Westboro Baptist Church

• Alex Alvarez @ Mediaite: Anonymous Claims Westboro Baptist Church Initiated Feud For Attention, IP Addresses.
• Andy Birkey @ Minnesota Independent: Bachmann: Glenn Beck can solve the budget deficit.
• Michael Cole-Schwartz @ HRC Back Story: HRC & Soulforce Present 70K Petitions To Lou Engle.
• Joe.My.God: GEORGIA: Wingnut GOP Rep Wants Police To Investigate All Miscarriages.
• Media Matters: Huckabee Upset That Christians Are Sharing Their Buildings With Muslims.
• Dump Bachmann: Will Michele Bachmann & Tim Pawlenty Be Hanging Out With Bradlee Dean at Freedom Fest 2011?
• Warren Throckmorton @ Crosswalk: Bryan Fischer speaks with forked tongue.

• Michael B. Keegan @ Huffington Post: Denouncing Violent Rhetoric, the Sheriff Gets it Right.
• Towelroad: Iowa Christian Group Blocks Gay Candidate Fred Karger from Debate.
• Stephanie Mencimer @ Mother Jones: Does Bachmann Believe Congress Should be Run by Christians?
• Alvin McEwen: Pete LaBarbera accuses me of being a hypocrite while ignoring his own activities.
• Steve Benen: Rand Paul's Bill Frist Moment.
• Good As You: Nice.
• Kevin Drum: The Wages of Sin Are....Nothing Much.
• Huffington Post: Westboro Baptist Church To Picket Funerals Of Arizona Shooting Victims.
• Stop Beck: Glenn Beck might wanna turn off random image generator.

I searched around in the newspaper archives for articles from Christine O'Donnell's days with Concerned Women for America and her time as Savior's Alliance for Lifting the Truth and found some rather interesting quotes and articles that are worth sharing.

Like this article praising Sen. Jesse Helms for opposing funding for HIV victims: 

AIDS BILL PASSES IN SENATE; SEN. JESSE HELMS' VIOLENT OPPOSITION MADE MEDIA WAVES, BUT DIDN'T SWAY THE 97-3 VOTE.

28 July 1995
Charlotte Observer

Sen. Jesse Helms, R-N.C., lost his battle Thursday to stop a special funding program for AIDS sufferers, but won an opportunity to publicize his views to a nationwide television audience during a two-day debate.

Over Helms' objections, the Senate voted, 97-3, to pass the Ryan White Care Act, which funnels money to states to help AIDS and HIV-positive victims who can't get help elsewhere ... Helms lost overwhelmingly because senators were disgusted by his remarks implying that AIDS sufferers didn't deserve federal help

...

Concerned Women for America, a 600,000-member Christian group, praised Helms.

Federal money from the Ryan White Act has in the past gone to teach teenagers to use condoms to engage in homosexual behavior that includes anal sex, said Concerned Women spokeswoman Christine O'Donnell.

Or this article attacking Coors Brewing Company for offering benefits to same-sex couples:

At Coors, a Brewing Dilemma Over Gay Rights

16 September 1995
The Washington Post

The Coors Brewing Co. is run by a family that has helped fund a conservative backlash against gay rights, but has become one of the first companies in the country to extend health benefits to the partners of its homosexual employees.

As a consequence, the corporation, whose annual beverage sales total $1.6 billion, finds itself boycotted both by gay and lesbian activists and by anti-gay Christian fundamentalists.

...

Fred Phelps Sr., minister of Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka, Kan., announced a boycott of Coors and began organizing a picketing and lobbying campaign. In an interview, Phelps said his church has only 150 members, but has 10 fax machines he uses to publicize the boycott. One fax that he said was sent to churches throughout the country said, "The Coors family of hypocrites claim to fear God, but sponsor filthy fags!"

Christine O'Donnell, press secretary of the 600,000-member Concerned Women of America, said her conservative group also opposes the new Coors policy. "We think that it legitimizes the homosexual lifestyle," she said.

