Posted on 10/30/2007 11:33:49 AM PDT by Non-Sequitur
BALTIMORE | Shirley Phelps-Roper told jurors that she was an angel assigned to speak the truth to earth dwellers, that God hates their evil.
On the witness stand in U.S. District Court in Baltimore, she explained last week that’s why she picketed the funeral of Matthew Snyder, a 20-year-old Marine from Westminster, Md., who was killed in Iraq in March 2006.
After 33,000 protests over the last 17 years, the Snyder case is thought to be the first individual lawsuit brought against the Phelps family of Topeka and their Westboro Baptist Church. The Snyder family is seeking unspecified monetary damages for invasion of privacy and intent to inflict emotional distress.
Closing arguments are expected today.
Phelps-Roper, 49, testified that the family pickets military funerals because “we are supposed to be timely and topical.” Noting that her father, Fred Phelps Sr., and his offspring are used to being mocked and scorned, she said Thursday that the same thing happened to Noah.
“The pattern is always the same,” she said. Asked if she had any regrets about her actions outside the St. John Catholic Church, she replied: “If I was sorry, I would not have done it.” She said God had killed Snyder so God’s servants could preach how the Marine had gone to fight for “the United States of Sodom, a filthy country,” which has institutionalized sodomy and represents all things evil.
(Excerpt) Read more at kansascity.com ...
Here’s to hoping for a quick guilty decision. They are evil parading around as angels of light.
Sounds like a case of too much inbreeding...
A quick decision followed by a large financial judgement against them.
Hm...Anyone know whether this protest took place on private or public property? The story notes they were outside a church, but it doesn’t designate where outside the church.
Let the Phelps Phreaks hang themselves on their own arrogance...
I would never have been allowed on that jury. I would have made it clear that the family would end up owning Westboro.
Issues of protection of Free Speech from government encroachment don’t come into a civil suit at all. If the Phelps clan wants to claim that the have protected free speech rights that somehow counters, or waives, the damage and injury claimed in the civil suit they can make that argument.
The media has this “rights” business so messed up in their own mind and the public mind they can’t even supervise their headline writing responsibilities. This is like saying, “I ran over your leg but I was exercising free speech at the time and because government can’t restrict that, then you, as an individual, can sue me for the damage I did.” Pretty stupid analysis, correct?
And if they are successful, I soon expect numerous women entering a clinic to get an abortion to use the same logic against anti-abortion protestors.
I’d like to “limit” their free speech with a tire iron to the skull.
The real question in this case is when are the Westboro crowd going to turn on each other.
It is my fondest hope that by spewing that hateful speech from the witness stand that Shirley just convicted them all.
A fair and just end for the Phelps family would be disbarment for any lawyer involved in their “protests”, criminal legal racketeering charges, revocation of their tax-exempt church status, and collection of back taxes with interest for all monies/judgments they’ve collected over the years while masquerading as a bona-fide church.
it was funny on O’Reilly last night when Kristen Powers tried to pass these loons off as members of the Republican base and Bill hit her with the fact that Phelps is a registered Dem. If only he’d have shown the picture of Phelps and Gore together.
Why don’t I every read articles about this guy protesting a gay pride parade?
And David Duke was a registered Republican and was elected on the Republican ticket. That doesn't make the GOP the party of the Klan. The simple fact of the matter is that every person I know from all sides of the political spectrum find the Phelps' disgusting. Democrat office holders in Kansas have been attacked by the Phelps mob constantly. And even Gore learned the folly of being nice to the Phelps family when they picketed his father's funeral after the Clinton administration didn't condemn homosexuality. Phelps is a Democrat for the same reason he's a Baptist minister - there are no mechanism in place for kicking him out of either organization.
He used to. He and his family picketed gay pride parades, funerals of homosexuals and people of dies of AIDS, all sorts of things. But who cared about homosexuals? Nobody paid much attention to him and his mob until they started picketing servicemen's funerals. They hit they publicity gold mine with that.
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