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I don't think I can say it any better than this guy, so, to quote Ytoabn of the TWC forums:

Quote (Ytoabn)

To quote Nosferatu of the anre.net forums.

Quote

Reverend Fred Phelps intends to erect a 'monument' to Mathew Shepard, a college student brutally murdered five years ago. This 'monument' would not be a memorial; Phelps says the monument would be 5 to 6 feet tall and made of marble or granite. It would bear a bronze plaque bearing the image of Shepard and have an inscription reading "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.' Leviticus 18:22."

Please read and sign this petition to try and keep this from happening.

http://www.petitiononline.com/mrphelps/petition.html

Thank you.

Here's an article on the kid: http://www.cnn.com/US/9810/12/wyoming.attack.01/index.html

Please sign, and if you feel very strongly about this, consider e-mailing or writing your politician. His voice carrys alot more weight then all of ours.

Also, please spread this around to other forums, so we can drum up all the support possible.

This is getting ridiculous.

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~Status Report~

* Completed... Dragon's Head
* Completed... Soldiers of the Empire: Disciples (release pending)
* In Progress/Undecided... Of Love and Betrayal
* Planning/Assembly... Where it all Began

Some people who share the title of christian as me are I'm afraid full of it.

I know I'm not a Mod but please don't turn this into a debate.

He is a teenager killed because of the intolerance he suffered from. My condolences to the family. And may Matthew being given the dignity he deserves. May he Rest In Peace.

this is really quite sickening -- not because i am a strong activist for the pro-gay agenda, but because i am a christian -- a 'Biblical' christian at that. and while i believe that homosexual acts are sins, the actions of this 'christian' man are just as sinful as they represent the kind of cruelty that Jesus himself warned against.

ridiculous indeed. don't be fooled into thinking that all christians are as quick to condemn others as is this man. many of us choose to work on removing the plank from our own eye first.

This kind of thing is disgusting... But hey, why don't they go <verybadjoke>erect</verybadjoke> a monument to all those pedophile bishops they have first...¿

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Shhhh! I'm trying to hear the voices!

Elapidae: Christian and Catholic are not the same thing.

I read about this two or three weeks ago. I'll say the same thing I said when I saw it at the other forums: distasteful or not, what he is doing is perfectly legal and should remain so. Just because you disagree with what he is doing doesn't mean that he doesn't have a right to do it.

I don't think that legal action against the guy would ever pan out, congressman or not. However, someone should file a civil suit on behalf of the Shepard family and seek personal damages against the guy. Hit them in the pocketbook, that's where they care the most anyway.

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"To create something great, you need the means to make a lot of really bad crap." - Kevin Kelly

Why aren't you shopping AmaCoN?

I just wanted to say that I'm positively disgusted that anyone would celebrate the loss of human life, gay or otherwise.

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Club Sandwiches. Not Seals.

If anyone is interested in reading about the anti-gay monument, there are numerous stories around. I did a quick google news (http://news.google.com/) search and found some relevant articles.

http://www.iol.co.za/index.php?click_id=22...03N000&set_id=1
http://www.trib.com/AP/wire_detail.php?wire_num=318467
http://www.firstamendmentcenter.org/news.aspx?id=12159

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Hey, put the cellphone down for a while
In the night there is something wild
Can you hear it breathing?
And hey, put the laptop down for a while
In the night there is something wild
I feel it, it's leaving me

Catholic is a form of Christian, just as Baptists, Anglicans, and my form, Orthodox. See, I know the difference...

I was assuming that Reverend Fred Phelps is Catholic, since that is the predominant form of Christianity... and the Catholics are the ones having trouble keeping their clergy away from the kiddies...

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Shhhh! I'm trying to hear the voices!

I think you may be thinking of Baptist...though I know there was a Catholic Bishop recently (fairly certain) who came out as gay. Or maybe I'm backwards.

Either way, as othes have said, it's not about Christians being cold blooded murderers, it's about people who think they know everything, taking people they don't know how to deal with otherwise (such as homosexual people) and making it so that they don't have to deal with it. It's very sad, and sickening.

And there have been people who abuse their authority over children for centuries, now. It's not just the Catholics, though some people love to point that out over and over again.

Thirty years or so from now, I wonder what local school teachers would tell their classmates about the monument. Or if it'll even still be up.

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I had an old signature. Now I've changed it.

