The Outhouse - The Greatest Comic Book Forum

[AaronW]

I think the speech is covered but i wonder how close the protestors get. surely a cemetary can at least push them to outside the cemetary.

I also question paying the legal fees. Let phelps pay his own legal fees.

I blame the legal system and scumbag lawyers.

[Spidey-Man]

Phelps goes way back

This is from Time Magazine, 1951, writing about 21 yr old California college students Fred Phelps

even then attracking attention

Religion: Repentance In Pasadena
Monday, Jun. 11, 1951


Five-year-old John Muir College* at Pasadena (enrollment: 2,000) has no more than the average quota of campus sin. But to Fred Phelps, 21, a tall (6 ft. 3 in.), craggy-faced engineering student from Meridian, Miss., John Muir is a weed-grown vineyard. Day after day this spring he has called upon his fellow students to repent. His method: to walk up to groups of boys & girls munching their lunchtime sandwiches in the quadrangle, ask "May I say a few words?" and launch into a talk.

Fred Phelps's talks drew crowds of up to 100. Over & over he denounced the "sins committed on campus by students and teachers . . . promiscuous petting . evil language . . . profanity . . . cheating . . . teachers' filthy jokes in classrooms . . . pandering to the lusts of the flesh." Such strictures sent Dr. Archie Turrell, principal of John Muir, and most of his faculty into a slow burn. Not only was Evangelist Phelps attacking them, they decided, but conceivably he was violating California's state education code, which forbids the teaching of religion on any public school campus.

Something of a Martyr. A fortnight ago they ordered him to stop his campus preaching. Phelps moved across the road, off campus, and kept on preaching. Principal Turrell warned him again. "He accosted me in very stern language," says Phelps, "and told me that he would call the law. So I told him I had no fears. If the police arrested me I would preach to them in jail."

As Phelps's audience grew, police arrived, cleared the crowded sidewalk of both the earnest and the merely curious. Phelps was "invited" into a police car and driven away from the scene; John Muir suspended him for the rest of the week.

But Evangelist Fred Phelps, who had turned down an appointment to West Point to devote his life to preaching, was not to be discouraged by a little thing like suspension. Last week he was back, preaching from the lawn of a friendly Pasadena citizen across from the quadrangle. His audiences were bigger and more sympathetic; in fact, Fred Phelps now had something of the attraction of a martyr.

Off His Stick? Pro-Phelps students recalled that the California law against the teaching of religion has never been interpreted at John Muir as a ban on such voluntary groups as the Student Christian Association, the Roman Catholic Newman Club, the Christian Science Club, and the Mormon Deseret Club. In any case, they thought Principal Turrell had no right to pursue Phelps across the street.

"I don't agree with what he says," said a history major. "But I agree that he has a right to say it—off campus." Said another: "I think some of us can stand a bit of revival. Maybe Phelps has got something."

Students were delighted with the story that Phelps had been ordered to consult the school psychologist, a middle-aged lady, and that he had turned the tables on her by "psychoanalyzing" her. Gloated an admiring coed: "I hope he did. They had no right to suggest that he's off his stick. Just because you're religious, it doesn't mean you have to be crazy."



Read more: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/artic ... z0jfVgCqrz

[YeaSureWhatever]

I think the speech is covered but i wonder how close the protestors get. surely a cemetary can at least push them to outside the cemetary.

I also question paying the legal fees. Let phelps pay his own legal fees.

I don't agree with Phelps, but if he was sued in civil court and won doesn't that basically mean that the person who sued him wasted his, the courts, and the taxpayers time and money? I am not a lawyer, but I have seen enough instances where losers of lawsuits have to pay court costs that this does not really surprise me

[Spidey-Man]

He was a civil rigths lawyer

Phelps earned a law degree from Washburn University in 1962, and founded the Phelps Chartered law firm in 1964. The first notable cases were related to civil rights. "I systematically brought down the Jim Crow laws of this town," he says.[15] Phelps' daughter was quoted as saying, "We took on the Jim Crow establishment, and Kansas did not take that sitting down. They used to shoot our car windows out, screaming we were nigger lovers," and that the Phelps law firm made up one-third of the state’s federal docket of civil rights cases.[18]

Phelps took cases on behalf of African American clients alleging racial discrimination by school systems, and a predominantly black American Legion post which had been raided by police, alleging racially-based police abuse. Phelps' law firm obtained settlements for some clients.[19] Phelps also sued then-President Ronald Reagan over Reagan's appointment of a U.S. ambassador to the Vatican, alleging this violated separation of church and state. The case was dismissed by the U.S. district court.[19][20] Phelps' law firm, staffed by himself and family members also represented non-white Kansans in discrimination actions against Kansas Power and Light, Southwestern Bell, and the Topeka City Attorney, and represented two female professors alleging discrimination in Kansas universities.[18]

In the 1980s Phelps received awards from the Greater Kansas City Chapter of Blacks in Government and the Bonner Springs branch of the NAACP for his work on behalf of black clients.[21]

Phelps Chartered also won one of the first reverse discrimination cases

odd guy

[YeaSureWhatever]

I blame the legal system and scumbag lawyers.

like the ones that did not tell the dad that suing Phelps was a losing cause and would cost him money?

