Church Group or Hate Group – which is it???
So… Elizabeth Taylor died, and apparently the Westboro Baptist Church will be at the funeral to protest, because… I don’t know, apparently being friends with gay people is enough. Oh, and her work as an activist against AIDS.
What caught my eye in this write up in Time, however, was this nugget:
Margie Phelps, daughter of the hate group’s leader Fred Phelps
Are they saying that the Westboro Baptist Church is similar to other hate groups, like the KKK? According to Wikipedia, they are. The Anti-Defamation League agrees. And so does the Southern Poverty Law Center.
So, if they are a hate group, then doesn’t that mean that their protests at military funerals are hate speech, and therefore not protected by the First Amendment?