I'm usually a very nice guy; I generally can't stay angry with someone for very long. However, I HATE Fred Phelps with every fiber of my being. What kind of a*****e protests a funeral? I cannot wait for this man to finally die. If that's too intense, moderators, I'm sorry.

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"I sat alone and I didn't care,
I sat two years in the same old chair,
I saw three roads but didn't know,
Which way to go-go-go"
My Coco, stellastarr*

Quote (tenshi/akuma @ 10th November 2003 09:48)

I'm usually a very nice guy; I generally can't stay angry with someone for very long. However, I HATE Fred Phelps with every fiber of my being. What kind of a*****e protests a funeral? I cannot wait for this man to finally die. If that's too intense, moderators, I'm sorry.

I would like to say as head admin of the forums, I don't find it too intense at all.

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"To create something great, you need the means to make a lot of really bad crap." - Kevin Kelly

Why aren't you shopping AmaCoN?

you know people like this phelps guy are the reason for racial/sexuall inequality. we should build an anti-that-kinda guy-monument. then drop it on him.

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Failure is not an option. its an art form

Wow, I can't believe this guy. Talk about out of line, and out of context. How can you claim you are religious and holy when you are out there only trying to spread your message of hate. Hypocrite. People like this are what's wrong with the world. Endorsing murder, and using it to prove his illegitmate point. Sick.

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The clouds ran away, opened up the sky
And one by one I watched every constellation die
And there I was frozen, standing in my backyard
Face to face, eye to eye, staring at the last star
I should've known, walked all the way home
To find that she wasn't here, I'm still all alone

-Atmosphere "Always Coming Back Home to You"

As a devoted and practicing Christian myself, I find the Reverend's proposal deeply disturbing. Where our faith should promote mercy and forgiveness, he can find only hate and vindiction. I'm offended at his methods, which only serve to give Christians a bad name. Things like this don't solve anything, and only serve to fuel the fires on both sides.

This post has been edited by Super Moogle on 10th November 2003 22:28

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"I always have a quotation for everything - it saves original thinking."
~Dorothy L. Sayers

"The truly remarkable thing about television is that it allows several million people to laugh at the same joke and still feel lonely."
~T.S. Eliot

"Defeat is not defeat unless accepted as reality - in your own mind!"
~ Bruce Lee

Jesus Tap Dancing Christ On Roller Blades...That has got to be one of the most pathetic things I've ever heard. The poor guy was murdered for christ's sake. Leave him be! I feel sorry for his parents, who have to watch some idiotic excuse of a Reverend attempt this kind of thing. If Fred Phelps is ok with the idea of murdering innocent people just because they prefer the company of fellow guys, then it should be perfectly fine that I'm ok with the idea of him being murdered for being a goddamn blind idiot. Let's erect a statue of Sheer Ignorance and put his big ugly mug on the thing. See how HE likes that.

The fact that he's a Reverend only goes so far as to put a bad name towards other religious Christians. See, I don't have any real religion that I follow, but I still feel sorry for the people of the same faith who will have to put up with such a nutjob. It's amazing the kind of people that are popping up these days...

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Okay, but there was a goat!

i am ashamed to share the same atmosphere with an idiot like that....

I heard about it a few weeks ago, but I didn't think it was actually going to go up.
Like others have said, this man is a very bad example of a Christian. "Love the Sinner, hate the sin," showing the kind of cruelty Christ warned against (as gozaru~ said), etc. etc.
This man celebrates the murder of a guy because Leviticus condemns homosexuality (or acts, depending on your def. of hs), but I guess he didn't read a few verses onward to find out the punishment for it wasn't even close to death.

Quote (Cazboab @ 10th November 2003 16:40)

you know people like this phelps guy are the reason for racial/sexuall inequality. we should build an anti-that-kinda guy-monument. then drop it on him.

Murdering then celebrating that murder would put us below his level of just celebrating murder.
I know you weren't serious, but still.

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"I had to write four novels before they let me write comic books."
-Brad Meltzer

Last time I checked, yeah, the Bible did say that homosexuality is wrong. But it also said something about loving your neighbor as yourself, not committing murder, and lots of other things that some "Christians" choose to ignore. Christ overturned a lot of the Old Testament--for example, he basically said that there was no further need to keep kosher. The biggest thing he did say was that we were to love one another--and I don't see how bigots like this can possibly say that they're expressing love. We weren't put here to hate and judge each other.

