He was She didn't provide the cause of death or the condition that recently put him in hospice care. Throughout his life, Phelps and the Westboro Baptist Church, a small congregation made up almost entirely of his extended family, tested the boundaries of free speech, violating accepted societal standards for decency in their unapologetic assault on gays and lesbians.
In the process, some believe he even helped the cause of gay rights by serving as such a provocative symbol of intolerance. Phelps believed any misfortune, most infamously the deaths of American soldiers killed in Iraq and Afghanistan, was God's punishment for society's tolerance of homosexuality.
He and his followers carried forward their message bluntly, holding held signs at funerals and public events that used ugly slurs and read "Thank God for dead soldiers. And these preachers that muddle that and use that deliberately, ambiguously to prey on the follies and the fallacious notions of their people, that's a great sin.
The activities of Phelps' church, unaffiliated with any larger denomination, inspired a federal law and laws in more than 40 states limiting protests and picketing at funerals.
He and a daughter were even barred from entering Britain for inciting hatred. But in a major free-speech ruling in , the U. Supreme Court held that the church and its members were protected by the U. Constitution's First Amendment and could not be sued for monetary damages for inflicting pain on grieving families.
Yet despite that legal victory, some gay rights advocates believe all the attention Phelps generated served to advance their cause.
Sue Hyde, a staff member at the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, said plenty of churches and ministers preach a message that attacks gay people. But Phelps and his family had "taken this out on the streets," forcing people to confront their own views and rousing a protective instinct in parents and friends of gays and lesbians.
They are not there to save us. They are there to advise us that we are doomed. Supreme Court - most often speaking for Westboro. In the fall of , even they were replaced by a church member not related to Phelps by blood as Westboro's chief spokesman. In Phelps' later years, the protests themselves were largely ignored or led to counter demonstrations that easily shouted down Westboro's message. A motorcycle group known as the Patriot Guard arose to shield mourners at military funerals from Westboro's notorious signs.
At the University of Missouri in , hundreds of students gathered to surround the handful of church members who traveled to the campus after football player Michael Sam came out as gay. Phelps' final weeks were shrouded in mystery. A long-estranged son, Nate Phelps, said his father had been voted out of the congregation in the summer of "after some sort of falling out," but the church refused to discuss the matter.
The group is basically a family-based cult of personality built around its patriarch, Fred Phelps. And taking you with him! God hates these dark-hearted rebellious disobedient Jews.
The Westboro Baptist Church WBC is made up of its leader, Pastor Fred Waldron Phelps, nine of his 13 children the other four are estranged , their children and spouses, and a small number of other families and individuals.
Phelps has maintained tight control over the group. His estranged son Nathan says the elder Phelps abused his children and his wife, cultivating an atmosphere of fear to maintain his authority.
They believe that God chooses some to be saved, and those lucky few cannot resist God's call; but God chooses not to save most, and these unfortunate souls will burn in hell forever. Your prayer every day should be that you might be. And if you are not, nothing you say or do will serve as a substitute. WBC specializes in anti-gay vitriol. Its main website is titled "God Hates F They want to force you by law to support their filth, and they want to shut you up by law when they hate what you say.
For example, when two sets of twin girls drowned in Massachusetts in separate incidents in July and August , the WBC blamed their deaths on the state's legalization of same-sex marriage. The church held its first service on Nov. Fred Phelps raised his family near the church and many members of the Phelps family live in houses on the WBC compound. These houses are arranged in a box formation and share a large backyard.
In , Fred founded Phelps-Chartered, a law firm that has come to represent the church in its civil suits. All five of the firms' attorneys are his children. The Kansas Supreme Court disbarred Phelps in , stating that Phelps showed "little regard for the ethics of his profession.
The WBC came to public attention when it began its "picketing ministry," meaning their practice of holding controversial protests to raise awareness of the church and its beliefs. However, the truth about Matthew Shepard needs to be known.
He lived a Satanic lifestyle. He got himself killed trolling for anonymous homosexual sex in a bar at midnight. Unless he repented in the final hours of his life, he is in hell. For each day that passes, he has only eternity to look forward to. All the candlelight vigils, all the tributes, all the acts of Congress, all the rulings by the Supreme Court of the United States, will not shorten his sentence by so much as one day. And all the riches of the world will not buy him one drop of water to cool his tongue.
It will damn the soul, destroy the life, and doom any nation that tolerates such ev il. God Hates Fags is a profound theological statement, which America needs more than it needs oxygen or bread.
A black dyke! An abomination! Me lots smarter now. Me be Deputy Mayor This crowd could dumb down the Western Hemisphere. The named individual is an African-American city council member in Topeka, Kansas.
Here Come De Judge!!! Westboro Baptists will picket this black obfuscator, in religious protest and warning. Being black won't get you to Heaven. But promoting fags will take you to Hell. But most of us are sick and tired of self-flagellation. Shall a few isolated racist acts keep us all in sackcloth forever, repenting the sins of slave-owning ancestors?
They are cowardly, lukewarm, and ashamed of Christ's Word. They have substituted their own pathetic ideas for God's clear commandments Don't listen to the money-grubbing heretic who stands at the front of your church. Listen to God. Any church that ordains fags is a fag church Any church that marries fags is a fag church Because they have created an atmosphere in this world where people believe the lie that God loves everybody.
This soul-damning lie is the reason that fags are so out-spoken today. Fag priests and dyke nuns is the order of the day for Kansas Catholics. They deserve the sick, perverted leadership that now dooms and damns them. Botton [sic] line in approximations: one-third are gay, one-third are womanizers, and -- with important exceptions -- the other third mostly covers, pimps and enables the lust-driven two-thirds. Catherine's Catholic Churches in Emporia in religious protest and warning.
Mexican idolaters worship bloody rectums These Satanic evangelists from Hell They are not true churches of Jesus Christ. Must be a comfort to you sodomite Episcopalians, that your Catamite church was founded by a faggot king butt - buddy to Rev. Erasmus of Rotterdam Episcopalians hate God. The Sovereign Horseman rides in New Orleans Get Right with God! You are pouring gasoline on the raging infernos of God's wrath in Iraq and New Orleans Nothing less will do.
Otherwise, we warn you again: Expect worse and more of it from that Outraged God your sins have mightily offended. The Tsunami is a curse! Your children shooting each other in the schools is a curse! A child coming home dead from the battle is a curse!
Katrina the whirlwind is a curse! The US Supreme Court, blindly demanding that the people of this nation give respect to filthy beasts, when God has said they are an abomination, is a curse!
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