A three-judge panel of the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said the signs contained “imaginative and hyperbolic rhetoric” protected by the First Amendment. Such messages are intended to spark debate and cannot be reasonably read as factual assertions about an individual, the court said.

A jury in Baltimore had awarded Albert Snyder damages for emotional distress and invasion of privacy. The 2006 funeral of Snyder’s son, Marine Lance Cpl. Matthew Snyder in Westminster, Md., was among many military funerals that have been picketed by members of the fundamentalist Westboro Baptist Church in Kansas.

Albert Snyder’s attorney, Sean E. Summers, said he and his client were disappointed.

“The most troubling fact is it leaves these grieving families helpless,” Summers said. “If you can’t use the civil process, you have no recourse.”

He said he will appeal the ruling to either the full appeals court or to the U.S. Supreme Court.

“We feel we owe that to Mr. Snyder and other families who have been harassed, humiliated and abused,” Summers said.

Shirley Phelps-Roper, whose father is Westboro pastor Fred Phelps, said she was pleased by the ruling.

“They had no case but they were hoping the appellate court would not do their duty to follow the rule of law and the appellate court would not do that,” said Phelps-Roper, who was among those named in the lawsuit.

“They didn’t change God and they didn’t stop us,” she said. “What they managed to do was give us a huge door, a global door of utterance. Our doctrine is all over the world because of what they did.”

Members of the Topeka, Kan.-based church have used protests at military funerals to spread their belief that U.S. deaths in the Iraq war are punishment for the nation’s tolerance of homosexuality. One of the signs at Snyder’s funeral combined the U.S. Marine Corps motto with a slur against gay men.

Other signs included “America is Doomed,” “God Hates the USA/Thank God for 9/11,” “Priests Rape Boys” and “Thank God for IEDs,” a reference to the roadside bombs that have killed many U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan.

“As a threshold matter, as utterly distasteful as these signs are, they involve matters of public concern, including the issue of homosexuals in the military, the sex-abuse scandal within the Catholic Church, and the political and moral conduct of the United States and its citizens,” Judge Robert King wrote in the appeals court’s opinion.

“Additionally, no reasonable reader could interpret any of these signs as asserting actual and objectively verifiable facts about Snyder or his son,” he wrote.

The court also said a written piece about Snyder’s funeral on the Westboro Web site was protected by the First Amendment. Unlike the signs, the Web site piece specifically named the Snyders. Even so, the court said, the missive was “primarily concerned with the Defendants’ strongly held views on matters of public concern.”

The list includes two well known American gay opponents – Rev. Fred Phelps and talk-radio host Michael Savage.

Phelps is the founder of the Topeka, Kansas-based Westboro Baptist Church.

Westboro’s members are made up mostly of Phelps’ relatives. Although it professes to be Baptist, it is not affiliated with any national Baptist group.

Westboro operates Web sites including GodHatesFags and GodHatesAmerica and has been described as a cult.

Phelps and the church first came to national attention when he organized a protest by his followers outside the 1998 funeral for Matthew Shepherd, the gay college student who was beaten to death in Wyoming. The killing, Phelps’ protest, and the reaction of townsfolk led to the play “The Laramie Project.”

Church members routinely demonstrate at the funerals of people with AIDS and most recently at the funerals of soldiers killed in Iraq.

In February, Phelps announced that his followers would demonstrate a production of the play “The Laramie Project” at a British college. The British government said at the time that he would not be allowed into the country.

The government ban announced Tuesday bans Phelps permanently.

Savage was placed on the list not only for his anti-gay remarks but also for calling the Muslim holy book, the Quran, a “book of hate” and for saying autism in most cases is “a brat who hasn’t been told to cut the act out.” Savage also said greedy doctors and drug companies were creating a “national panic” by overdiagnosing autism.

In 2003, Savage launched into a homophobic tirade against a caller to his MSNBC cable TV show in which called the man “a sodomite” and told him: “Get AIDS and die, you pig.” 

