Westboro-Baptist-Church

The Twitter accounts of several Westboro Baptist Church members as well as “official” Anonymous accounts have been blowing up recently with what is assuredly a conflict of perspectives:

Now that Anonymous has declared war on Westboro Baptist Church over their most recent plans to picket the funeral of the children from the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, CT, it seems WBC members are strangely enthused and calling Anonymous “helpful” and “useful afterall.”

What is completely baffling to me as a tech enthusiast is someone who sits back and says “God will protect our website, no one can shut down our words!” as someone is hacking their site LIVE on the air on the David Pakman Show:

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OZJwSjor4hM]

It always frustrates me to see people act sassy and victorious as though they have “totally pwned” someone when they are completely ignorant of what’s going on. She clearly doesn’t even realize the site just got hacked live while they were talking.

I can’t decide, truthfully, if Anonymous is doing more harm than good by attacking / publicizing WBC’s idiocy – are we encouraging them to keep doing this foolishness and bigotry by giving them the limelight? Ignoring these hateful people when they’re just alongside of the road and not engaging them is one thing; when they picket someone’s funeral it is simply insensitive, rude, aggressive, un-Christ-like, hateful, and inhuman. That hatred should not be ignored.

WBC relies heavily on the argument that their enemies do not tolerate them, and therefore are “hypocrites” for asking WBC to be tolerant instead of hateful. This is a fallacy. Not everything ought to be tolerated. Good men ought not to tolerate evil done to others, but it is not up for man to judge another person’s lifestyle so long as he isn’t hurting another person or himself. A man’s moral / religious choices are his or her own.

Harassing, picketing, and otherwise making people who are hurting hurt worse, that’s where the line is drawn. We ought not to tolerate hatred.

There is an operation scheduled for Friday, December 21st to annoy / grieve WBC through Distributed Denial-of-Service attacks, black faxing (I believe faxing full, black pages to their fax numbers), prank calls, prank deliveries (pizza, etc), email spam sign-ups (the most outrageous gay porn, apparently), and more. The Op is called OpWestboro and you can find out more at the website for the operation http://www.opwestboro.com/ or their Twitter @OpWestboro (EDIT: account currently suspended). You can also find Anonymous news and information from @YourAnonNews or @Anon_Central

Anonymous has reminded it’s members that if you do not want to get suspended / banned from Twitter you do not post people’s personal identity or other private information.

Prank calls, website attacks, email & snail mail spam, pizza deliveries, human barricade, maxed out credit cards and closed accounts, and even a rumored death certificate for Margie Phelps was successfully filed under her real social security number. I have seen screenshots of her Cox Cable bill statement. Is all of this going too far? Is it not enough? Is all of the attention just giving the world stage to WBC’s hatred and bigotry? The world watches already; it judges, and now some are acting.