banned and they get to spew, they’re triumphant advocates for their lunatic views. It’s exactly the same strategy that the foetishists have been using for years, more recently adapted by the Shaidle/Levant auto-da-faux for their HRC wars.
Coverage is a given. So you need to ask – what coverage makes them look the stupidest? Banned at the border, or derided by a group of ordinary folks incensed by their idiocy?
I vote B. But I acknowledge that I suspect I get more amusement from the spectacle of seriously stupid people humiliating themselves in public than most – after all, I read Canadian Sentinel for giggles. So I may not be the best judge.
By the way, why is the world suddenly disparaging the notion of debate on this issue?
First Montreal Simon, then Ti-guy…I mean, guys, isn’t that what we DO around here?