Baltimore, I am very proud to say, gave Fred Phelps his due today…

BALTIMORE – A grieving father won a nearly $11 million verdict Wednesday against a fundamentalist Kansas church that pickets military funerals out of a belief that the war in Iraq is a punishment for the nation’s tolerance of homosexuality.

Albert Snyder of York, Pa., sued the Westboro Baptist Church for unspecified damages after members demonstrated at the March 2006 funeral of his son, Lance Cpl. Matthew Snyder, who was killed in Iraq.

The jury first awarded $2.9 million in compensatory damages. It returned in the afternoon with its decision to award $6 million in punitive damages for invasion of privacy and $2 million for causing emotional distress.

Snyder’s attorney, Craig Trebilcock, had urged jurors to determine an amount "that says don’t do this in Maryland again. Do not bring your circus of hate to Maryland again."

…

The church and three of its leaders — the Rev. Fred Phelps and his two daughters, Shirley Phelps-Roper and Rebecca Phelps-Davis, 46 — were found liable for invasion of privacy and intent to inflict emotional distress.

Even the size of the award for compensating damages "far exceeds the net worth of the defendants," according to financial statements filed with the court, U.S. District Judge Richard Bennett noted.

Yes, but those financial statements are almost certainly bullshit.  I’ve seen Fred’s compound…he and his family own an entire neighborhood block’s worth of property.  And their forays around the country to picket everything from Funerals to high school plays are being paid for with something. 

Their attorneys maintained in closing arguments Tuesday that the burial was a public event and that even abhorrent points of view are protected by the First Amendment, which guarantees freedom of speech and religion.

And Fred is still free to spread his message of hate.  Just not at funerals.  The first amendment doesn’t give you the right to come into my house and scream in my face.  Goodness knows telephone solicitors, door to door salesmen and politicians every election year would be in heaven if it did.  There are public and private spaces and if a funeral isn’t a private space I don’t know what is.

Fred’s known all these years what he’s doing isn’t about anything more righteous then how much he hates the world he lives in and how badly he wants to make it suffer for making him hate it.  It’s not that God Hates Fags, but that Fred does.  It’s not that God Hates Fag Enablers, but that Fred does.  It’s not that God Hates America, but that Fred does.  And nothing gets a hater’s goat more then knowing that the objects of their contempt also happen to be a lot smarter then they are.  Fred could out hate anyone, but he couldn’t out think a brick, and he knew it and it must have turned the worm inside of him all the more knowing it.   You need brainpower, you need audacity and nerve, to really destroy your enemies.  But Fred knew the most he could ever manage was pissing people off and he settled for doing that because at least making people angry gave him a small measure of power over them.  It’s the chickenshit’s revenge, as befitting the chickenshit pulpit thumper of a congenital congregation.  When the only people you see in your pews are your own family, that’s a message straight from God Almighty Himself that it’s time to close your book of sermons, walk out the door  and go look for some honest work.  But Fred didn’t have it in him to wield a mighty sword against his enemies, let alone raise a mighty voice to God from his pulpit.  So he settled for mooning the world he hated, and everyone in it possessing that half a brain he himself had never been blessed with, just out of range.  Well, today he got his ass kicked…

Snyder sobbed when he heard the verdict, while members of the church greeted the news with tightlipped smiles.

That’s how people who are perpetually constipated look.  Fred isn’t a prophet, he’s Kaopectate for the soul.