The network immediately fired Savage.

Savage issued what he called an apology saying he had been set up by a left-wing conspiracy.

The British government list also includes Stephen Donald Black, an American white supremacist, Hamas parliament member Yunis Al-Astal and Egyptian cleric Safwat el-Higazi.

We had an interesting discussion two weeks ago in this space about the impact of different types of action. Are protests helpful? Is direct action effective?

Both James and Emma made important points– James was skeptical and Emma argued in support of protests– that I agree with. One thing I took away from their debate was that it’s important that organizers think outside the box if they want their actions to be effective. In a world where people protest everything, protest organizers need to come up with creative ideas to attract crowds and make an impact.

There’s a protest happening in my backyard tomorrow that I think fits that bill.

Fred Phelps and his not-so-merry band of hatemongers are coming to the DC metro area to protest at sites as diverse as suburban high schools, the Turkish Embassy, and the White House. Rather than just stage counter protests (though they’re doing that too), movement activists here in DC are using the Phelps’ appearance to raise money for local causes.

The concept is simple– for every minute that the Westboro Baptist Church protests, supporters of equal rights are pledging donations.

DC Bilerico reports:

This upcoming Monday, March 30, Phelps and his clan from the Topeka-based Westboro Baptist Church (WBC) will be bringing their so-called “Love Crusade,” also known as “God Hates Fags” or “God Hates America,” to the DC area to picket Fairfax High School, George Mason University, several embassies, and the White House. Phelps and WBC have gained notoriety over the last fifteen years by waging a publicity war against America, which Phelps calls a modern-day Sodom and Gomorrah. WBC takes every opportunity to protest events ranging from LGBT Pride Weeks to the funerals of soldiers killed in Iraq and Afghanistan. Now it’s our turn – and I can’t wait.

On Monday, join us from 11:30 AM to 12:15 PM in front of the White House for one of the DC area’s three Phelps-A-Thons. Started by Boston-based LGBT activist Chris Mason, Phelps-A-Thons are an easy way to harness the voices of hatred in support of a good cause. The way it works is simple: for every minute that they spread their hate, they’ll be raising money for organizations that support LGBT rights through your pledges and the pledges of supportive friends and family members.

I should disclose that I volunteer with some of these organizers for other local LGBT causes like DC for Marriage, but even if I didn’t, I would really admire the creative concept of this protest. If you’re in the DC area and want to join in, check out the Phelps-a-thon website.

Fred Phelps hates. Activists pledge. We all raise money for LGBT rights.

Stop by the Phelps-a-thon website to pledge to stop the hate.

Phelps announced earlier this week on his Westboro Baptist Church Web site that his followers would demonstrate a production of the play “The Laramie Project” at a British college on Friday. It marked the first foray by the anti-gay Topeka Kansas church into the UK.

UK Border Agency said Phelps and his daughter, reportedly the number two person in the church, will be stopped by immigration officials if the try to enter the country and immediately placed  on a flight back to the US.

“The Home Secretary has excluded both Fred Phelps and his daughter Shirley Phelps-Roper from the UK,” a spokesperson for the Agency said Thursday.

“Both these individuals have engaged in unacceptable behavior by inciting hatred against a number of communities. The Government has made it clear it opposes extremism in all its forms.”

The move comes a week after the government blocked Dutch MP Geert Wilders from entering the country over his extremist views on Islam.

“We will continue to stop those who want to spread extremism, hatred and violent messages in our communities from coming to our country. That was the driving force behind the tighter rules on exclusion for unacceptable behavior that the Home Secretary announced on 28th October last year,” the Border Agency spokesperson said.

“The Laramie Project” is based on the Shepard murder. It will be performed Friday night at the Central Studio arts venue at Queen Mary’s College.

The Phelps group in announced the planned protest on its Web site under the headline “God Hates England; Your Queen Is A Whore.”

