Westboro Baptist Church in another failed UK protest

I was reading this thread and thought about what QueerNews posted. I thought about this while I was shooting these parts of the film. I disagree with both the ideas that we shouldn’t publicise extremists like the Westboro Baptist Church and also we certainly should not have banned them from entering the UK.
While reporting the story, yes producers and journalists do publicise the activities of the WBC and so give them the notoriety and attention they so obviously crave for themselves and their message. However, the stories also inform the public allowing the possibility of counter protests to be organized and the victims of the pickets to be prepared. I also think that debate and public awareness actually strips groups like this of their shock power. Everyone now knows this group and the fact that they are crazy. They’re no longer that sinister really. I think if they had courted the press less and been more opaque about who they are they would seem like more of a threat. Their want for fame has rendered their message unthreatening. Maybe I can say this because they haven’t picketed as child of mines funeral. I’m sure I’d be very upset. But on the whole I think they have made themselves utterly irrelevant and simply a source of amusement. And that is the best way to deal with groups like this. As the Guardian journalist Andrew Mueller points out ridicule is often the best way to deal with extremist views.
I wonder how less scared we’d all be of certain Islamic fundamentalist figures if Louis Theroux had spent a weekend with them?
This is obviously flippant and hate certainly is disturbing especially when there is also the threat of violence. We can’t simply not report it however, disturbing it might be. I don’t think in the on-line age groups like this need the press to organise but the press has the ability to inform and ultimately render meaningless. Oh and of course ridicule.
As for being banned from the UK. I basically see the decision as quite a cheap publicity trick by Jacqui Smith. These guys specifically have a mandate of non-violence. Although they have a deeply offensive messages to most adjusted members of society it is still a message. This is a freedom of speech issue. Meddling with that most important of rights to my mind is much more damaging to Britain than the Westboro Baptist Church could ever be. In this case my instinct is that freedom of speech should have been upheld. The piece of legislation used to ban them is worded like this - “A person who uses threatening words or behavior, or displays any written material which is threatening, is guilty of an offence if he intends thereby to stir up religious hatred”. If we accept in a world of violent religious fundamentalism that we might need to stop people expressing racist, homophobic or religious intolerance then we must reserve this right for a very serious threat. And although I understand the offense Phelps and his followers create I do not think they represent a very serious threat.

Well, you know there's a special place in hell for Phelps. Thankfully, nobody with half a brain considers him a "Christian". My main beef with him is that he likes to disrupt military funerals. Yeah, the US is going to hell, but what purpose does it serve to prey on people in a time of grieving....Phelps is one sick nut- he needs to be involuntarily committed...........

god to these fucking morons :
''yr doin it wrong!''

It is certainly a good thing they have been banned yet again but please can we stop giving the Westboro Baptist Church so much attention. It is what they desire above all else.

'No special laws for religious extremists'?
I'm surprised that this group is still legally tolerated. By the rights of all incitement laws, why are they still permissibly active?

As a dad with a kid at the school, I had a few choice words ready (yes, I know, I know, don't feed the trolls, but still).

Perhaps Phelps made the same mistake as you, and decided that Leytonstone was somewhere in West London.

i bet he smoked alot of fags in his day...as far as "special laws" for non heteros,WHAT PLANET IS HE LIVING ON?

Barking mad, the lot of 'em

The WBC are absolutely ridiculous. Looking forward to this pod you're filming though. Think I'll add you as a connection :)