"Minister of hate to 'hunt down' Swedish king"

What a wanker.

and suffice it to say, plenty of religious conservatives hate the guy.

He's as much or more a filthy terrorist scumbag than any other. Then again maybe the feds do have tabs on him, if he actually advocates killing and such. I cannot fathom how people like him exist and are allowed to operate.

The backstory of the minister preaching anti-gay things and being convicted is a bit complex and has been debated a lot here. I mean, instinctively I feel good that the moron wasn't allowed to preach his stupid fucking anti-gay bullshit. But having a "hate-speech"-law DOES conflict with the freedom of speech. Sweden is the country of well-meaning but not-very-thought-through legislation.

Getting the URL to that page sent to me and being faced with a hearty "THANK GOD FOR 1500 DEAD SWEDES!" did provide me with one of the biggest cries of "WTF" in recent memory.

Also, as a (swedish) friend of mine pointed out, the page features what might very well be the only instance in recorded history of anyone saying "BEWARE OF SWEDEN".

http://www.altfg.com/Stars/Queenchristina.jpg

It'd be great if she got to kill Descartes in that movie, too. But who would have played him??

Hmm, I think "hate-speech" legislation is set in most Western European countries, or at least in the Nordic states. We have it too. While the idea of it is in principle against my anarchist ethics, in practice I'm not really against it if it helps shut down racist/homophobic/etc assholes. Anyway, isn't it basically just an extension of libel laws?

(only in Kenyaaaaaaa!)

While plenty of undergrads were fine in attacking the guy head on, i thought it more productive to ask him(Fred's son, who was leading the thing that day) which was his favorite Star Wars movie, or if he preferred Kansas State football or basketball. He and his placard-holding children were completely decked out in KSU gear.

He was later pied.

Michael Moore's show The Awful Truth featured an episode wherein Moore tried to talk Phelps out of picketing funerals. Phelps would have none of it, so Moore got together a big bus full of gayers and sent it driving to all of Phelps' demonstrations. The bus was bright pink, covered in happy pro-gay statements, and was full of gay men in assless chaps, listening to Cher and making out. Phelps was not happy, and the whole thing was pretty amusing.

As much as I am repulsed by Phelps, I can't help but almost hate the anti-gay but anti-Phelps crowd more. When homophobia comes in a sugary, "Jesus loves you" coating I find it far more sinister, somehow.

My vague memory of having seen that site - the death toll was IIRC still rising when that happened, tho. Yeah, more died, and I'm sure the fella updated to show his rejoicing over this regularly, too.

not much confusing. according to Fred, the Lord acted, and gay people were killed(this is, of course, assuming that any gay swedes at all were among the dead), so if the Lord has to take out several dozen thousand other innocents in the course of smiting some Sodomites, so be it.

If you support freedom of speech only for people who don't say things you find objectionable then you don't support freedom of speech.

Supporting freedom of speech as a relative absolute can be soul-sapping, like watching the last season of "MASH" - goddamn, it sucked tanks of noxious gas, but you're gonna stick by it until the bitter end. And it means that you have to support the right of fucktards of all political stripes to make stupid ass statements...

I guess so. It's not though that I want simply want to limit everything I find objectionable; only in the case that the said speech causes clear damage to a group of people that have done nothing to darw such hate on them. I hold people's right to not be a subject of attacks based on some quality of theirs that they have no control over higher than the right to free speech. We have to think of the results: letting Nazis, homophobes etc spread their propaganda leads to less freedom (in the sense that it makes gay people or ethnic minorities to have less freedom inside the society), not more. Freedom of speech is an abstract, a principle, and in real life there are always exceptions. Absolute freedom of speech doesn't exist in any state, because of libel laws and such - and as I said, hate speech laws can be viewed as an extention of those.