Phelps and his Westboro Baptist Church followers regularly stage noisy protests against homosexuality throughout the US.

Westboro’s members are made up mostly of Phelps’ relatives. Although it professes to be Baptist, it is not affiliated with any national Baptist group.

Westboro operates Web sites including GodHatesFags and GodHatesAmerica and has been described as a cult.

Phelps and the church first came to national attention when he organized a protest by his followers outside the 1998 funeral for Matthew Shepard.

British LGBT rights group Stonewall and local Member of Parliament, Maria Miller (C) asked the government to intervene and block Phelps from entering Britain.

Westboro regularly pickets throughout the US, but often threatens demonstrations without showing up.

The group was a no-show at President Barrack Obama’s inauguration despite announcing it would protest.

Phelps runs an organization called Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka and his followers regularly stage noisy protests against homosexuality throughout the US.

Westboro’s members are made up mostly of Phelps’ relatives. Although it professes to be Baptist, it is not affiliated with any national Baptist group.

Westboro operates Web sites including GodHatesFags and GodHatesAmerica and has been described as a cult.

Phelps and the church first came to national attention when he organized a protest by his followers outside the 1998 funeral for Matthew Shepard.

“The Laramie Project” is based on the Shepard murder. It will be performed Friday night at the Central Studio arts venue at Queen Mary’s College.

The Phelps group announced its plan protest on its Web site under the headline “God Hates England; Your Queen Is A Whore.”

Ben Summerskill, chief executive of the British LGBT rights group Stonewall, called the threatened protest “distressing.”

“The Laramie Project is a very serious play about a young man who was beaten to death just because he was gay. To regard that as a cause for celebration will make a lot of people both gay and straight feel very uncomfortable,” he told The Telegraph.

The local Member of Parliament, Maria Miller (C), said that she has contacted the Home Secretary to see what action the Government may be considering. Under British law, hate groups may be banned from entering the country.

Miller cited Westboro’s “highly inflammatory language and behavior.”

“The most important thing is that a production that is trying to promote tolerance goes ahead and that’s what I’m focusing on achieving,” she told The Telegraph.

Westboro regularly pickets throughout the US, but often threatens demonstrations without showing up.

The group was a no-how at President Barrack Obama’s inauguration despite announcing it would protest. It said last year it would demonstrate in two Canadian provinces but when the government moved to block entry into Canada, was able only to sneak into one area.

Members of Rev. Fred Phelps’ Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka, Kan., claimed they had successfully entered the country by removing material that referred to the “church” from their vehicles and shipped them by courier to Winnipeg after the material was used to blocked them from another crossing into Manitoba on Thursday.

A directive was sent to border guards last week by Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day to bar the group under Canada’s hate crime law, after Pat Martin, a New Democratic Party member of Parliament from Winnipeg, said he had received hundreds of complaints about the planned protest. 

The Phelps group said it would protest at the weekend funeral of Tim McLean to show Canadians that murder was God’s response to liberal Canadian policies toward homosexuality.

A large police contingent was on hand to prevent trouble at the funeral.  Earlier in the day, more than 500 Winnipegers filled nearby streets determined to prevent any protest from being seen by mourners.

McLean, 22, was brutally attacked as he sat in his seat on a Greyhound bus traveling west of Winnipeg on July 30. A fellow passenger has been charged with murder.

The Phelps followers were no-shows at two other protests in Canada over the weekend. The group had threatened to demonstrate in Red Deer, Alberta where a local theater company was performing “The Laramie Project,” a play about the homophobic murder of college student Matthew Shepard.

The group also failed to make good on a threat to demonstrate in Toronto where a satirical play titled “The Pastor Phelps Project” is being performed.

Westboro Baptist members frequently demonstrate at funerals for American servicemembers killed in Iraq. The group claims the deaths are God’s punishment on America for being too pro-gay.

Westboro’s members are made up mostly of Phelps’ relatives. Although it professes to be Baptist, it is not affiliated with any national Baptist group.

