it comes in pints?

Rick Ross has a ton of stuff on Phelps in his cult database, Emily - if you want to read more about these hate-mongers. There's a very interesting op-ed column there written by Phelps' estranged son who basically says: "My father is poisoned by hatred of homosexuals. His life is one of hate." I am paraphrasing - but it's a psychotic hatred (I would call it fear as well) of homosexuals that make these people tick. It's a very small group - that's what's so messed up - it's basically just Phelps' ignorant family, who he sends out on these missions - but they get so much press because they are literally beyond the pale. Nobody acts like this except monsters who have no sense of compassion for other people - they are missing so many screws - they see everyone else as sinners beyond saving - they have no interest in converting anyone - just blame and judgment and also hatred. They're uncivilized animals, as far as I'm concerned.

I saw a video of - some comic? I can't remember who - went up to the Phelps' while they were protesting something - and basically started coming on to Fred Phelps, in a homosexual manner, right on camera. He said, "I can't help myself ... I have to talk to you right now, Fred Phelps ... because your ass is just SO ATTRACTIVE."

I'll see if I can find the clip if you want to see it. Take the edge off how upsetting these mofos are. It's funner to just laugh at them, point and laugh at how they have missed the whole fucking point of life.

Sounds like something Carlos Mencia would do.

For some of us, it's important to actively oppose phelps not because we think we're special for doing so, but because we are what he claims to be -- Christians -- and we don't want this pile of... hatred... presuming to represent us.

Felps has come up with the gimick of suing counterdemonstrators. Lacking a judge with guts, a tactic is needed to derail that. Any ideas?

Emily, I found sort of an answer to your one question, "What is their motivation to show up at the funerals of little murdered dead girls with signs that read 'YOUR CHILDREN ARE ROTTING IN HELL'?" Actually, the explanation Shirley Phelps-Roper gives has such a tenuous connection that it just seems to be a pretext to spew their hate toward everyone more universally and completely.

In this transcript from Hannity and Colmes, she says, "... those children were killed at the hands of a raging mad God to punish those families, to punish the state of Pennsylvania, because you've got a governor in that state got on FOX News and lambasted us because we serve God."

(WorldNetDaily: "Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell also said he appealed to the Topeka, Kansas-based group to allow the funerals to be held in private. Rendell in June had signed legislation to restrict the group's picketing by making it a crime to demonstrate within 150 meters of a funeral or memorial service.")

So, basically, it seems their ostensible motivation was to picket the Amish funeral to make the point that God punished Pennsylvania for having a governor who opposed them and their picketing. Really, their motivation is that they hate everybody who's not part of their gang, and, really, how can you make that more clear than by attacking the funeral of murdered little Amish girls?

Vile. I'm just at a loss for words. How horrible. The thing is, you know the Amish would be willing to forgive even them...but I know I can't.

this makes me sick. That's all I can say.

If free speech ever gets abridged in this country, it's going to be because of people like this who completely and totally abuse any sense of human dignity in the name of getting their hateful "message" out. And that also makes me sick, to think that someday I might lose the chance to worship as I choose, to criticize the government, whatever, because of some backwards people who can only see hate and anger in a God that many of the rest of us see love in.

My threshold of "live and let live" is pretty high too, but these vile scum crossed it years ago. They ruined a high school graduation locally because the school had a Gay/Straight Alliance club.

There are few people in the world I wish a horrible death on. Phelps and his brood make up the bulk of that select group.

another thought:
some weeks back, in the church I belong to, the sermon was about how modern Christians need to guard their hearts and minds very carefully lest they become a modern version of the Pharisees - where the "untouchables" of society are excluded because they are "ritually unclean." (He asked us all how we would react if someone showed up who was clearly homeless, or was an AIDS patient, or was mentally disabled...and you know, a lot of us squirmed uncomfortably because a lot of us WOULD have a hard time shaking, say, a homeless person's hand and being as welcoming to them as we would to someone who "looked more like us.")

I find it very chilling to look at the followers of Phelps and imagine that, as the old saying goes, there but for the grace of God could go any of us who call ourselves Christians.

I'm going to try to take this as a personal lesson rather than letting it simply make me blindly angry.

The truly ironic thing is that the Phelps group is directly in conflict with Christ's own teaching that *no one* is beyond redemption. How can they call themselves Baptists, or even Christians?
And especially considering that they chose to condemn the Amish girls, who were the personification of Christ's statements that there's no greater love than to lay down your life for a friend, and the Amish community in their unparalleled example of forgiveness.
I think we can figure out who will be burning in hell, and it's not the Amish.

If I remember right, his "church" is basically just his kids, their spouses and their kids. It's almost all extended family so doesn't even number that high in membership (I think it might hit a couple hundred, but I'm not even sure it's that big), but they are masters at media manipulation. Partly because Phelps was a long time political activist (and not for whom you would think) and -- especially -- fundraiser. He knows who to call to get a) money, b) attention.

I could be wrong, but that's what I think I remember from when I looked shit up a few years back when he first popped.

Oh, boy. Here I go.

Hypocrisy. It's the one thing incompatible with true Christianity and it's the one thing Phelps deals in spades.

I won't cast stones. I won't point out the mote in his eye and ignore the beam in mine. I won't do any of the things Phelps makes the cornerstone of his so-called "faith."

Jesus loved the outcasts. He loved the tax collectors and the prostitutes and the lepers and the poor who begged in the streets. He spent most of his ministry in their company, to prove that God was for everyone. That God loved everyone.

