The Haters: Volume One: Fred Phelps
Hatred gets slick…
It’s an antiseptic cover for a cesspool of the vilest and most disgusting rhetoric possible. I’m speaking of course of the site known as www.Godhatesfags.com, which is the internet home of the Westboro Baptist Church, that gaggle of forty or so inbred cretins spawned by Fred Phelps.
The Church itself, ostensibly a mix of Primitive Baptist and Calvinist theology has been polluting the quiet residential neighbourhood in which it squats in Topeka, Kansas since 1955. But the odd and colourful career of Fred Waldron Phelps goes a bit further back.
“The June 11, 1951 issue of Time Magazine included a story on Phelps, then a Pasadena street preacher who lectured lunch-hour students about "sins committed on campus by students and teachers." The sins Phelps cited included promiscuous petting, evil language, profanity, cheating, teachers' filthy jokes in classrooms and pandering to the lusts of the flesh.”The Transformation of Fred Phelps The Topeka Capital-Journal
By Joe Taschler and Steve Fry
At this point in time Phelps was being a street preacher, haranguing passersby until often moved by police ‘for his own safety’. October of 1951 was when Phelps met his bride to be whom he married in 1952. By 1955 he preached his first sermon at the Westboro Baptist church. He earned his law degree from Washburn University in 1962, and by 1964 he founded the Phelps Chartered Law Firm.
Strangely enough, Phelps law career was as a successful and effective Civil Rights attorney, who was credited with helping to bring down the “Jim Crow” laws in Kansas City. He received a lot of praise and awards for his work in combating racial prejudice in that city, up to at least 1980.
However, in 1977 Phelps started exhibiting that strain of vindictive, mean spirited and abusive action that has been his claim to fame every since. The cause and target of his manic vitriol you ask? A court clerk named Carolene Brady failed to get a piece of documentation to him in time for him to use it at trial. It was unneeded at any rate.
Phelps sued the hapless Brady for $22,000, and during the trial he
“… called Brady to the stand, declared her a hostile witness, and then cross-examined her for nearly a week, during which he accused her of being a "slut", tried to introduce testimony from former boyfriends whom Phelps wanted to subpoena, and accused her of a variety of perverse sexual acts, ultimately reducing her to tears on the stand.”Wikipedia
On appeal, Phelps perjured himself before the court and by 1979, he was disbarred. By 1985, He had been similarly forbidden to practice in Federal Court, and two of his children were suspended for 6 months.
The Phelps clan’s first public anti gay action was in 1991, when they sought a crackdown on ‘gay activity’ at Gage Park, about six blocks from the church. Phelps made some dubious claims that homosexuals had tried to ‘lure’ his 5 year old grandson into the bushes. No explanation of WHY Phelps had the boy in the park at night was ever offered.
Phelps and his misbegotten brood are of course infamous for their anti gay and anti American protests but there are a few other activities and claims made that you, gentle reader may find amusing.
Phelps supported Al Gore in his 1988 presidential bid, but by 1997, was calling Gore a "famous fag pimp" presumably for His boss’s support of Gay Rights. In 1998 the Phelps’ assured Gore at the funeral of his father that “your Dad’s in Hell!”.
Insulting politicians is Phelps forte’, He’s referred to the Mayor of Topeka as the “anti-christ”, a city council woman as a “Jezebelian switch-hitting whore.” And the District Attorney as a "gestapo," "forked-tongued she-devil," and a "dirt-dumb, butt-ugly and demon-possessed vixen."
He doesn’t hate everyone though, for instance, in 1997 he wrote a glowing letter to Saddam Husain praising Iraq for being
"the only Muslim state that allows the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ to be freely and openly preached on the streets"
Christianity: A disgusting middle eastern blood cult, based in human sacrifice, with sacraments of cannibalism and vampirism, whose highest icon is of a near naked man hanging in torment from a device of torture.
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Phelps is a joke, even the
Phelps is a joke, even the politicians who "disagree" with homosexuality look sane compared to him. I think mental illness is a real issue with Phelps.
However much of a joke he is, people like this have to be taken seriously at a minimum the scrutiny keeps people like this from getting serious political clout. And also when they are exposed the rest of the camp who might agree can only be embarrassed by his position.
It is sad that even today a gay soldier gets booed at from a debate question. But Phelp's position was much more accepted in the past than it is today. Phelps is marginalized and as long as we expose him as the zoo animal he is, it also helps marginalize people who might agree with him.
But we must never forget that the only difference between people like Phelps and Saddam are numbers and the check of blasphemy and ridicule are the only tools to prevent people like this from gaining power.
I forgot who said but it is true and the potential is always there "Those who accept absurdities can go on to commit atrocities"
Compassion is on our side. Truth is on our side. Hate cannot win with under the sunlight of scrutiny.
"We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus -- and nonbelievers."Obama
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