God Hates Australia 2...

I am not quite sure what Australia has done to offend the Westboro Baptist Church, but whatever it was it must have been good. My understanding is that Australia's biggest sin can be traced to a film about a gay cowboy played by the late Heath Ledger.

Anyway, the founder of the Westboro Baptist Church, Pastor Fred Phelps, has put out a video stating that Australia is suffering for its sins and that God hates Australia. He even suggests that he is hopeful that more tragedy strikes Australia and that the death toll from the recent bushfires in Victoria continues to climb. He is also praiseworthy of the floods in hoping that the death toll and destruction continues to rise on that front.

This man is a complete nutter. It is hard to take a Church seriously that maintains a website called www.godhatesfags.com.

I am sure others will have more choice words to describe his hate-filled drivel. I cannot, for the life of me, reconcile the idea of a vengeful Christian God that slaughters the innocent. Perhaps, I just expect too much from the Christian faith or I just do not understand religion in the same way as the Westboro Baptist Church.

Clearly just trying to ignore the Westboro Baptist Church is not working, they simply have not gone away. I guess this is the flip side of free speech and free expression.

The Westboro Baptist Church

I have written about the Westboro Baptist Church formed by the Rev. Fred Phelps in a previous entry. These people are the crazy Christian fundamentalists that have decided that God has given them a mission that revolves around the eradication of homosexuality, abortion, and adultery. The chosen method of eradication is to protest at all manner of funerals and attribute the death of the individual to some tolerance of homosexuality, abortion, and adultery.

The WBC is the group you see on TV holding the signs and placards that read, "God Hates Fags". These people are hate-mongers, vilifiers, and by my reckoning not even remotely representative of the Christian faith.

The latest target of these idiots has been the funeral of Tim McLean. McLean was the young man decapitated on a Greyhound Bus in Canada the other week. The WBC has decided that the decapitation and cannibalism of McLean was God's way of letting Canada know that he is displeased with the tolerance of Canadian policy and law towards the issues of homosexuality, abortion, and adultery.

To suggest that the WBC is a few sandwiches short of a picnic basket seems to ignore the fact that the picnic basket is not a few sandwiches short but rather it is empty, devoid of all sandwiches! There is nothing rational in the positions that the WBC adopts.

Thankfully, the Canadian border guards have been instructed to bar entry to members of the WBC to Canada. The family of Tim McLean has a right to grieve in peace and bury him without interference from the WBC! I am one that normally advocates that people have a right to protest, and even if I do not agree with you, I still would argue for your right to protest. Nevertheless, some lines in the sand need to be drawn, this is one of those times. The idea of targeting specific individuals as having died because of a government policy and then picketing their funerals is offensive.

The WBC is the same group you see picketing the funerals of fallen soldiers throughout the US. For me the message of the WBC constitutes hate speech and they should and must be prosecuted where the law allows for this sort of vilification to be prosecuted.

My guess is that God hates the Westboro Baptist Church!

Gay Marriage -- Who Cares?

Tuesday is the first full day in California were same sex couples can legally get married! It is 02.54 Wednesday now while I write this sitting here in Jakarta and by my reckoning that makes it Tuesday in California. I am sure there will be a bit of a rush today with couples looking to tie the knot and get on with business. The system in California expects a rush too. They have extended operation hours and put on additional staff to cope with the expected rush.

The change in the law has required some form changes as well. The traditional "bride" and "groom" spaces on a marriage license have been changed to "Party A" and "Party B".

One of the first couples to get a marriage license were George Takei and his longtime partner. This is the fella that played Sulu in the original Star Trek and more recently appeared in Heroes. Nah, this is indicative of how much attention I pay to who is gay and who is not, as I did not even know he was gay! I just do not care!

I do not believe that homosexuality and lesbianism are lifestyle choices. I do not believe that homosexuality and lesbianism is a disease that can be cured like genital warts. I believe that you are born homosexual or lesbian and that society encourages you to repress your true self in order to conform to an unrealistic and arbitrary norm.

