Pastor Phelps damns us all to Hell...
...but especially Jacqui Smith
"Some Godforsaken little place called Bass-ingstoke is planning to produce a disgusting little play about a little pervert..."
"What "Home Secretary" Jacqui Smith has done is ban God from the United Kingdom and brought down his inevitable curse. God hates England, land of the curse of the Sodomites. Amen."
In other Westboro-related news, Liberty's Shami Chakrabarti has finally gone on the radio to express a thought about this and the Geert Wilders case. It didn't amount to much; she sounded as though the words were being extracted from her mouth with pliers. But she did at least bring herself to say that the government has gone too far with its determination to ban anyone whose opinions might provoke more than a stifled yawn. She also made the point that banning the likes of Wilders and Phelps only brings them more publicity. No shit, Shami.
At a basic human level, the right of the Phelps family to annoy the burghers of Basingstoke with their ugly perversion of Christianity may not be up there with freedom from torture or indefinite detention without trial. But cases like this affect the whole mood of a country. Troublemakers and criminals have been banned from these shores for years. Since last October, however, the Home Office have instituted a new draconian policy of banning anyone who attracts negative coverage in the press. The result is gesture politics at its cheapest and most unprincipled, where government ministers - and publicity-seeking MPs of all parties - can demonstrate their commitment to harmony, diversity and human rights by piously calling for anyone who disagrees with them to be locked out.
The country that allowed Voltaire and Karl Marx - "troublemakers" both - to come here to preach against religion and the status quo now wants to build a wall around itself, within which only bland, pre-approved ideas may the thought or expressed. In any era it would be depressing. In the age of the Internet it simply makes our government look prim and ridiculous. But then what's new?
"Some Godforsaken little place called Bass-ingstoke is planning to produce a disgusting little play about a little pervert..."
"What "Home Secretary" Jacqui Smith has done is ban God from the United Kingdom and brought down his inevitable curse. God hates England, land of the curse of the Sodomites. Amen."
In other Westboro-related news, Liberty's Shami Chakrabarti has finally gone on the radio to express a thought about this and the Geert Wilders case. It didn't amount to much; she sounded as though the words were being extracted from her mouth with pliers. But she did at least bring herself to say that the government has gone too far with its determination to ban anyone whose opinions might provoke more than a stifled yawn. She also made the point that banning the likes of Wilders and Phelps only brings them more publicity. No shit, Shami.
At a basic human level, the right of the Phelps family to annoy the burghers of Basingstoke with their ugly perversion of Christianity may not be up there with freedom from torture or indefinite detention without trial. But cases like this affect the whole mood of a country. Troublemakers and criminals have been banned from these shores for years. Since last October, however, the Home Office have instituted a new draconian policy of banning anyone who attracts negative coverage in the press. The result is gesture politics at its cheapest and most unprincipled, where government ministers - and publicity-seeking MPs of all parties - can demonstrate their commitment to harmony, diversity and human rights by piously calling for anyone who disagrees with them to be locked out.
The country that allowed Voltaire and Karl Marx - "troublemakers" both - to come here to preach against religion and the status quo now wants to build a wall around itself, within which only bland, pre-approved ideas may the thought or expressed. In any era it would be depressing. In the age of the Internet it simply makes our government look prim and ridiculous. But then what's new?
Comments
Maybe that's because WBC are a bit surprised at the setback - their theology essentially states that no harm can come to righteous people, which is why they interpret every natural disaster as God's wrath. If they go too overboard with this, people will start asking why a minor 'sin' against them (not being allowed to enter the country to protest) is noble persecution, but Islamic terrorists murdering thousands of mostly Christian Americans is a sign of God's displeasure with America.
There's also Romans 13, which says all governments are in the hands of God and ultimately working for your good (perhaps if they had entered the UK they would have been killed by counter-protestors and Jacqui Smith saved their lives), as well as 2 Peter 2:10, which warns of evil people who "are not afraid to speak evil of dignitaries".
Anyway, the whole "inevitable curse" idea falls a bit flat when you consider that the Bible says "the whole world lies in the power of the evil one". In other words, everywhere is more or less the same, and as a rule of thumb "evil men and impostors will grow worse and worse".
Also, their godhatestheworld entry for the UK is about the most strained one on the list. It gives the Great Fire of London as one of the "body-blows" with which God has been striking the country over the centuries. Odd, then, that we went on to build the greatest empire in human history AFTER God started smiting us. At least Jack T. Chick has a more or less coherent theory for the rise and fall of the British Empire - we rose because we were the first to grant Jews full rights, and fell because we gave those horrible Palestinians part of the Promised Land. That's based on the "I will bless those who bless you, and I will curse him who curses you" clause, which WBC blithely ignores, as they have an entire section on their godhatestheworld site badmouthing Israel.