Oh,....OK...
I am too tired to even comment on that one, but I have copied an article from a national newspaper on Fred Phelps, the self-described 'pastor of hate'. Take 5 minutes to read it.....What are your thoughts on this guy?
WICHITA, Kan. - It is a quiet family Sunday. Boys toss a football in the yard. Children scramble on playground equipment. Their moms and dads, aunts and uncles clean up after a birthday party.
The family’s patriarch reposes comfortably behind a large mahogany desk in a long rectangular workroom next to the sanctuary of his church.
Pastor Fred Phelps, 76, is talking about quiet times like this, when all of us think about life and death, heaven and hell, our place in the universe.
In such moments, Phelps says, he finds great solace in knowing he is almost universally despised.
America has heard him and recoiled. At least 27 states are considering laws to ban or restrict picketing at soldiers’ funerals, his latest effort to spread his message that God has turned against America for harboring homosexuality.
Phelps has been called the vilest of the vile, inhuman, even insane. He considers this evidence of his righteousness, proof that he is preaching the truth of God.
The funeral picketing has focused national attention on his church, Westboro Baptist, and the complex on Topeka’s southwest side, where Phelps and some of his children and grandchildren live in modest wood houses surrounded by chain-link and wood fencing.
The fencing creates a spacious yard with a swimming pool, running track, tennis and basketball courts, and the playground.
Above the compound, an American flag flies upside down, the signal for distress. Above that a Canadian flag flies upside down, Phelps’ response to a Canadian law prohibiting picketing at funerals there.
Phelps says he and his family have picketed more than 25,000 times since 1991. The family has picketed the funerals of Matthew Shepard, a gay man who was beaten to death in Wyoming; gay men who died of AIDS; miners who died in the Jan. 2 Sago Mine disaster; Frank Sinatra; Barry Goldwater; Mr. Rogers; and Coretta Scott King.
They spend a quarter of a million dollars on airfare each year, Phelps says. It is paid by the family, which includes 10 attorneys among 13 children.
‘‘We do not ask for anything from anyone,’’ says one of Phelps’ daughters, Shirley Phelps-Roper, a lawyer for the family firm, Phelps-Chartered. ‘‘And we will not take anything from anyone. We pay our own way.’’ ‘‘We get thousands of e-mails every day, most of it just raising Cain,’’ Phelps says. ‘‘Nasty stuff.’’
From his chair behind the desk, Phelps smiles at all the hatred.
‘‘I knew it was coming,’’ he says. ‘‘I counted the costs, and I’m daily paying the installments. And it’s a bargain.’’
Phelps has contempt for preachers like Jerry Falwell and Billy Graham who he says like being popular and no longer preach the message that man is depraved and can’t save himself.
Phelps met and married his wife, Marge, in 1952 in Arizona. Fred Jr. was born in 1953. A year later the family moved to Topeka, where Phelps had been invited to be co-pastor of a Baptist church. After a stormy stay, he founded the Westboro Baptist Church in 1955.
To supplement his income, he sold insurance, vacuum cleaners, dictating machines and baby carriages door to door. The family also sold candy to get by.
Last month, Phelps picketed the Atlanta funeral of Coretta Scott King.
Today, a large poster with her photo, headlined ‘‘King in Hell,’’ still sits by his pulpit.
‘‘I’m mad at them for turning that movement over to the fags,’’ Phelps says.
His 50-member church has roughly 75 members, of which 80 percent are related to Phelps by blood or marriage, said Shirley Phelps-Roper.
Jonathan Phelps, an attorney with Phelps-Chartered, says his father is a very caring person.
‘‘It’s a privilege to be his son because he has a lot of years of experience you can tap into, and he’s ready, willing and able to share it with you so you can get by in this life,’’ Jonathan says. ‘‘His grandchildren love him to death.’’
But three of Phelps’ children left the family long ago and have never returned.
Two sons, Mark and Nate, left in the 1970s and now are businessmen in southern California. They could not be reached for comment.
A third child, Dortha, left in 1990 at age 25 and changed her last name to Bird. She’s a Topeka attorney and deputy administrator of the Kansas Workers Risk Cooperative for Counties.
‘‘I felt like I was being controlled, and I didn’t have any freedom,’’ Bird says. ‘‘And if I didn’t follow everything the pastor, or shepherd of the flock, says, I wasn’t right with the Lord.
Phelps also has 54 grandchildren and five great-grandchildren.
While he worries about violence against his family at picketings - he says they’ve been beaten in other states, and that one was punched in the face by a sheriff in Wisconsin - Phelps says the Bible has plenty of verses that comfort them in their mission.
He laughs off accusations that his children and grandchildren picket only because he has brainwashed them.
‘‘Man, I couldn’t stop these kids from doing this. They’d get rid of me,’’ he says.
‘‘And beside that, they are happy little ducks. It amazes me. They are so enthused about this stuff. You try to keep them away from those pickets, they fight.’’
As for those who left the family, Phelps has turned his back on them and doesn’t want to reconcile.
‘‘The notion is repulsive to me,’’ he says. ‘‘If the wife of your bosom, Moses said, comes to you secretly and says let’s go another way, let’s share another god, you’re supposed to take her to the judges, tell them what she did . . . and stone her to death.’’
On the wall hangs the first sign Phelps held up in Gage Park, with the comparatively restrained message: ‘‘Watch your kids. Gays in restrooms.’’
Signs are more inflammatory now, and Phelps knows they hurt mourners.
He thanks legislators around the country for passing those laws and bringing attention to the family’s message.
Phelps refers to the laws popping up around the country as a ‘‘popcorn movement,’’ and he wishes Congress would pass a law unifying the rules for his protests.
‘‘The federal court could do it, but it’d be better if Congress does it,’’ Phelps says. ‘‘I look forward to it. I want to see those jackasses up there wrestle with the First Amendment.’’
Meanwhile, he and his family picket somewhere every day. They picket about 15 churches every Sunday. For pickets within driving distance, they travel in Honda minivans of different colors, with trucks carrying their signs.
Phelps says he has no plans to stop picketing, and he has no plans to soften the message.
He doesn’t know what the future will bring.
‘‘Man,’’ Phelps says, ‘‘we haven’t even got started yet.’’
Literally......TGIF!