My good blogging friend Rima has written an excellent little post on "why religion does not matter" and I encourage you to drop by and read it! The relevance to that post and this one is with regards to the "not caring". I really do not give the proverbial rat's arse in terms of people identifying whether they are gay or lesbianism. I am not judging them on any criteria that relates to the sexual preferences as I would expect them not to be judging me on my preference for heterosexuality. To each their own!

Yet, I must care because there are many who want to convince me that there is something inherently evil and bad in homosexuality and lesbianism. So evil that I must rail against it now or forever live in damnation! My response is always the same...if this is such a bad thing then let them get on with it and God can sort it out later.

I have never really understood why some people think that God has given them the authority to be God's arbiter and representative on earth. This bothers me because I am asked to tolerate the stupidity of the Westboro Baptist Church and their protests. They seem to think that God hates Australia but I wouldn't be surprised if in fact God had a few more issues with the Westboro Baptist Church than God has with Australia.

I have never met a gay or lesbian person who has interfered with or been a hassle to my daily life experience. Not one of my gay and lesbian friends has ever tried to "convert" me in order that I bat for the other side. Nope, the only zealots that I have encountered are those who try and convert me to some misguided religion that looks for me to allocate 10% of my salary to the building of a bigger church or mosque!

Back to California. It was nice to see that the first couple married were Del Martin aged 87 and Phyllis Lyon aged 83. This pair have been together for some 55 years! A commitment of 55 years to each other deserves to be recognized in marriage. I do not care who was Party A and who was Party B. I bet my last dollar that neither did they! The picture is of the happy couple and it is a sweet photograph of two people still in love after 55 years. They have been together longer than I have been alive!

I am pro-same sex marriage!

God Hates Australia

It is important to learn something everyday. Today I learned that God hates Australia!



I have written about the Westboro Baptist Church in passing when I wrote my post about the passing of Heath Ledger. This little flyer is something they published at the time when they were jumping up and down claiming that God had already started to visit his wrath on Australia and had started with Heath Ledger. It appears that Ledger's crime against God was to portray a homosexual cowboy in Brokeback Mountain. I guess this means that the Christian God really is a vengeful God!




Generally, I try and be understanding of all, even the far Christian right, but this supposed Church is so far right that I do not think they are in cooee distance. Besides, I just do not see that rational argument is an option here. Look, how do you argue a rational point of view with a Church whose website address is www.godhatesfags.com? Afterall, these are the same religious zealots (I must admit other words came to mind other than zealot) that protest at the funerals of returned service men and women in the US.




Apparently, God is killing America's young men and women in Afghanistan and Iraq as punishment for moving away from the pure teachings of God. It appears that in particular God sends down his wrath against anyone or any country that tolerates homosexuality.

The above just goes to show that there is no one religion that has a monopoly on fundamentalist teachings and interpretations. Even ones that seem to cross the line to vilification and hate speech in some pundits books!




At least Australia can now move on from the "where the bloody hell are ya?" tourism campaign and onto one such as this: "Come and visit the most corrupt and decadent place on the planet" or "hurry to visit the most corrupt and decadent place on earth before the wrath of God takes it all away!" I would imagine that if the Westboro Baptist Church is right then Australia will not have a lot of time to capitalize on this pre-wrath destruction so Tourism Australia better "get the party started", to borrow a line from Pink!




This is a good test for those who clamour to protect free speech and those who seek to limit free speech. The flip side of free speech is the freedom to ridicule, to insult, to belittle, and to mock, among others! The question though is when does this apparent freedom to ridicule and insult cross the "line in the sand" to vilification or other criminal speech?




I am a big believer in free speech but an equally big believer that if one wants to enjoy the freedoms of speech then they must respect that this is not an absolute or unlimited freedom and be responsible for the words they utter!




I am sure that the members of the Westboro Baptist Church believe whole-heartedly what they preach and most, if not all, would be prepared to go to jail for their beliefs. Ahhhh, such is the power of religion and faith in God!




But no matter what the Westboro Baptist Church thinks -- I am proud to be an Australian and will remain proud right to the end whenever that may be! So, Westboro Baptist Church -- you lose!