Bill Maher Defends Westboro Baptist Church: ‘They Protest Me Every Week, And It Never Ends In A Gun Battle’

Bill Maher doesn’t usually say nice things about the Westboro Baptist Church — or as he refers to them, “the God Hates F**s People” — but when it comes to WBC and radical Islam, there is no comparison for the TV host and funnyman.

Maher voiced his preference on a recent episode of Real Time, his HBO night-time talk show. While discussing the decision of 200 writers to boycott an awards ceremony honoring Charlie Hebdo for its stand against the violent reactions of radical Islam, he had this to say about Westboro.

“Westboro Baptist Church protest me every week, and it never ends in a gun battle.”

Bill Maher, a self-described atheist, has long been an opponent of all religion, but he has a special place in his disdain for Islam.

Maher said he believes the Charlie Hebdo team are heroes for continuing to draw Muhammad even though they’ve been hit with violent attacks time after time.

While he saw Pamela Geller’s “Draw Muhammad” contest in Garland, Texas as a “provocation” and called Geller a “loon,” he believes Muslims should just get over it.

“This is America, do we not have the right to draw whatever we want?” he asked his guests.

Guest Will Cain of CNN, The Blaze, and Starting Point, agreed, noting that whenever someone protests what you have to say with death threats, “it becomes virtuous to offend that person … [and] you need to shock them out of their horrible position.”

The other two panelists — former Rhode Island Gov. Lincoln Chafee and Alex Wagner of MSNBC — felt that it was the whole point of free speech “not to judge people” with Chafee referring to Geller’s actions with this line.

“You’re talking about hatred!”

Bill Maher, however, found it odd that Chafee would assign that label to the people drawing cartoons instead of the ones killing them for it.

He found critics of Charlie Hebdo in particular to be practicing “the soft bigotry of low expectations” for railing against cartoonists under the guise that “Muslims aren’t able to control themselves.”

One of the strongest opinions came from Cain, who equated tiptoeing around radical Islam with blaming sexual assault victims for what they wear when they’re raped. “Let’s stop laying this on the victim,” he said.

The discussion is definitely worth a listen, so I’ve included the video below.

As for Westboro Baptist Church, they haven’t reacted to Maher’s unusual defense of them. They’re primarily active through Twitter.

Do you think Bill Maher went too far in drawing a distinction between radical Islam and Westboro? Sound off in the comments section.