Fred Phelps' funeral is going to be EPIC

[tongodeon]

Listening to Reasonable Doubts this morning I realized that Fred Phelps' funeral is going to be epic.

I mentioned this on Twitter, and @noirem replied that this would make me no better than him. Worse if [I] ever condemned his actions." An argument which I rejected: the morality of one day spent celebrating the death of a particularly hateful

Comments

[mmcirvin]

If Phelps' heirs are anything like Phelps, they're counting on this. Phelps' people are experts in the applicable laws, are extremely careful not to break them, and do what they do at least in part as a legal scam designed to provoke people to physically attack them so they can successfully sue. The people protesting Phelps' funeral are likely not to be so careful, and to step over a line so Phelps' group can sue some more. They may be morally better than Phelps, but legally they're likely to be worse.

[tongodeon]

I'm actually quite curious about this - seeing what Phelps' family does when the shoe is on the other foot. They've not just thought about this, but given it more thought than anyone else has. Whatever their reaction is, it might be a good lesson for folks reacting to them.

[mmcirvin]

The other variable is what they do in the absence of Phelps. Based on the statements of his son, it sounds as if the church is very much a personality cult revolving around the person of Fred Phelps. The question is whether it instantly falls apart when he dies or if somebody can take his place. There are precedents for either outcome.

[quercus]

Is Fred Phelps dead?!

...or is this a problem either way?

[tongodeon]

Fred's not dead, and when he dies I probably won't actually go through the trouble of flying to the funeral, so this whole thing is extremely hypothetical.

[quercus]

No reason not to bury him though.

[gaping_asshole]

Interesting idea. When something really terrible ends, especially when that terrible thing is a person, my gut sense is to put as much distance between me and the ended bad as possible. This leads me not to celebrate the ending, which feels like looking backwards, but to get busy doing/feeling whatever I would have done or felt had the bad thing never happened. In this case it would be rebuilding my world view in such a way that I didn't have to leave room for how angry these cock mouthed shit breathers make me.

Still, there's something foreign yet appealing to doing a Ding Dong the Witch is Dead dance when this guy goes. Reminds me of the fact that we had friends in college who got married and incorporated travelling to Richard Nixon's then fresh grave to dance on it as part of their honeymoon.

[ctd]

room for how angry these cock mouthed shit breathers make me

This is the nub of it for me. Indulging in hate is not conducive to my continued peace of mind, nor my capacity to be productive at things that are far more important (and long-term pleasurable).

[gaping_asshole]

I certainly don't let myself hate people lightly, that's kinda the point. Once these guys are off the scene however it happens I'll want to return to a "like they were never here" state as possible. That said, there are times when hate is appropriate and healthy. It's a distant hate, these idiots have only directly impacted people close to me once so I don't wallow in it daily, but when these guys come to my attention my honest and considered emotion is hate.

Not hating them would require me to hide from the fact that they exist. That's not healthy or productive. Or I could formulate some apologist position that obscured the evil these people do, but that would grant them legitimacy. Or I can see the evil and hate the evil. Done.

[palecur]

The point you missed and seem to be continuing to miss is that 'disrupting a funeral' is a dick action, orthogonal to the personal qualities of the deceased, and that your position was, and seems to continue to be, that when someone is sufficiently reprehensible (by some objective, though ill-defined, moral standard), behaving like a dick at that person's funeral somehow magically loses its dick qualities. It doesn't.

noirem's attempts to raise this point did not seem successful, so I am attempting to get it across again.

[falconwarrior]

Your argument presupposes that nobody ever deserves to have dick actions acted upon them. This is false.

[gaping_asshole]

+1

[flwyd]

The Onion has good insight into this: If we don't protect freedom of speech, how will we know who the assholes are?

You could say that protesting Phelps's funeral would be stooping to his level. Why not be the better person and make the event not about Phelps or his beliefs, but a celebration of something worthwhile, like a public make-out session (all orientations welcome).