Once again, the Westboro Baptist "Church" of Topeka, Kansas is up to its First Amendment-backed agenda of hate. This time, they've set their sights on Princess Madeleine of Sweden, jamming her personal fax line with dozens of abusive anti-gay messages. Why her? Seems that her father King Carl XVI Gustav and her siblings -- Crown Princess Victoria and Prince Carl Philip -- were all out of the country last week, so Madeleine was acting head of state.
Westboro has really been ramping up the pressure on Sweden ever since a minister in that country was convicted for violating the country's anti-hate laws. But the anger should be aimed towards the country's elected officials, not the royal family which as in other constitutional monarchies is above politics.
I cannot begin to express how much contempt I have for the "Reverend" Fred Phelps. (I did here, a couple of years ago.) Picketing funerals of dead American POWs and praising their deaths because of the perceived "threat" of gays and lesbians -- as if every serviceperson is "that way" which of course they're not -- is one thing. But threatening a foreign national, someone who theoretically could be a future Queen, is a step too far. There should be no hestitation here -- if Phelps and his posse violated the laws of another country, then they should be extradited to Sweden to face justice and imprisonment.
No precedent would be set. There's a difference between criticizing a communist or authoritarian country from abroad because you want to effect regime change and actually threatening to kill a pillar of a democratic state. A huge one.
No doubt others will take the place of the Westboro Hate Society -- but when you're dealing with a pandemic like Westboro the only solution is to isolate it and cast it out.
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