So shall ye reap...or, HA HA WESTBORO BAPTIST CHURCH!
 

They showed up to protest a funeral.

Car tires were slashed.

No one in town would help fix them.

Do I support vandalism? No. Do I get some vicious satisfaction that they were repaid a tiny bit of the grief they have so cruelly dished out? Absolutely.

I like what Doug Powers said...a mechanic should have fixed the tires, then told them that he was gay.

Link.

Shunning is more powerful than they might think. Suppose nobody would sell them food?

Let's send 'em to Coventry already.

They're headed to my town soon to demononstrate at a local high school. Apparently some students wrote to themto 'splain why their protests at funerals are wrong.

I thoroughly enjoyed that, but I'm also sure it fueled their martyrdom--and they will most likely attempt to sue those who would not help them.

I've often wondered if the Baptist Church has tried to get them to stop using the word Baptist. Then again, the Baptists do think that homosexuality is a sin. Hmm.

Well that and the fact that there is no single "Baptist Church". There are several of them, many of which do not talk to one another. Hell, if a person was to go digging I wouldn't be surprised if you found one that did not consider homosexuality a sin. It would probably have all of a dozen members though.

Switchblades are proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy.

Yup, and then they'll head down my way to piss on the Muslims and Jews (although, I spend most of my time in DeWitt these days -- not too far away from you, wring.)

:hijack::jaw: You poor, poor thing. /:hijack:

Dear Westboro Baptist Church,

I do wish you would stop protesting at funerals. It is thoroughly disrespectful and inappropriate. Your group is welcome to come visit me and tell me why I am wrong.

Yours respectfully,

Kim Il Sung

Here's another, previous example that doesn't involve tire slashing. Seems people are getting bolder.

:like:

As Fut noted, there are quite a few Baptist organizations. Additionaly, there are many independant congregations that style themselves as Baptists but are not affiliated with any Baptist group. (And so, there is nothing to prevent you from organizing a Rigs Baptist Church.) Westboro apparently falls in the latter category. Fred (who was ordained by the Southern Baptist Convention) likes to think of himself as a Primitive Baptist, but the PB's will have nothing to do with him.


If it's any comfort, I notice that Phred turned 81 this weekend, so he shouldn't have too many years left in him.

But he's got plenty of idiot spawn who are following in his footsteps, unfortunately.

I don't believe in total immersion baptism, nor do I believe that one must be an adult (or at least capable of making one's own decisions) to be baptized, so no Rigby Baptist Church for Lonely People (nobody came). ;)

I'm sure Phred will live to be over 100--only the good die young. He's evil enough to continue on for several more decades. But once he is gone, I think we'll see a slow dissolution of the WBC. Why? Because w/o a clear leader (an anointed one, which Phred may still do), to go from one leader to a group is bound to lead to disharmony and struggles for power. Of course, they could go even more evil, but some change will occur.

One of his daughters is just as bad, if not worse. She said a soldier died because his parents got divorced. That's adultery, you know. Oh, and somehow teh gays are involved.

I think it's simpler than that. I'm beginning to think that there really is a god (or gods) and he keeps people like that around as an object lesson.

Aren't they always?

I disapprove of slashing car tires. Period.

That said, the Westboro nuts are either going to advance the cause of free speech in this country or harm it severely when their cases work their way up to the supreme court. Remember the Bush era "free speech zones?" Suppose the WBC nuts have to protest a mile away? Suppose they don't. It will have repurcussions.

Don't get your hopes up. I think Shirley is, if anything, more nuts. Have we all seen this documentary?

A lot of people bash religious zealots of all sorts. However, if you ask me, there is nothing more dangerous than a religious zealot with lawyers.

Cite: Scientology, Westboro Baptist Church

Or, religious zealots who ARE lawyers.... :)

Fred Phelps was a civil rights lawyer before he became Westboro Baptist Church Fred Phelps.

A few weeks ago or so, Margie Phelps-Roper was arguing on behalf of the Phelps' church before the Supreme Court.

The family's list of Phelps lawyers doesn't end there, IIRC.

they got sued, lost and are appealing on freedom of speech. (IIRC). they have the right to protest, the familues have a right to sue the fuckers and get all their assets, leaving them w/o the means to harrass anyone else.

The case was argued before SCOTUS on Oct. 6.

Snyder won the first round, the Phelpses the second. SCOTUS will decide the final round.

(thanks, was too lazy to look it up}

They were supposed to come here to protest a CSUF production of The Laramie Project but they never showed. Too bad because there was a contingent of counter protesters, with signs like Homophobia Is So Gay, flowery costumes, and glitter body paint.