"hate speech" laws are fascist and create more intolerance than anything they act to prevent- if neo-nazis, fred phelps, etc are actually wrong (and they ARE) we have nothing to be afraid of by allowing them to speak publically.

as it happens, I agree with you in principle: you have to let everybody speak, period. But the notion that "we have nothing to be afraid of by allowing them to speak publicly" is totally ridiculous; the right set of cicumstances + hate speech = pogroms, lynchings, etc

however! the fact I agree with your premise - that it's essentially fascism to say who can & cannot speak, or regulate what they can and cannot say - is why I get fucking agitated when somebody anywhere is given a pass for homophobic or sexist statements: for the all-speech-is-allowed process to work as proposed, people of conscience have to call bullshit when they see it

You'd know.

but the Detroit soul sound he was asking about is decidedly not rock music & is/was an entire genre unto itself that made use of both rock & soul tropes to very interesting ends, and to say to such a guy "what you want is rock music" is pretty dismissive

while we're here though y'know "hating on rap" & wishing that the brightest lights in the rap-writing world would at least think out loud about whether misogyny & homophobia are fucking poison, and feeling, upon seeing that one of them knows that homophobia is a virulent social evil, a real twinge of regret that they don't - well, they're two diff. things

one love 3, you know I only call you out (constantly & probably annoyingly) 'cause I think you're gonna be famous

Like Banana sez, like as not you'll be damned well-known. Why not consider that it's been four years now since you've beaten certain tropes into the ground, and as much as you can identify hobbyhorses and crutches others use for years, you're pretty well reliant on 'em yourself?

Gary Reese Senior called it ironic that his son lost his life to spread the same freedom that grants minister Fred Phelps' flock the right to stage what he calls a disrespectful demonstration.

and here's a little bit about Phelps being a gay plant

LaBarbera went on to say: "Politically and culturally speaking, Phelps and his protesters serve as a crude caricature of pro-family traditionalists who oppose the normalization of homosexuality. Fred makes an easy target for the media and secularists who are tempted (partly by their own prejudices) to paint any opposition to 'gay rights' as hateful. For this reason, I have sometimes wondered if Phelps and his lawyerly clan are 'gay plants.'"

tho it's nice that he feels the need to get in the standard "you called my hateful views hateful, so you're obviously a hateful person" thing.

Deal with Mr. Hongro is this -- ten years ago I tried (rather passionately if ultimately pointlessly) argue him into the ground on his own hobbyhorses. It was some ridiculously idiotic exchange -- and I have no problem in calling it that -- that lasted for three days or some crap like that, and at the end of it he budged slightly. I threw in the towel because clearly that was all that was going to happen.

At a certain point you learn that some people are set in their ways -- I most certainly don't exclude myself, and I don't use that as an excuse but as a warning sign to be wary of my own crutches. I don't always catch myself.

To ask again -- are you aware of your own crutches? There's no vendetta or BS politics here, Ethan -- but I am honestly curious, the same way Banana is with that combination of laughter and then thinking said thought, which pretty much was the same way *I* reacted. You've been part of the discourse here for four years off and on and if I'm a caricatured persona at this point, you're no less so, and surely you know that.

not terrifically - smoove b in the onion is sorta this caricature posterboy for Roger/Al B Sure!/Vandross-style smooth r&b, that was all I took it to mean! maybe a li'l questionable, I think "vile's" a little overreacting there & besides whatever objections one might raise to "smoove" it's effective as shorthand

*shrug* Hey, if you're happy, what can be done.

don't know if I'm being clear there but sometimes I wanna listen to Curtis Live! (which because I am soul 1337 I have on heavy vinyl don'tcha know) but then other times it sounds like hippie crap to me and I'd rather hear something that just rips the doors off! "You Are My Lady" is one of my fave singles of the eighties, but when I'd rather hear something shred, I want Prince & not Freddie y'know?

xpost ha you know I am always at the ready with the LOGISTICAL BEATDOWN for an off-the-cuff seven-word remark

(insert smiley emoticon here)

the stones throw comps, aren't those more funk than rock? I only have the jukebox comp and it's kinda cratedigger beat/loop oriented

xpost natch yr right there's no need for a dude to say "I hate x" when he's asking for information on y but the way to correct that behavior is certainly not to just smack a guy down - only positive reinforcement alters behavior, etc