That being said, yeah, the jackass has a right to his little monument if he wants to pay for it and put it on his property. A petition might convince him to reconsider, but a civil suit would be ridiculous. "I'm suing you because your freedom of speech offended me!" Get real. That's total BS.

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Veni, vidi, dormivi.

Quote (karasuman @ 11th November 2003 14:19)

Last time I checked, yeah, the Bible did say that homosexuality is wrong. But it also said something about loving your neighbor as yourself, not committing murder, and lots of other things that some "Christians" choose to ignore. Christ overturned a lot of the Old Testament--for example, he basically said that there was no further need to keep kosher. The biggest thing he did say was that we were to love one another--and I don't see how bigots like this can possibly say that they're expressing love. We weren't put here to hate and judge each other.

That being said, yeah, the jackass has a right to his little monument if he wants to pay for it and put it on his property. A petition might convince him to reconsider, but a civil suit would be ridiculous. "I'm suing you because your freedom of speech offended me!" Get real. That's total BS.

The flipside to that coin is not only are the bigots not expressing love, they're being hateful to someone who more than likely was expressing love in the only way he knew how.

Oh, and I think the method in which the guy is expressing his hatred towards homosexuals would be grounds for a slander suit, by the way. It's defamation of character, pure and simple. A liberal judge would be more than willing to hear it.

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"To create something great, you need the means to make a lot of really bad crap." - Kevin Kelly

Why aren't you shopping AmaCoN?

Quote (Rangers51 @ 11th November 2003 15:29)

The flipside to that coin is not only are the bigots not expressing love, they're being hateful to someone who more than likely was expressing love in the only way he knew how.

Oh, and I think the method in which the guy is expressing his hatred towards homosexuals would be grounds for a slander suit, by the way. It's defamation of character, pure and simple. A liberal judge would be more than willing to hear it.

Yeah, that's what's so great about bigots. You can usually count on them to be wrong on every imaginable level.

According to the original post, the text of the plaque is "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.' Leviticus 18:22."" I fail to see where a slander suit comes in. Some Christians believe that all non-Christians go to hell--so should all Christians be subjected to these suits for articulating their religious beliefs because you disagree with them and take offense at being told that you're headed down below? That just doesn't make sense. A liberal judge might hear it, but that doesn't mean it's right that he should do so.

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Veni, vidi, dormivi.

But even if the didn't win the case, it would at least put Phelps in a bad light. Of course it would give the guy more attention, too, which is a bad thing for all of us non-zealots. Being a future teacher, I want to use the teaching solution, which is to ignore the troublemaker until the attention-seeking behavior stops. Maybe if we ignore Phelps he's shut up...but I don't think that's going to work. I like the idea of erecting a statue of Phelps right next to his statue with something on it like "Reverend Fred Phelps: Carrying on the work of Adolph Hitler" or something like that. (Hey, freedom of speech!)

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Hip-Hop QOTW:

"Yeah, where I'ma start it at, look I'ma part of that
Downtown Philly where it's realer than a heart attack
It wasn't really that ill until the start of crack
Now it's a body caught every night on the Almanac"

"Game Theory"
The Roots

along with the other people responding, i disagree with fred phelps wholeheartedly. it may be legally feasible to erect the statue that he plans, but obviously his morality and the very faith he claims to uphold is thrown into question. everyone HAS to have at least a gay cousin somewhere down the line, including the good reverend phelps, so maybe he should think about that, because im willing to bet dollars to donuts he's got at least one gay relative that he probably doesnt even know about. i can agree with the slander suit idea, i would listen to it if i was wearing the judge's robe even though im not really a liberally thinking person, but really trying to take other kinda of actions against rev. phelps would just be overkill, as i dont think two wrongs are gonna make it right. you can erect a statue of phelps, but the fact remains you still got a statue of the poor soul who was murdered standing just as phelps wanted.

i was not a relative of his. nor am i a homosexual myself, so i cant say that i can identify with the situation as closely as some folks can, but i CAN say that im stunned by the fact that one man has it in him to go out of his way to waste his own time and money (damned if the church would fund such a campaign) to showcase his ignorance.

due to certain things ive dealt with throughout my life, i have lost my faith, but i know that no modern organized religion advocates the killing of innocent people, regardless of color, differing religious beliefs or sexual preference. call him iehova, allah, brahma or any other name you like, god doesnt ask to have his own creation killed by his other creations. he'll do it himself. he can do that. he's god.

people fear what they despise in themselves. homophobia included. phelps obviously has some of his own problems in his head to sort out before he casts his own guilty stone at someone left completely speechless due to the (obvious) unfortunate circumstances which have befallen him. if phelps was even half a man, he would take his prejudices out on a homosexual who is still with us. thats just cowardice on his part.

welcome to hell Reverend Phelps.

