Fred Phelps Banned in Britain

[Lemur]

Now i despise the Phelps family as much as anyone, but why is Britain suddenly banning people? First that Geert Wilders, now Phelps? Is the British way of life so fragile that allowing a couple of fruitbats in will destroy them?

Seriously, what gives?

A homophobic American cleric who runs a website called God Hates Fags and was allegedly planning to picket a play showing in the UK has been banned from Britain by the home secretary, Jacqui Smith.

Fred Phelps had vowed to come to Britain with his daughter, Shirley, to picket a school play in Basingstoke, Hampshire, that promotes tolerance for gay people. The play, The Laramie Project, depicts the murder of a homosexual teenager, #Matthew Shepard, in the Wyoming town in 1998. It will be staged tomorrow evening at Queen Mary's College. [...]

A posting on Phelps's companion website God Hates the World this week stated: "God hates England. Your Queen is a whore. You're going to hell." [...]

A UK Border Agency spokesman said: "The home secretary has excluded both Fred Phelps and his daughter from the UK. Both these individuals have engaged in unacceptable behaviour by inciting hatred against a number of communities.

"The government has made it clear it opposes extremism in all its forms. We will continue to stop those who want to spread extremism, hatred and violent messages in our communities from coming to our country … regardless of their opinions and beliefs."

[InsaneApache]

We banned George Raft as well.

[Jolt]

God Hates Fags What a comedy. This guy thinks he is entitled to know exactly what and who god hates or loves.

[LittleGrizzly]

People didn't like muslims saying a bunch of nasty things so we decided to cut down on it, everything after that is just for consistency...

[Crazed Rabbit]

From what I read in articles dealing with the whole Wilders controversy, Britain hasn't actually been throwing out that many violence preaching Imams.

CR

[English assassin]

why is Britain suddenly banning people?

"Ban" is our politicians favourite word.

Whilst I don't want to hear either Phelps or Wilders, I don't want them banned. Its a worrying sign of our increasingly unfree society.

Britain hasn't actually been throwing out that many violence preaching Imams

Its a little more complicated. We got to the party late, true. There has been rank hypocrisy in the past, largely on the left, which saw Muslims as an exciting source of status quo busting votes without thinking about the inevitability of a Muslim political identity developing or what it could look like. And there are issues that some of the Imams are British citizens, and so can't be thrown out (alas, Australia doesn't let us transport crims there any more), and others may be tortured or not get a fair trial if deported to certain countries (although the House of Lords gave a helpful judgement on that yesterday). But as things stand today I don't think an Imam equivalent of Wilders would be treated much differently.