[jeremiahvedder]

When I was at Ottawa University (KS), barely an hour away from Topeka (where Phelps is headquartered), there was a marine funeral at our campus chapel (OU is an ABC-sponsored Christian school) and Phelps' people arrived to protest.

Luckily, OU is private property and the protesters couldn't get near the chapel and a bunch of USA-loving bad ass bikers came to hold up American flags (that shielded the protesters from view of the mourners) ... but they were still assholes. And it was still weird.

I was Copy Editor of the campus paper at the time and I drew the short straw to interview Phelps (because he was supposed to be there), an interview that was granted by his people, but (also luckily) it was too cold and rainy and that hateful son of a bitch didn't show up.

I was relegated to interviewing some of the protesters instead, and it was a mind-numbing experience that lessened my faith in humanity.

[Spidey-Man]

I don't agree with Phelps, but if he was sued in civil court and won doesn't that basically mean that the person who sued him wasted his, the courts, and the taxpayers time and money? I am not a lawyer, but I have seen enough instances where losers of lawsuits have to pay court costs that this does not really surprise me

It's very rare. The American system is you pay your own costs. Unless its ina contract, certain statury provisions (civil rights discrimiantion cases) or if they find you acted in bad faith

Losing is not necessarily a waste of time. If you have a good faith basis to sue or challenge a law, or advance a legal theory, that is not a waste of time, even if you lose.

Remember, the dad's case was good enough to win in the initial court. He only lost on appeal.

Remember also he's the first one to sue phelps. It's not like this is the 20th losing case.

[Jack Burton]

Exactly. It's not like they were completely innocent in this case. They have really no right to be there.

I hope someday Phelps and his ilk push someone too far and they all go and see the God that they "love" so much.

Scum.

Hopefully God is just there to let them know what detestable human beings they are and then fast track them to Hell.

[AaronW]

like the ones that did not tell the dad that suing Phelps was a losing cause and would cost him money?

No, just Rob.

[Spidey-Man]

Hopefully God is just there to let them know what detestable human beings there are and then fast track them to Hell.

Under most Christian belief systems going to hell or not going to hell has nothing to do with whether you are a good person or not.

just FYI.

[YeaSureWhatever]

It's very rare. The American system is you pay your own costs. Unless its ina contract, certain statury provisions (civil rights discrimiantion cases) or if they find you acted in bad faith

Losing is not necessarily a waste of time. If you have a good faith basis to sue or challenge a law, or advance a legal theory, that is not a waste of time, even if you lose.

Remember, the dad's case was good enough to win in the initial court. He only lost on appeal.

Remember also he's the first one to sue Phelps. It's not like this is the 20th losing case.

those are good points, and again I am not a lawyer
My reaction was more of a knee jerk to the fact that, the way I see it, if some one had sued a company or some one that most people agrees with there would have been a bunch of complaining about our litigious society, but because Phelps is a douche its OK sue him for being an asshole.

[Thunderstorm]

Phelps and his group know the legal system very well and try to stay perfectly within their rights when they protest. From what I understand, they want people to try and shut them down, because they make money on the resulting lawsuits which goes to their budget for traveling around the country. Best to just ignore him.

[AaronW]

Under most Christian belief systems going to hell or not going to hell has nothing to do with whether you are a good person or not.

just FYI.

Yep, if he has faith in his savior the Lord Jesus Christ he is in. So expect Phelps in heaven Christians.

[achilles]

He is nothing but a hate-monger, but even they are covered by free speech. Otherwise there probably wouldn't be any police protecting white power/nazi rallies held in front of state buildings.

Based on what that article said, I have to wonder just what the court was smoking. The First Amendment doesn't say that you can defame the character of a person with factually inaccurate statements, which that dirtbag did. It should have been a slam-dunk case of libel. It seems to fit the definition of libel to a t.

[Amoebas]

Not a lawyer but the right to organize requires a few steps doesn't it? I'm assuming this because I've heard the word "unlawful assembly a time or two.

So, while it's fact that Nazi's have the right to parade down the same streets as the Irish or other organzied groups, I can't concieve of a town clerk anywhere approving a protest at or near a cemetary timed to coincide with a particular funeral.