Al Snyder's son died in Iraq in May of 2006. Members of the rabidly anti-gay Westboro Baptist Church picketed his son Matthew's funeral, causing immense personal, emotional pain for him, his family and their friends.
Snyder won a $5 million civil lawsuit against the church and the Phelps family, but it was recently tossed out of a federal court. To add insult to injury, the court has now ordered Snyder to pay all of the church's legal fees:
BALTIMORE — Lawyers for the father of a Marine who died in Iraq say a court has ordered him to pay legal costs for the anti-gay protesters who picketed his son's funeral.
The protesters are led by Fred Phelps of Westboro Baptist Church. Albert Snyder of York, Pa., had won a $5 million verdict against Phelps, but it was thrown out on appeal.
The U.S. Supreme Court agreed earlier this month to consider whether the protesters' provocative messages, which include phrases like "Thank God for dead soldiers," are protected by the First Amendment.
Lawyers say Snyder already is struggling to come up with the fees associated with filing the brief with the high court. Read on...I really hate to waste Mr. Amato's bandwidth on these despicable people, but Mr. Snyder needs our moral support as well as help with legal costs. I hope he doesn't pay one thin dime to these people, but he'll need lawyers to help continue the fight. There is a legal fund set up for him, if you'd like to show him some love, you can do so by clicking here.
8 comments:
Hello Microdot,
As a Navy Viet Nam veteran myself, I find these GOD FEARING HOMOPHOBIC ASSHOLES claiming to be CHRISTIANS the most offensive group of people on this earth.
For our courts of this land to now inflict the financial cost on the father of a dead service man is just beyond my comprehension.
I have an old high school friend who also went into the Navy the same time I did. He belongs to a motorcycle group in Maine who ride to military funerals to show honor to fallen servicemen and they uses themselves as shields to put between the family / friends and these same homophobic asshole protesters.
As a marine I should be offended, but somehow I just can't bring myself to take these people seriously. At least they are harmless, they're getting their message across with garish poster boards vs bricks and bullets.
Though I think what they do borders on criminal harassment. I'm not sure that the right to freedom of speech goes so far as to protect a group that singles out individual citizens for what amounts to psychic terrorism. But on the other hand I think any time we can bolster freedom of speech, then we probably should err on the side of speech.
I'm a part of a music blog and one of the guys in this group is a Virginia Tech student. He has gotten word that Phelps and Co. are planning to picket Virginia Tech on the anniversary of the VT massacre - with signs like "Thank God for Cho".
We discussed ways to confront the WBC picketers and we sort of came to the conclusion that it's best just to ignore them. But I had the idea that a way to drive these people ape shit would be to turn their pickets into a carnival. Just follow them around from town to town, set up bandstands with different music acts, Frisbee, rides, cotton candy, parades with marching bands. Turn the whole thing into a festival. Call it the "Fred Phelps Freedom of Speech Tour". Set up a picture kiosk right by the picketers where people can go up and put their arm around a picketer and get their picture taken, or maybe a caricature artist. It would be loads of fun for all ages.
Oh, I could probably go to their website and read their faQ, but if they believe the bible, what makes them so special that THEY themselves are above sin and beyond reproach - Like the pharisees ready to cast stones?
And I maybe crazy, but who would WANT to worship a God that is that malevolent? That inflexible? That hateful? Any spiritual feelings I have, or have ever had, I have taken my cues from nature.. I don't think a God, if there is a God, that could have created an infinite universe and the myriad intricacies of nature, would be so small minded to give 2 craps about the brainless activities of humans. It makes no sense, that God the creator, would create a human, only to destroy said human in the pits of hell.. knowing beforehand he was going to send said human to fry. It's a picture of God as a kid with a bag of plastic army men and a magnifying glass on a hot summer day. That's the God of the WBC.
If according to their doctrine, God has preordained who is going to heaven and who is going to burn, and basically we are just going thru the motions of playing out Gods floppy disc program, what does that say about the vaunted "Free Will"? Their positions make no theological, or philosophic sense. If the righteous are preordained, then what is the purpose of Jesus's sacrifice? Why even carry on with the whole dog and pony show for one more day? I guess because I'm not really an atheist these types of questions intrigue me, and you guys probably give a yawn.
I read this article yesterday at random about how there's this evangelical author who... oh well here it is if you are interested:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=125165061&ps=cprs
oh 1 more thing LOLOL!!
Here is a great read:
http://www.godhatesfags.com/schedule.html
Notice all the Obama = Antichrist prophesies... So 6 years from now when we elect Hillary as prez(LOL), we can come back to these prophesies and ask "where is your Antichrist now dolts?".. Unless Obama goes to the UN after his term.. Oh shit, these people's heads would explode then.
Sorry for being a forum hog! these clowns just tickle the shit out of me.
Microdot- glad to see you online again and hopefully permanently!
Steve writes- what makes them so special that THEY themselves are above sin and beyond reproach
What makes them? Why self-righteousness, of course. Just ask one. As you visit Barb's blog, you might pose that question to her if you want to read 5000 words of blather!
Some demon inside of me wishes that some psychotic person will drive their truck at hight speed into that clutch of righteous bigots.
"a way to drive these people ape shit would be to turn their pickets into a carnival."
Looks like Michael Moore is way ahead of me!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ra_fAYl4Th4
When I lived in the USA I used to watch Moores TV Show, Alien Nation.
He had a feature for a while where he had a big purple bus full of truly outageous gay stereotypes which he would visit towns in the Bible Belt with and then film the ensuing mayhem and interaction. It was absolutely brilliant.
Hopefully, I will have internet restored in the next day...
It works for a few minutes, then reconnects then disconnects.
I am going to do a picture show of the process...It was much shorter to rebuild the stone barn wall than to get Frnce telecom to fix my internet.
But now I have a snazzy new sokid barn and the new roof starts next wee.
I was up all night writing a paper for school, and in between paragraphs I did more research on the Phelps clan. I've come to the conclusion that they are all just a bunch of swindler scam artists. The whole sortid thing is just a money making scheme. Like a wagon driving patent medicine hawker of yesteryear pushing their tonics and elixors, Phelps rides into town with his carnival hawking confrontation. The plan is to possibly get someone angry enough that they strike one of the picketers and then sue them, or sue a municipality for not allowing them the right to assemble, or to be as visible as possible attracting media attention in order to get like minded kooks to send in money. It's a traveling carnie show of scamorama! Just about every last one of the Phelps gang are trial lawyers.
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