Last Thursday, someone threw a "big ol' landscaping rock" through a set of glass doors at the American Civil Liberties Union's Kansas City office. ACLU Executive Dan Winter sent out an e-mail, saying the attack was the second in three weeks.
I called Winter this morning to see why someone would chuck a rock through his front door. Winter told me that he thought the vandalism was planned given the type of rock thrown. But he has no idea who hurled the rock.
"It may be Phelps related," Winter said, referring to Topeka's gay hating Westboro Baptist Church. "I don't know."
Winter wasn't ready to point fingers but said the timing of the
vandalism coincided with the ACLU of Eastern Missouri filing a
lawsuit in support of the Phelps family's right to protest in St. Joe. It was also the same day as the Phelps family's protest outside of Shawnee Mission East.
"Clearly we don't support Phelps," Winter said. "We support speech. The
deal is that if you don't support unpopular speech, who's going to come
around to support your speech when your speech becomes unpopular.
"Like it or not, Phelps is a religious man," Winter added. "And his
followers are doing it in the name of a church. And it's a form of
religious expression as well."
I got the impression that Winter wasn't a fan of the Phelps family or mouthpiece Shirley Phelps-Roper.
"My
personal opinion is that she's the poster child for whack jobs, but
whack jobs have a right to speak their mind as well," Winter said. "And
somebody's got to defend the whack job's right to speak."
The windows are fixed, but the ACLU's office is adding security cameras installed.
"It's expensive to fix," Winter says. "We've had some donations."
If you want to help out, the ACLU wouldn't mind. Or if you want to celebrate free speech, the ACLU2
and the ACLU's Racial Justice Task Force throw a "Motown and the
movement" party tonight from 7-10 at Lafferty's Lounge, 6301 Blue
Parkway.
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Well well well
Actions DO have consequences.
P.S. "common decency?" Cry me a river.
Great. Property vandalism makes insurance rates for ALL of us go up, whether the property was directly insured or not. When will these dumbass inbreds learn something about common decency?
Nuts? Wack jobs?
The first news commentators to have the Phelps on their shows were once the "wack jobs" whose extremism made traditional conservatives sound like reasonable centrists. Compared to themselves, the Phelps now make these "commentators" sound reasonable while prompting governments to try to restrict free speech, discouraging legitimate questions about the wisdom of sending American soldiers to die in Iraq and Afghanistan and getting in a little gay bashing on the side.
A rock tossed through an ACLU window, if it is connected tangentially to the Phelps, must be like gravy.
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