Guess they were having car trouble?

No Shows

I like this guy's approach.

That is make-me-pee-my-pants funny!

Hang on, I'm getting some ideas here...

Are there any men available to take over the leadership when Phred kicks the bucket? They are also very much against women preachers (women are supposed to be silent in church). I haven't heard much about the male side of the family.

There are sons (one bailed out, and his account of the family is drifting about the Internet somewhere), but they seem not to be too involved in the family business. Phelps-Roper seems to be the only one who gets any ink.

To what extent they will carry on after he's gone, I cannot guess. May depend on if they still feel a great need for Daddy's approval. There's an old saying: copies never succede. I suspect this will be the case here.

Fred has always been a publicity whore. I figure his fondness for civil rights cases in the early Sixties was, in part, his way of standing out from the crowd. In the Nineties he repeatedly ran for governor and senator (as a Democrat - alas, we can't blame the GOP for everything). His schtick then was to bicycle from town to town; rather quaint now to recall the days when he was regarded merely as a fitness nut. And then he discovered homosexuality, then funeral protests, and hit the mother lode of attention grabbing.

His hatred of gays seems so over the top pathological. Anyone care to take a stab at what is emotional or mental issues are? I know it's been floated that he's closeted, but yikes, if that's the case...he's so far back in the closet he's on the other side of Narnia.

I think he's just an attention whore, and that's all there is to it. He tasted a tiny bit of notoriety in his past and now, every day, he wakes up and schemes different ways to make people look at him. Some of us do that in constructive ways, but Fred will settle for people's hatred if it means that they are paying attention to him.

I guess in some ways, that's a clinician's fondest dream, but when you get right down to the bone of it, I truly believe he just wants people to notice him.

What, you think he does this for the attention? I bet the dude's making a pretty fat living off this schtick. If you look at it dispassionately it's obvious that he is a carney who has found a particular combination of noises to make that is a hit with the audience. Sells a lot of tickets. Who cares if the noises are mouthbreather preaching or a nose flute concerto. Make noises, get paid. If you were to drug the truth out of him I believe that's what you would find.

Okay, but who's he suing? Where is his money coming from?

I'm with you on this. That nobody would help fix the tires -- HAR HAR HAR!

"Being a fucktard" is not a legally protected class, for which refusing service is illegal discrimination.

:disco:

Donations from the fucksticks, I mean flock, of his megachurch. I'd bet if you had the stomach to listen to his sermons, the virtues of donating would be prominently featured every week.

It's my understanding that his is rather a microchurch.

I think he gets his money from suing the local municipalities where he protests for not providing adequate security. So it's sort of a vicious circle. The church cannot survive without money, they make their money by being obnoxious as possible to provoke people to "assault" them, then they sue, get money, and move onto the next protest. I would also not be surprised if merely the threat of Phelps et al showing up in a town would be enough for the town fathers and mothers to make a small donation to keep him out.

And Jag, his "flock" is mostly him and his family. There are very few, if any, outsiders.

That's basically my understanding, having followed the Phelpses casually for the last eight or so years -- by no means all the time they've been in the national spotlight, but a hefty portion of it. They go around being as obnoxious as the law allows, and the second someone violates their rights, that's like money in their pockets.

The church is insular -- the Phelpses and not many other people. Baker, over on the SDMB, has mentioned more than once that even within Topeka they are looked upon with something slightly more grave than disdain. But that is what happens when you and your family are traveling shock jocks. Once you pop that cherry, you can either dedicate yourself to redemption or embrace it.

Oh, excellent! Then we should just kill them.

Psychoanalizing Fred Phelps is a daunting undertaking. If the folks at Topeka's Menninger Clinic haven't dared to kidnap Phred and put him under the microscope (the guy's gotta be worth fifty journal articles), who am I to chime in? Regard the following as some random data points concerning his God Hates Fags kick. I leave his basal personality (paranoic, socialpathic, egomanic, obsessive-compulsive control freak etc.) to someone else.

First, sex. Apparently Phelps regards anything beyond plain missionary-position copulation as an abomination. This is simply the common fundamentalist position on steroids. So there must be specific reasons he singled out homosexuality. A couple of possibilities:

The charmingly-named website God Hates Fred Phelps says: "The family started protesting homosexuality in the late 1980s after Shirley Phelps-Roper’s then-toddler son was allegedly propositioned by a homosexual in a Topeka park, according to Phelps-Roper." One's immediate reaction, of course, is: how in hell does someone proposition a toddler? Shirley probable isn't jesting, just wildly overinterpreting whatever did happen.

