America's most hated family?
 

Over here in Britain, we have the pleasure of having Louis Theroux a BBC journalist who has witnessed the real side of the wrestling world where he spent 2 weeks at WCW's training academy The Powerplant. He has also recently gone into Lagos and looked into the justice and law system there.

He has also been to several prisons in the US including one that has 500 convicted pedophiles and also looked into the rise of plastic surgery in US Culture and how this is spreading to other western states.

However, his most recent (And the one I would like to get a disccusion out of) was when he visited the "Most hated family in America". This family was the leaders of the Westboro Baptist Church in Kansas, this church has become highly notorious for a hell of a lot of stuff, This stuff is taken from Wikipedia:

Westboro Baptist Church members believe that the United States government is immoral due to its tolerance of homosexuality, and they protest at funerals of U.S. military killed in action with signs that display text such as "God Hates ***s" and "Thank God for Dead Soldiers".

Watching this, and seeing the reaction of the people on the street, it was confusing to see where they come from, they are not "white pride" movement or KKK-ish (or nothing that we didn't see in the film), they are just highly opinated and have strong morals on lots of things but again religion plays a part and again they used religion to their advatange... when one member was confronted on his use of signs and banners, he remarked to the offended youngster:

"You see I'm here because God told me to and that's what I'm telling my kids, but you were obviously brought into this world to be taught by the devil and not God, so err yeah you're gonna burn in hell for that"



Let's try and get a good discussion going here peeps, are these guys really the most hated family in America??

I will be honest I try to go out of my way to ignore them. They want the reactions they are getting. I'm surprised they haven't gotten shot yet only a matter of time if they keep this up.

They're the real-life equivalent of internet trolls.

now that you mention it I have to agree with you there. I think the worse thing to happen for them is getting media attention in the first place.

I thought this would be a Kardashian thread somehow, but West Baptist is high on my list.

The more attention they get, the more they will continue with their shenanigans. We're just feeding the troll.

I hope so badly that at least one of their kids ends up being gay.

Yes I'd say they are the most hated. I hate them more than anyone. I think it's pretty much all one family and just a few non-family members in the church, and I think some of them are lawyers. It's pathetic to me that laws can't be changed or something can't be done to prevent them from protesting funerals. Instead, police forces line up in towns across America to protect their rights. And I like the rights that we have as people, but draw the line somewhere. any reasonable person can conclude that these people are complete shitheads.

I don't even think they are trolls, at least by my definition anyways. They believe what they are saying, they are just brainwashed idiots. Actually maybe they are trolls because they know very well they aren't promoting the word of god or anything by protesting the funerals of people that they have nothing to do with. They were gonna come to my hometown area 2 weeks ago to protest the funeral of 7 children who died in a barn fire. And there was a ton of uproar from my redneck town and a lot of people threatening them and saying they were gonna show up with their shotguns and blast them away lol. They ended up not showing up however.

I just can't express my hate for these people enough. Very few things in this world get me mad whatsoever but these pieces of shit really get my blood boiling. If i ever reach a point in life where I am suicidal and have absolutely no reason to continue living, I am doing the planet a favor and taking down these guys with me. I am going out, guns blazing, and I am taking down as many of these losers as possible before the cops shoot and kill me.

I caught most of this last night, and I watched the first documentary he made with them a few years ago.

I thought it was really interesting to see a lot of the younger people there. I remember in the first documentary there was someone who drove past one of their demonstrations and threw a Burger King or something similar at them, and there was a very young boy who got caught up in it. From one or two of the conversations he filmed with the younger kids, I also couldn't help but feel that they don't really have any beliefs of their own or even seem to fully understand what it is they are taking part in. A lot of them will most definitely end up turning into the older teenagers in the film, who have more than likely been raised to believe that what they are doing is for the best, and believe every word of what they have been taught as impressionable children.

I also like the fact that he didn't pull any punches. It's not like he was pretending to buy into any of it, but rather questioning their ideals and beliefs, telling them to their face that he believes what they are doing to be wrong, and that he finds it offensive, but capturing it all on film.

Of course I found the majority of people he met to be pretty deplorable, but he also managed to get close enough to these people to depict them as people rather than just the monster they may appear to be on TV and in the news. In the documentary that aired last night, where he revisits these people years later, some people have defected and left the church. It was interesting, and kind of heart breaking, to see that girl who has left and now finds herself completely seperated from her family. She said that she misses her family and would like to be able to see them or still have some contact, even if she has quit, and when he then went and interviewed her family there definitely seemed to be conflict. They were suggesting that they believed it was the right to do, to sever all ties with her, but the mother especially didn't have much to say on the subject. She was just telling him "what he (her husband) said" whenever she was asked for her opinion. I couldn't help but wonder if they are simply scared to be seen to contact her.

Well, one of Fred Phelp's sons is an atheist who speaks out against their church, I think that's pretty good.