There's a petition circulating to have the WBC legally classified as a "Hate Group."

Quote :

WE PETITION THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION TO:
Revoke the tax exempt status of the Westboro Baptist Church & re-classify Westboro Baptist Church as a hate group.
Westboro Baptist Church is legally recognized as a religious organization and therefore receives a tax exempt status under our laws. The Phelps family and their supporters use these tax exempt funds to finance a country-wide campaign against any person or group they feel promotes values that do not meet with their own. Most prominently they are anti-gay.

The members of this hate group make a practice of targeting funerals to make their case, routinely inflicting further pain and anguish onto the mourning families of deceased soldiers and, even worse, the victims of tragic crimes. They hold signs thanking God and celebrating the deaths of these people. They wave these signs in the faces of the families.

By granting their tax exemption WE ARE FUNDING THEIR HATE. This must change.

Created: Dec 16, 2012

Source: https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/revoke-tax-exempt-status-westboro-baptist-church-re-classify-westboro-baptist-church-hate-group/tNVz4V7Q

Yes

Yes they are scum and yes they are offensive. I don't see any use in anything they do. But aside from them humiliating themselves and having ridiculous posters, they are not actually advocating violence and that's usually a strong component of hate groups do. I agree wholeheartedly that they should lose their tax-exempt status.

While I am cautious about the government starting to declare churches into hate groups because I know that the government itself is lately a borderline hate group and could easily abuse this power to punish any religion that teaches things contrary to the government agenda, I think that the Westboro Baptist church might just be an exception. These folks need to be stopped. They wanna hate on everyone, go ahead. But stay the heck away from funerals. And especially stay the heck away from the funerals of the victims of the shooting. So yeah, if it takes that to stop their violation of families, The Westboro Baptist church might just need to be declared what it is.

Even more than a hate group, they are basically a scam. That "church" is comprised of only Phelps family members. The religious community doesn't take them seriously from what I can tell.

Call them what they are. They meet all the criteria.

The Ku Klux Klan doesn't even like them. Now you know that's despicable.

Yes. Their picketing funerals is nothing short of terrorism (even if they are able to hide behind the first amendment.) And terrorizing the community and its citizens is what hate groups tend to do.

Chris wrote:

Yes. Their picketing funerals is nothing short of terrorism (even if they are able to hide behind the first amendment.) And terrorizing the community and its citizens is what hate groups tend to do.

And to threaten to go to the funerals of these babies. Yelling the horrible things they yell. They deserve to be declared a hate group & lose that precious tax exempt status they're enjoyed for too damn long. And I don't care what Anonymous does to them.

Yep.

Yep.