Or this one in which O'Donnell longs for the days when Lenny and Squiggy didn't sleep with Laverne and Shirley: 

AMERICA'S SEXUAL RIGHT TURN
INSIGHT
2 June 1997

"In general, my generation is confused," says Christine O'Donnell, 27, head of the Saviors Alliance for Lifting the Truth, a Christian youth group that advocates sexual abstinence. "We're craving more conservative values, more boundaries." O'Donnell lectures at high schools about abstinence and says there always is a sigh of relief when teens hear that it's okay to wait. "A lot of these kids have never had anyone tell them no, and they want that," she explains.

Despite O'Donnell's modest success - she has been featured on MTV and will fence comedian Al Franken on an upcoming episode of Politically Incorrect - her mission, she says, is a struggle against the still-dominant liberal culture. "People are always talking about how bad the seventies were, but things in the popular culture have gotten much worse even since then. I grew up watching Laverne and Shirley, and Lenny and Squiggy never slept over. Now with shows like Friends or Married i With Children, sex is everywhere. I mean, can you imagine the minds that were raised on those shows?"

Ot this one that O'Donnell wrote about handing out S.A.L.T literature at the annual HFStival in Washington, DC in which she warned at Satanism had become the religion of choice for her generation:

Opposite Attraction; Pitching Abstinence to the Young and the Restless at the HFStival
By Christine O'Donnell

15 June 1997
The Washington Post

Walking through the crowd I also noticed more pentagrams than crosses around the teenage necks. "Satanism is the religion of the '90s," I was told. "It means I worship nature," responded one girl when I asked her what the pentagram meant to her. I explained that the pentagram is to Satan what the cross is to Christ. She didn't want to believe it.

Others knew exactly what it meant.

"I'd rather go to hell and do what I want than go to heaven and do what others say," said a pale boy wearing smeared red and black eyeliner who had deep scars along the insides of both arms.

This boy mirrored "The Satanic Bible's" basic philosophy, "Do what thou wilt." Satanism has re-emerged among Generation X with an arrogance that mocks its members as it blatantly destroys them. Was this boy so consumed with his right to worship Satan that he couldn't see Satan's true purpose, which is to devour and destroy his worshipers? Past generations have broadened the boundaries so much that this generation must go to great extremes to rebel.

The generation of young people that questioned the establishment in the '60s is now middle-aged, and has become the establishment itself. Moral absolutes have been eliminated, "feel-good" religions created, and free sex legitimized, paving the way for disposable marriages. The results of these tailor-made values are new strains of sexually transmitted diseases, more potent drugs, more broken families and out-of-wedlock pregnancy rates and worrisome suicide rates. It's time for this generation of young people to question the new establishment.

Matt Barber's latest column is quite a work of art. 

Still upset about the fact that the Southern Poverty Law Center has labeled his good friend Peter Labarbera's Americans for Truth a hate site, Barber begins by attacking "progressives" for their use of ad hominem attacks ... by likening them to pig farmers: 

“Progressives” are like pig farmers. In an effort to bury opposing viewpoints they sling pejorative slop, labeling as “bigot,” “hater,” “wingnut” or “racist” those with whom they disagree. It’s the height of intellectual sloth.

The ad hominem approach – chief among logical fallacies – undergirds an effort to both marginalize conservative viewpoints and avoid arguing on the merits the controversies of the day. For liberals, to set sail in fair debate is to navigate treacherous waters.

Apparently unaware of the irony of decrying ad hominem attacks by launching ad hominem attacks, Barber then moves on to making a point that is actually semi-reasonable, at least by his standards, in which he agrees with the SPLC's designation of Fred Phelps and his Westboro Baptist Church as a hate group:

Cult leader Fred Phelps and his Westboro brood of “God hates F-gs” fame are infused to the marrow with pure, unadulterated hate.

Phelps hates homosexuals. He hates the military. He hates America. He apparently hates everyone. But he also hurts people. Intentionally, I believe.

