Breaking Fred Phelps on the wheel.

Well, I was wrong and my introductory post about the evils of Web2.0 nixed the “Hello World” default. I feel I should therefore say something beyond rampaging on about the intricacies of modern web design. That’s a complete non-seq. but hey I’m new to this game…

Fred Phelps and his cavalcade of loons were recently broken financially by the State of Maryland. I followed part of the debate about this at Harry’s Place (alas I can’t find the thread, sorry) and whilst I suppressed a wry smile at Phelps being thoroughly fucked-over I think there are two more important issues at stake.

At this point I feel I must add a personal perspective (and no, I’m not coming out) and I have followed via the ‘net the progress of the Phelpsians for longer than they have been commonly known about in the UK (via documentaries on BBC & C4). Indeed, when I first heard of them I emailed a Topeka, KS newspaper and by first dispatch received an extremely nice email from a sub-editor saying that Phelps was for real and his website and other activities were genuine and not the wind-up I suspected. The kindly lady in Topeka lamented this fact. Alas, I no longer have the email. My IBM Deskstar HD self-destructed shortly afterwards. It was apparently a failing common to that model. Hitachi have subsequently sorted it but too late for me - I’ve gone over to Western Digital. I digress.

Anyway, back to my two points…

The first is simple. The first amendment rights of the Phelpsians to be thoroughly obnoxious I feel should trump any attempt to censor them by law even when their activities go from the merely contemptible to the outright obscene it should not be the law that nixes them. Not when there are folks like this around. Of course that raises the issue of the value of non-government actors and that’s a wider issue I’m not prepared to raise right now though hats off to those bikers. I shall raise it though, this is a libertarian blog afterall.

My second point is more nuanced. The first, the defence of freedom of expression, is an absolute. Fred Phelp’s rag-tag army of loons are utterly self-defeating. Even parking that URL guarantees that the overwhelming majority of the much maligned US “Religious Right” is against them. They focus the issue of homophobia in the US and they define battle-lines in such a way that practically everyone else is on the side of the angels.

In a way that Mr Phelps would hardly approve of, he has added to the gaiety of his nation even more than if he’d (forgive me for this image, I will suffer for it at 4am) taken part in a Gay Pride conga line in the Castro district of SF wearing naught but a leather thong.