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You watch the world exploding every single night
Dancing in the sun, a newborn in the light
Say goodbye to gravity and say goodbye to death
Hello to eternity and live for every breath

Your time will come...

I agree with you totally on that last part. I don't know about everyone having to have a gay cousin, but my aunt's best friend is openly gay, and I grew up around him. He's as regular as anyone here, and he's actually a pretty religious fellow. See, what Gears said about Phelps carrying on Hitler's work fits the bill in a few ways. Hitler wanted the Jews gone because when it came down to it, he was scared of what they were becoming, the amount of power they had. Gay people today live openly with their sexuality, hold parades, have clubs and bars, even shows focused on their life styles. Phelps, not being able to accept this, lashes out against a local homosexual.

If God didn't want people to be homosexual, he would have never allowed the idea to last a split of a half second in our minds. He gave us the choice to do what we want, and the freedom to live by our choices. We don't all have to follow the same beliefs, we don't all have to pray. If the Reverend and the God that he choses to believe in have an issue with that, they can take it up with someone other than the deceased or the voices in Mr. Phelp's head.

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Okay, but there was a goat!

Quote (Rangers51 @ 11th November 2003 15:29)

The flipside to that coin is not only are the bigots not expressing love, they're being hateful to someone who more than likely was expressing love in the only way he knew how.

this, so far, is not a platform for expressing our personal views on homosexuality, so why make it one? everyone seems to agree, whether believing that homosexuality is right or wrong, that this man is a sick individual and what he is doing cannot be rationalised in any manner regardless of what religion he claims to. why bring something like this up when you know that there are people here who hold religious beliefes that says that homosexual acts are sins? that doesn't seem right at all -- you are, in fact, propagating another type of discrimination -- a discrimination that has become very popular and acceptable in many social circles nowadays -- discrimination against certain religious beliefs that you know full well certain members of this board hold very dear to their hearts. let's all just continue to be in harmonious agreement about the wrongness of rev. fred phelps' actions, and not say things like this without making sure that they are presented as opinions/personal beliefs, and not as "most likely" -type facts.

Moderator Edit

OK, everyone can be offended by something. I don't think I said anything offensive, you do. Whatever. If you have a problem with it, PM me - don't put your treatise out here, where it's just as improper as you claim my comments to be. -R51

Moderator Edit

I just discussed this with Neal a bit more, and we came to the conclusion that you might have thought that "bigots" in my post was meant to equate to "Christians." That was in no way my intent, as should have been obvious by the confusion I had about the fact that you were angry. I can understand that you would be upset by people discriminating against your religion; however, kindly take the time to confirm before lashing out, eh? -R51

This post has been edited by Rangers51 on 12th November 2003 17:16

Quote (Dragon_Fire @ 11th November 2003 18:46)

See, what Gears said about Phelps carrying on Hitler's work fits the bill in a few ways. Hitler wanted the Jews gone because when it came down to it, he was scared of what they were becoming, the amount of power they had. Gay people today live openly with their sexuality, hold parades, have clubs and bars, even shows focused on their life styles. Phelps, not being able to accept this, lashes out against a local homosexual.

To go along with that,after visiting the Holocaust memorial in Boston this weekend I did a little research about the Holocaust for my next article. I found that about 15,000 homosexuals were among those killed in the Holocaust. They were among the first to be round up and sent to the concentration camps. I have more information, but it's somewhat disturbing, so I'll put it in a spoiler box. Read at your own risk:

Possible spoilers: highlight to view

Homosexuals were persecuted even inside the death camps by fellow inmates. They weren't allowed to sleep with their pants on, even in winter. They're "job" each day consisted of carrying snow with their bare hands from one side of the road to the other, and back again (earth in the summer.) The survival rate for Homosexuals was worse than it was for Jews, and just above Gypsies. This was part of a speech Heinrich Himmler made to his group commanders in 1937:
"...In the SS, today, we still have about one case of homosexuality a month. In a whole year, about eight to ten cases occur in the entire SS. I have now decided upon the following: in each case, these people will naturally be publicly degraded, expelled, and handed over to the courts. Following completion of the punishment imposed by the court, they will be sent, by my order, to a concentration camp, and they will be shot in the concentration camp, while attempting to escape. I will make that known by order to the unit to which the person so infected belonged. Thereby, I hope finally to have done with persons of this type in the SS, and the increasingly healthy blood which we are cultivating for Germany, will be kept pure"

(I took it out of the quote box so it could be blocked out, too.)