The point Barber is trying to make is that it is people like Phelps who are the "real haters" and it is unfair to lump people like LaBarbera or Barber in with these sorts of bigots ... and then Barber proceed to proclaim that it is really "leftists" who are the Phelps-like bigots: 

So, Fred Phelps aside, every time you hear some lefty like Anderson Cooper or Keith Olbermann despicably refer to Bible-believing Christians as “homophobes,” or who call grandma a “teabagger” (slang for a vile homosexual act), consider who the real haters are.

Whenever Mark Potok, Rachel Maddow or some liberal politico in Congress attempts to equate conservative Joe to a “right wing extremists” or a “domestic terrorist,” contemplate who the true bigots are.

The palpable irony is that leftists – with their slanderous name-calling, harsh judgments and ad hominem attacks – are, in truth, more like Phelps than those they falsely accuse.

So, to recap:  Liberals engage in ad hominem attacks when they equate anti-gay activists like LaBarbera or Barber to bigots like Fred Phelps, and that is unfair ... because it is liberals who are bigots just like Fred Phelps.

• David Hart explains why the US Commission on Civil Rights' opposition to hate crimes legislation comes as no surprise.
• Speaking of hate crimes, the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights has released a new report finding that "the problem of hate crimes continues to be a significant national concern that demands priority attention."
• Pam's House Blend points out that anti-gay activists in Maine have hired the California public relations firm that ran the successful Proposition 8 campaign.
• David Corn reports that Ken Starr has endorsed Sonia Sotomayor.
• Jodi Jacobson of RH Reality Check reports that a Republicans are obstructing a Senate resolution condemning clinic violence.
• As David Neiwert asks, what should the media be calling Shawna Forde and her Minuteman gang if not "extremists"?
• Finally, the Southern Poverty Law Center reports that the Westboro Baptist Church is now targeting Jews.

Earlier this week we mentioned that Patrick Mahoney of the Christian Defense Coalition announced that he would be leading a daily prayer vigil outside the White House until Barack Obama's inauguration that would coincide with his own 21-day hunger strike to "stand in solidarity and identify with the homeless, poor and disenfranchised of America, as well as the 50 million innocent victims of abortion."

As we noted before, the focus of Mahoney's stunt was far more about abortion than any sort of concern regrading the homeless and poor - and now it looks like it will culminate with a CDC-led anti-choice rally during the Inaugural Parade:

The Christian Defense Coalition has been issued a permit to conduct a pro-life vigil and display along the parade route during the Presidential Inauguration.

The permit was issued after discussions between the American Center for Law and Justice, who is representing the Christian Defense Coalition, and the National Park Service and the Secret Service.

The group plans to display 25 large signs on Pennsylvania Ave. showing the development of life from conception until birth.

...

Rev. Patrick J. Mahoney, Director of the Christian Defense Coalition, comments,

"It is critical that moments after Barack Obama takes the oath as the 44th President of the United States he drive by a visible reminder of those who will have no voice or rights in his Administration. Those are the over 50,000,000 innocent lives that have been brutalized and lost through the violence of abortion.

"While millions will be celebrating along the Inaugural Parade route, we will be speaking 'truth to power' and calling for justice and equality for all Americans. Sadly , President-elect Obama is on the wrong side of history and human rights by embracing the most radical abortion policies of any President in American history.

"This display will also serve as a 'teaching moment' for the new President in helping him understand that life begins at conception and that social justice begins in the womb.

You can see the full series of CDC signs here.

But speaking of this event, it looks like the CDC aren't the only ones planning on staging a protest during the inauguration - they'll have some company in the form of members of the militantly anti-gay Westboro Baptist Church: 

The U.S. Park Service granted some groups permits to protest on Inauguration Day.

The Westboro Baptist Church from Topeka, Kan., will have 15 people at the northeast corner of John Marshal Park protesting military funerals and gays until the parade clears, the park service said.

Protesting abortion clinics in front of the Canadian Embassy will be 100 to 200 people from the Christian Defense Coalition in New Jersey.