Family preaches hate; gets nicked for $11M.

See here. The Phelps family — a band of slobbering morons hailing from the Westboro Baptist Church (I would link to the church’s website at www.godhatesfags.com, but the server is unresponsive, as it should be) — has made ABC News with a story about how the family traveling the country and haunting soldiers’ funerals and other disaster areas.

The Phelps’ carry signs that taunt the families of the deceased (“Thank God for maimed soldiers”) while preaching what is most accurately described as outright hate: a massive intolerance for “fags” and others who don’t follow precisely in the extremist footsteps they do.

This family has been in the news before, and when I first read about them, I didn’t understand why nobody was doing anything about them. The good news is that that trend is changing: recently, they Phelps family and their church got punished to the tune of $11M for disturbing a soldier’s funeral.

Members of the Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka, Kan., often picket the funerals of soldiers. As family members arrive to grieve the loss of their loved one, the picketers confront them with screaming, cruel songs and signs saying things like “America Is Doomed.”

Shirley Phelps-Roper and her brother Tim Phelps carry on the campaign their father Fred, founding pastor of the church, began decades ago.

“Repent, dummies! The wrath of God is upon you. It’s abiding upon you,” said Shirley Phelps-Roper at one protest. “America’s doomed. Your destruction is upon you.”

Where do we draw the line for free speech? Constitutionally, by the letter, this behavior is permitted. In any semblance of reality, it shouldn’t be, and I’m glad to see a jury rule against them for such a formidable sum. Let the Phelps’ appeal the decision and spend even more money fighting people who are, at a minimum, hundreds of times smarter than they are.

What concerns me the most is that should this get to a national stage, in the real limelight, I think the Phelps family would have more supporters than we think.

This behavior shouldn’t be tolerated at all. Zero leeway.

At what point does their behavior constitute child abuse towards their children? Already we see their 10-year-old parroting an anti-homosexual message, yet when asked what “fag” means, he’s at a loss:

Ten-year-old Jonah Phelps-Roper says his favorite flag is one that says “Fags Doom Nations.” “I like that sign,” he said.

When asked what the word “fag” means, Jonah replied “A fag is someone … who … I can’t really explain.”

“A fag is someone who does not obey the word of God,” said Noah.

I won’t get into my views with respect to how extreme dogma — especially religious dogma — constitutes child abuse in my eyes, but I will say that if there’s any chance of these children living normal lives, they need to be separated from their parents immediately. Without such a measure, their lives are already lost. For all intents and purposes, the parents may as well be drug addicts, because their capacity to fulfill their parental role is nil.

If you want to be an idiot unto yourself, fine. But you cross a tremendous line when you start propagating your bullshit onto a child who lacks the mental capacity to decide for himself and defend himself intellectually and emotionally against what you’re doing.

I’m at an uncharacteristic loss for words when talking about these people. What’s going to happen to them one day is that they’re going to show up somewhere to protest, and someone’s going to gun them down in the cold light of day.

I’m all for free speech, but at what point do we draw the line? Clearly one has been drawn here, but how do we, as a society, articulate it?