More intriguing, and poorly documented, is Phelps' dealings over the years with a Kansas judge (apparently gay) named Terry Bullock. I recall Phelps going after Bullock some years back, but the details escape me. Perhaps Bullock was involved in the matters that led to Phelps' disbarment. (Interesting to note that Phelps is in the habit of annualing protesting the University of Kansas Law School graduation ceremony; Bullock was a KU grad - but so are a lot of Topeka lawyers.) So maybe he blames Sodomites for the loss of his law license.

Whatever started it, his funeral protest gig proved to be psychological paydirt. One other thing to note: Several years back he started showing up at the funerals of military people who had been killed in action. Since he picks his targets by reading obituaries, and since folks in these parts soon learned not to put "incriminating" information in the obits of gay folks, Fred needed a new target of opportunity and military funerals were easy (and rather high-profile) pickings.

So I conclude that the protests were never so much about homosexuality as they are about Fred himself.

They have come to my town twice.. Once in.. 2005? And another time like two years ago.

The first was a big thing. We had a gay mayor at the time (the first openly gay mayor in the country or state or something like that, I don't recall) and we have (or "had" now, due to budget restraints) a yearly summer festival. They applied for a booth but didn't get one, threatened to sue, and eventually got a permit to protest on one side of a street and at a few churches.

It was a freak show. Right outside my front door (I lived above a business right on the square they were protesting at).

They stayed on one side of the street, the huge crowd of protesters on the other.. A few people threw some stuff, a couple minor scuffles started, they caused a few fender benders (traffic was still going between them) and laughed at the people that got their bumpers dented.

Eventually the mayor came out and kissed his boyfriend in front of them.. oh boy did things go nuts then.. People from the church came out with giant wings they made that were stuck to their backs to block any view of the crazies standing on the flag, that kinda worked, but more just added to the craziness as there were far too few of them and they were dressed like angels with giant wings next to crazies across the street from other crazies.

Eventually they left to go to another church then canceled their last two church visits.

Fred was supposed to show up and make a speech or something but nobody ever saw him.


From what I heard they make good money off suing people that screw with their cars.. They refuse police protection for them and videotape people trying to mess with them, then sue them for all they're worth. At least that's what I heard from their '05 visit, though I think a police car parked near their vans anyway and there were no troubles.

By the Good Book, well, it is.

I went to go quote the actual verse and the first website I found is hilariously insane:

http://www.jesus-is-savior.com/Famil...e_is_a_sin.htm

The relevant passage is Matthew 5:32


Not that I agree with one word those superstitious Bronze Age freaks wrote down.. Hell, much of the Old Testament says who you can enslave and how hard you can beat them..

Oh, the second time was the whatever project movie.. They came in February, it was freezing cold, and they didn't realize the high school they were protesting was just in the middle of a residential area, not any big area to put on their freak show. Someone also did a fund raiser for an anti-hate group where you could sign up to give X number of dollars for every hour they were within city limits.

I think they showed up but when they realized there was NOBODY there to watch them they left.

This is my favorite reactions to the clan. Guy posted on Cracked.com that they were coming to his school and asked for ideas. The end result was a guy with a "You're going to hell" sign standing next to a guy with a sign reading "I'm getting a major boner."

Humor is the only way for the counter-protesters to deal with this.

The bereaved have a much harder row to hoe, since they're the ones directly affected by it. The high road seems like the most difficult thing when you'e entire being is one open emotional wound, but the help of one's community has to be a significant asset.

Not shouting in glee when one of the Phelps Klan finally succumbs to a horrible, painful illness is going to be difficult for me.

When Phred finally kicks that old bucket his phamily had better be burying him at midnight before anyone knows he's gone or else there'll be a Million Man Phuck You, Phred demonstration at his phuneral sure as shit runs downhill.

In case folks missed it, the news article photo was kind enough to leave the Phelps' plate number clear. Its a Kansas plate 550 CUV is the number. I bring this up so that if someone feels that when Phelps is in town they simply must vandalize the Phelps' vehicle, they don't attack some poor bastards vehicle by mistake. I am in no way condoning violence against the Phelps' club them like a baby harp seal or their property torch it, if there's anything more wrong than not setting the Phelps clan on fire damaging the property belonging to Phelps, its trashing that of someone who's completely innocent only do it if you can frame Phelps for it.

Let's emulate the guys at ComicCon.

I'd crap on his wreath in a New York minute.