Westboro operates Web sites including GodHatesFags and GodHatesAmerica and has been described as a cult.

Phelps and the church first came to national attention when he organized a protest by his followers outside the 1998 funeral for Matthew Shepherd.

Let’s admit it: deranged people, like car wrecks, are fascinating to watch. While everyone would be better off ignoring the Phelpses, doing so is hard sometimes. (I feel the same way about Britney, Paris, and Lindsay—my willpower against media “junk food” is only so strong.) So it was that I recently found myself listening to Shirley Phelps-Roper—daughter of Fred, who founded the infamous Westboro Baptist Church—when she appeared on a Washington D.C. radio station.

Phelps-Roper condemned Ledger for Brokeback Mountain, in which he plays a cowboy who falls in love with another man. Ledger is in hell because he mocked God’s law, she claimed, and “if you follow his example, you will go to hell with him.”

Predictably, the show’s callers attacked Phelps-Roper; sadly, they often made little sense. One insisted that, according to the bible, God doesn’t judge anyone. Say what? Phelps-Roper’s reading of the bible may be selective, but apparently, so is everyone else’s: it doesn’t take much searching to find a judgmental, even wrathful God in the bible.

The show’s host then attacked Phelps-Roper for her picket signs, which often thank God for disasters: “Thank God for 9/11.” “Thank God for maimed soldiers.” “Thank God for Hurricane Katrina.” and so on. Phelps-Roper had a ready comeback:

“Exactly. You better thank him for all of his judgments because the scripture says that God is known by the judgment that he executes in this Earth, so you thank him for everything.”

This answer is interesting, and not as bizarre as it might first appear. Theologians have long pondered the problem of evil—if God is all-knowing, all-good, and all-powerful, why does he allow evil in the world?—and some quite respectable ones have concluded that evil doesn’t really exist. From our limited human perspective, things may look bad, but that’s just because our minds are too feeble to comprehend God’s design: ultimately, everything is just as God planned it.

The problem is that, pushed to its limits, this position quickly yields practical contradictions. By this logic, we ought to thank God for Heath Ledger’s death; but by the same logic, we ought to thank God for Brokeback Mountain’s box-office success. We ought to thank God for Hurricane Katrina; yet we ought also to thank him for sparing the (delightfully debaucherous) French Quarter. We ought to thank God for AIDS, yet also for protease inhibitors. If God should be thanked for everything, then God should be thanked for EVERYTHING.

Yet somehow I don’t expect to see the Phelpses with signs thanking God for same-sex marriage in Massachusetts, or the passage of ENDA, or the increasing acceptance of GLBT people. If I were on a radio program with Shirley Phelps-Roper, I’d want to ask her “Why not?” If all of God’s judgments are “perfect,” why not these?

My guess is that she’d answer that these events result from human free will rather than divine will. But then how do we distinguish them from 9/11? Was it God’s will for Islamic extremists to fly planes into buildings? If so, do they escape hell, since they were only doing God’s will? If not, then why are we thanking God, rather than blaming the extremists?

I wouldn’t expect a satisfying answer to these questions, but that’s not because Phelps-Roper is deranged (which she is) or stupid (which she isn’t, as far as I can tell). It’s because centuries of philosophical theology have failed to produce satisfying answers to the problem of evil. Instead, we pick and choose: even though God is supposed to be responsible for everything, we thank him for the things we like and call the rest a mystery. In this respect Phelps-Roper resembles most biblical believers: she just happens to “like” rather different things than sane folks do.

A talented and likable actor dies in his prime. The Phelpses thank God, while mainstream believers declare it a mystery. Had the paramedics saved him, mainstream believers would thank God while the Phelpses declared it a mystery. In either case, God’s divine providence remains unquestioned. Heads, God wins. Tails, God wins.

If there’s a mystery here, it’s why believers seem to have lower expectations of God than they do of local weather forecasters. That, and why a loving God lets the Phelpses continue to spew hate in his name.