So true SolRo, so, so true!

I also wonder about this girl's parents. The mother looks like the rest of the Phelps women so I'm guessing she's a daughter, but does that mean her husband married into this insanity voluntarily? Or are they literally brother and sister?

*daughter of FRED, obviously

Why recruit people to your wacky religious ways when you can just make your own people? It's easier to just cum inside something rather than try to win others over with a compelling argument.

I heard he originally contacted the Phelps in order to make a documentary about them, and that after getting started on the project he decided he liked their brand of koolaid.

This video is so fucked up it blows my mind that this is all you thought about.

Oh, so YOU'RE why my whiny douchebag alarm was going off. I was wondering.

Jesus folks, it's poetv, be glad someone isn't asking if it's okay to masturbate to it.

So... it's not ok then?

Oh, you meant that it is. Right?

Whatever, I'm just going to get started and you can judge me later.

Who cares about the treason. Let them stomp about on flags and say whatever they want. Picketing a funeral on the other hand is harassment not free speech, and I don't see why they aren't arrested.

Would we really have a worse society if we broke WBC up?
Is the 1st amendment an excuse for brainwashing 3 year olds?

Also for the end music, another ***** of evil.

Free speech for all (unless it's speech I don't agree with)!

Good point....
....grmbrfrr....
I'm saying I'm ready to give up free speech if I can take WBC down with me.

One of the ways of telling if someone has been indoctrinated successfully is whether or not they think they have been. These twisted, broken people are teaching their children what is, in what remains of their minds, the truth.

The same reason Republicans still support every war they see and trickle down economics besides. It's really hard to deny everything you grew up believing.

From what I can tell, rites of passage generally boil down to some abuse that someone goes through, followed by a rationalization on their part that it was worth it.

Combine that with the fact that the quickest way to stop being the new guy is to find a new new guy to haze.

Someone get this man a Bible.

I think you're missing the point here. They didn't just kick her out of the house. They completely cut her off from the family, and instructed the children to hate and dismiss her. That's several levels beyond pushing someone out of the nest.

And what's the deal with airplane food?

They're regressively "traditional". She would most likely have lived with them until she got married, if she hadn't been kicked out. Otherwise she might have had time to have an independent thought. Or talk to boys. Or masturbate.

Their Calvinism is actually a reason WHY they're Baptists. I grew up as a Baptist and these guys started making the rounds just as I started questioning my faith.

Baptists aren't actually Calvinist, that's one of their prime definitions. They actually believe that once you receive salvation, it's impossible to lose it do to individual sin afterwards, because otherwise the Judaic sacrifices of the Old Testament would still be just as good as a solution. By traditional Baptist belief, you can basically do literally ANYTHING after salvation and still go to heaven... you have to explain to God why you did that, but he has to let you in.

When I started asking why the church allows these people to call themselves "Baptist", the answer I received was pretty defining to my youth: the Baptists were founded specifically WITHOUT any internal hierarchy outside of the individual congregation. So, they wouldn't be welcome in most Baptist churches, but because there's no "head" Baptist, they can't refuse them the right to call themselves that. It was actually the core founding principle BEHIND the sect. If the non-WBC Baptists tried to take away their title of "Baptist Church", they themselves would cease to be Baptists and would become something else.

I'm a Catholic now.

One of the greatest joys of my youth was collecting DAMN YOU SCHISMATIC BASTARDS leaflets from the various warring Protestant sects in my hometown. So much vitriol and scriptural polemics over something so mind-bogglingly temporal, like a congregation of 20 people that meet in Stan's garage every Sunday inside of Bob's garage.

inside = instead, urgh

Cognitive, your story makes me want to be a Baptist, or at least play at it for awhile.

Well, she did say "god forgives."

To paraphrase Barney Frank - It's a testament to the integrity of the first amendment that this kind of vile, hateful drivel is legally allowed.

In a very real sense, these people are the most true-to-bible sect of christianity I know of. Anyone LESS conservative is picking out the parts they find distasteful.

In the Gospels, Jesus makes a point of breaking some OT laws and challenging others. He even goes so far as to recast the ten commandments into two. WBC may be acting Christian in the sense that what they do is reminiscent of early Reformation-era zealotry, but they're pretty un-Christian in that they would have picketed Jesus's crucifixion, given the chance.

While I generally dislike it when people aren't critical enough of their own religion to at least look up the more brutal passages in their scripture and form an honest opinion of them, I think it's unfair to consider WBC to be model Christians. They're basically animals.

There are some aspects they have down very well, but WBC is picking out the parts they find distasteful just as much as the fuzzy-wuzzy Christians are.