My point in all this, to bring it back to the topic, is that the only reason Phelps can even begin to get away with this is that Homosexuals haven't come as far as they need to in terms of civil rights in this country. During the Nuremberg trials Homosexuals weren't even mentioned, and none came forward to testify because homosexuality was still a crime in Germany until 1969. Imagine if Phelps wanted to construct an Anti-Sematic monument? He wouldn't have half a chance. He wouldn't dare try to put up a statue of a KKK member. So why can he put up one with an anti-homosexual message. It's just not right.

This post has been edited by Gears on 12th November 2003 05:20

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Hip-Hop QOTW:

"Yeah, where I'ma start it at, look I'ma part of that
Downtown Philly where it's realer than a heart attack
It wasn't really that ill until the start of crack
Now it's a body caught every night on the Almanac"

"Game Theory"
The Roots

gears, that was definitely an interesting and well informed point, and id like to point out for those that dont know, heinrich himmler, the man who was responsible for said actions was a homosexual himself. kind of makes you think, doesnt it? thats what you call hypocrisy in its highest and most blatant form, my friends.

somewhat off topic, yes, but its something to think about.

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You watch the world exploding every single night
Dancing in the sun, a newborn in the light
Say goodbye to gravity and say goodbye to death
Hello to eternity and live for every breath

Your time will come...

Last year we read about him in L.A. class so sad. Man the U.S. needs to learn racial equality(i think thats what yo'd say please correct me if i'm wrong.) More and more rasons every day to pack my bags and head to japan after learning japanese of course. But the

Possible spoilers: highlight to view

i'll put this in spoiler mode. Yah i noticed how he used erect at the begining and found the irony too.

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PARENTAL ADVISORY:The text in this signature may offend some people read at your own risk.

I don't really have anything to add to to this thread; it's all been said, and much more intelligently than anything I can come up with at the moment. But I remember following the story of Matthew Shepard's murder when it first happened. It was one of the earliest occasions in my life where it hit home that discrimination and hatred are not abstract ideas that happen in wars and history books; they're real, and people carry them out in the everyday world. To find that we still live in such a world is saddening, to say the least. Sad, too, that we must rely on money and politics to stop discriminatory acts, and that we cannot simply point out it is wrong to abuse the memory of a murdered man, whether he was gay, straight, or whatever.

I only hope that one day society will have progressed so much that students will read about this and similar incidents and laugh at them as marks of a primitive society.

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"Turd-cookies!...they're hot and soft, though..."

Rose leaves, when the rose is dead, Are heaped for the beloved's bed; And so thy thoughts, when thou art gone, Love itself shall slumber on.  - Percy Bysshe Shelley

Quote (gozaru~ @ 11th November 2003 19:19)

Quote (Rangers51 @ 11th November 2003 15:29)

The flipside to that coin is not only are the bigots not expressing love, they're being hateful to someone who more than likely was expressing love in the only way he knew how.

this, so far, is not a platform for expressing our personal views on homosexuality, so why make it one?... why bring something like this up when you know that there are people here who hold religious beliefes that says that homosexual acts are sins? that doesn't seem right at all -- you are, in fact, propagating another type of discrimination -- a discrimination that has become very popular and acceptable in many social circles nowadays -- discrimination against certain religious beliefs that you know full well certain members of this board hold very dear to their hearts. .

I think that it's also (become) common for peopleto hide behind the label "religious" to protect their beliefs. If I say women should stay at home, cook, and make babies many people would take offense to that, but if that was part of my religion, taking offense to it would be considered wrong by much of society. I'm not aiming this at you in particular, I'm just pointing out that the religious label should not protect an opinion from ridicule.

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What would Zorro do?-Homer Simpson

Quote (Tmagic77 @ 13th November 2003 14:36)

I'm just pointing out that the religious label should not protect an opinion from ridicule.

Especially when so many others who share the "religious label" disagree with the opinion. Not all Christians believe that homosexuality is a sin.

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Veni, vidi, dormivi.