Mother Jones - Comments for "The Summum of All Fears"

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Reverend Fred Phelps, the

Reverend Fred Phelps, the infamous head of the Westboro Baptist Church in Kansas, runs a website called www.godhatesfags.com and wants to erect a monument in Casper, Wyoming's Historical Monument Plaza depicting Matthew Shepard, the gay University of Wyoming student who was murdered in 1998. The caption would read, "Matthew Shepard entered Hell October 12, 1998, in defiance of God's warning 'thou shalt not lie with mankind as with womankind; it is abomination.'"

Solution

I think the fundamental solution to this problem is to reverse the decision from which all this confusion proceeds: The Ten Commandments are an implicitly religious artifact and should be treated as such. Separation of church and state is absolute. We shouldn't have commandments, pillars, tenets, aphorisms, or any other religious statements-- no matter how fringe or how mainstream-- in the public sphere. Reverse that decision, and all of these other arguments about religious tolerance dissolve. If people are really that bent on having a religious belief and sticking to it, that's their business. They can do it inside churches; they can preach hate and build silly monuments to whatever they want in their gardens. They already luxuriate in tax-exempt status while telling their followers what to believe and who to vote for. Reversing the decision that declares the Ten Commandments a part of public life instead of calling them what they are-- religious doctrine-- is just one step in the right direction.

In school, I am the lawyer representing Summum.

How ridiculous, that the "Summums" (sorry, but I can't utter that joke name without snickering) should be trying to convince (anyone) that before the Old Testament Gawd handed down His concrete Thou Shalt Nots, he first trotted out a bunch of psycho-feely abstractions to test the proclamation tolerance of His Chosen People.

Evidently the desert-wandering focus groups weren't on board with that mushy new-age stuff, and demanded some old-age prohibitions about Golden Calves instead. What happened to Gawd's omniscience? How come He didn't see that one coming?

And how poetic, too -- that the LDS should be the ones complaining about such historical/doctrinal revisionism. After all, it was Joseph Smith "himself" (there's a deal of controversy over the very existence of a real Joseph Smith) who supposedly dug up some gold tablets hidden for him by the "Angel Moroni," that supposedly added to and addended all of the previous scriptures, by "revealing" a deeper book and plan for the (newly) "Chosen" people (the Mormons, of course).

That the tablets in question were again permanently "lost" is only par for the course, in revelation circles. Revelation and faith actually suffer, for having the "proof" at hand, because concrete evidence not only risks being concretely disproven, but also ossifies the revelationist instinct; which is to keep on revealing "new" truths as they are revealed to the elect by Gawd (read: made up for ideological convenience).

Personally, as one who would drive hundreds of miles out of my way, to avoid going through "Zion" (I have Mormon relatives, so I know how crazy they are), they can put up monuments to all the gods and angels they want. They can put them up in the middle of the highway, for all I care. It just makes them look like the kooks they are. Let's have monuments to Moroni, Kabuki, Stanislavski, and Fahuti, for all the great things they supposedly did in the great by-and-by. And let's have the personal testimonials of all these ridiculous "deities" engraved on new golden tablets, and used to pave the roads of Zion.

I've no problem with this, so long as they stay in Utah. But if they try to bring that nonsense to Alaska with them (and they're trying), they should expect to run into some, let's say, Second Amendment obstacles.

The reference to Fred Phelps and the murder of Matthew Shepard seems to be a sensationalized red-herring here. I do not see a relationship between the public display of religious maxims (10 commandments/7 aphorisms) or movie promotions, as the case may be, and the installation proposed by Baptist minister Fred Phelps. The latter commemorates an illegal hate crime, a brutal murder by torture and robbery justified by the murderers as "gay panic defense." The Phelps installation is not legally defensible as free speech, because it glorifies and promotes the murder, and "speech" that incites violence is not protected under law. No one would consider an objection to the Phelps installation to be anything other than an objection to promoting more hate crimes; opposition to the Phelps agenda is not anti-Christian or sectarian anti-Baptist, opposition need not be based on religious grounds, but based on objections to promoting violence, including even perhaps the potential for retaliatory violence against homophobes.

The issue of whether religious expression should occur in public space is a completely separate argument. I think that a jurist can easily argue that since religious expression is often intrinsically sectarian, promoting division and potential violence.

Im agnostic so take this as its meant...
Physicist can't "prove" gravity yet you blieve in that. You merely see it's effect. I would think the argument for God is the same.

Let Phelps put in his monument. He will have to replace it every week and will probably run out of funds doing it.

I feel I must respond to many of the anti-religious posts. I am not religious myself, and still have no idea what "God" is and if it even exists. However, simply saying religion is the root of all our problems is far too simplistic. Many of the problems of religion are people twisting words to benefit their own political agendas.

Almost everything is driven by language and culture. A misinterpretation of words in the Bible can cause and has caused a lot of problems. If you take religion out of the mix humans would still find something to disagree over. Basically it comes down to certain people wanting to attain power so that their ideology can be the ultimate truth when really there is no such thing.

While I am vehemently opposed to most if not all of Fred Phelps’ and his church’s beliefs, why should he be denied his right to free expression? My answer to that is a quite cliché but true sentiment: With freedom comes responsibility. Erecting a monument glorifying the murder of a human being is irresponsible and wrong. I use the word wrong carefully as I believe you should be allowed to do whatever you want unless you’re hurting or infringing upon another person. Fred Phelps saying “God hates [deleted]” is okay. He should be allowed to say that, as idiotic as it is. Implying that it’s okay to kill gay people, however, is not okay. I could never really wish death upon another person, but death is a natural part of life. Thank God Fred Phelps is 79 years old.

There is no evidence at all for the existence of a supernatural Supreme Being or Jesus for that matter.

Some people say they know God exists because they feel him in their hearts. Again that is just childhood conditioning.

Others are fond of saying that there had to be someone, or something to act as a First Cause, but even a child can see through that argument.

If you tell a child "God made the world" he will usually ask "Then who made God?" If we reply, as the catechism states, "No one made God, He always was," then why couldn't we just say that about the world in the first place?

Those of you here that still believe in Jesus are enablers of the wackos and give them credibility.

Check it out, there is no more evidence (archeological or anthropological) for the existence of your miracle producing Jesus than there is for Zeus. And until the stories of Jesus are placed in the proper category of mythology and/or superstition, the world (and especially this country) will continue on its ignorant, dysfunctional, irrational, bigoted path.

"What is the government doing supporting the Ten Commandments?" -about sums it all up. Since all religion is screwy, why not allow this (curse word) to display his vicious little ideals? How are his concepts any less unfounded then any other believers?

The jerk trying to install that horrid monument is not an aberration: he's the logical conclusion of religious belief.

We live in a country where even human waste gets a voice.

"...and no religion too." -john lennon

Very informative posting, Vasu Murti. Roger Williams is a hero of mine. One does not have to be mindless to believe in Jesus, but only a mindless follower would would attempt to enact these beliefs into law.