Phelps can call himself and his followers Christians, but they couldn't be further from Christ.

Let him hate. It consumes him. He lives to hate. And that is so very sad.

That being said, I hope he rots in hell.

There are no words. I never DREAMED in a THOUSAND years that they could do this. A snake couldn't limbo under these people's sense of decency.

Just a thought - what kind of a God do these jagoffs think they have, anyway? He's always smiting, punishing, judging... Does God ever, even once, smile on anyone? For the sake of five good people, does He ever stay His hand and let the city remain?

And yet I'm sure that the Amish would even forgive Fred Phelps. That just makes me sit down in awe, quite frankly.

Phelps' "God hates fags" message, among other things, illustrates sloppy Biblical interpretation. All the Old Testament passages referring to God's "hate" use the Hebrew word "sane" (pronounced "shaw-nay"). It can mean to hate or it can mean to oppose. Which one is it? Since John 3:16 says that God so loved the world - the entire world and not just the saved part (God's love is a precondition to send Jesus, after all) - then "sane" means "to oppose." Most conservative Christians who think homosexuality is a psychological disorder can grasp this notion, even without delving into translating ancient Hebrew.

Interestingly, Fred Phelps is a double helping of the convergence of the fringe left and fringe right. He sides with Cindy Sheehan on the war. With supreme irony, he sides with virtually every single gay activist organization in opposing programs for people to overcome homosexuality.

Nightfly - God, that's an excellent point. They would forgive him. They are probably praying for him.

You know, I wonder if Phelps and his followers don't punish themselves enough already, without us calling down any of God's wrath on them? I cannot help but think that must be a pretty joyless existence, looking around for new people to judge and playing connect-the-dots where no real dots exist.

Paranoia can be its own sort of hell. Its own sort of separation from the loving God that most Christians know.

so maybe they've already condemned themselves in their process of condemning others.

There is some speculation that the Phelps cult is just a cynical moneymaking scam rather than a sincerely religious outfit. You know: they show up at a funeral with their cute little signs, someone yells at them or tries to deck Phelps or something, Phelps and Co. sue whoever has the biggest pockets (say, the city where the funeral was taking place). The fact that their antics are passed about as tales of "when Christians go wrong" and thus helps undermine Christianity in the eyes of the public is just the cherry on top of this bullshit sundae.

"Felps has come up with the gimick of suing counterdemonstrators. Lacking a judge with guts, a tactic is needed to derail that. Any ideas?"

There are some of us who have aranged our retirements to be pretty much judgement proof (Kinda like OJ).

If they sued, they couldn't get anything even if they won, and in the meantime I would find out all kinds of stuff in discovery and depositions to put on the net.

If I encounter them at a funeral, I just might trust to the fighting words doctrine and a jury of my peers on any criminal charges and go for them.

Maybe I missed something, but...what was Phelps' excuse for wanting to picket the Amish girls' funerals? The Amish don't exactly have anything to do with his two pet peeves - gays and the Iraq War. (Unless they're making quilts for the troops, or something like that.)

I THINK the arguement they make, Alan (I try not to contemplate it too much lest my head explode) is that "bad stuff happens" to people in the U.S. because we (i.e., either the gummint or the people of the U.S.) haven't either killed, expelled, or interned in re-education camps all people who espouse a sexual attraction to their own gender.

but like Andrea said: maybe it's just a giant scam and they're using Christianity as a front, rather than making actual hateful claims that they actually believe in the name of Christianity. That would actually make me feel better, if that were true.

Key word. Money.
A family of "lawyers", laying ambushes for the
unwary. What better place to bushwack their
next victims than a funeral?
Using the First Amendment, they lay in wait
to be accosted for their outrageous behaviour
then file lawsuits for assault, etc,.
It generates generous amounts of cash, which
enables them to keep on traveling round the
country looking for more 'suckers'.
Christains? Not hardly.

Not advocating violence, but some one on one
tit for tat clue by fouring educational
"therapy" might help.

I thought Phelps considered himself to be post-Christian? Isn't he not even a Baptist anymore and more a cult of personality.

I recall a saying years ago that went something like: "Your right to swing your fist ends where my nose begins".
I would like someone to comment on where the 1st ammendment of the WBC would end if MY rights are being violated??? Any volunteers???
Thanks.

My first time posting, and I know all to well about this man. A few factoids about him:

1) He is a disbarred attorney who, while practicing, made ethical violations on a repeated basis.

2) He was criminally charged, but usually gets out by sleazy legal loopholes.

3) If he or the clan goes back to Canada, they will arrest them and prosecute them on hate crime charges.

4) Tried to sue Sears for $500,000,000 for not getting a television on layaway. He settled for less than what the television was worth!

It is a very lengthy read, but for anyone inquiring about this group, check out http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/michael_haggerty/expose3.htm.
Wikipedia also has an entry about them.

If he or the clan goes back to Canada, they will arrest them and prosecute them on hate crime charges.

Heh, the bad guys versus the bad guys.

Hate crime laws are evil - bigots use them to stifle opposing viewpoints, just as modern American presidents like Kennedy and Nixon used the Fairness Doctrine to intimidate their critics. The government isn't always fair and wise and honest enough to distinguish between hate and mere criticism. People who voice dispassionate criticism of the conventional wisdom can run the same legal risks as genuine hatemongers as Phelps.

The least expected part is that Phelps is a Democrat, though I am absolutely no-snark serious when I say this is no reflection on the Democrat party.

He's pretty much just generally batshit crazy and unwholesome.