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Saturday, July 15, 2000
FAIRMONT, W.Va. -- The Rev. Fred Phelps, disbarred lawyer and practicing homophobe, was outside the Marion County Courthouse this week, spreading the word about whom God hates.
Members of his Westboro Baptist Church -- that is to say, such family as are still speaking to him -- surrounded the tall, gaunt man, who looks for all the world like a week-old corpse dressed for a night out.
One member, James Hockenbarger, whose brother is married to one of Phelps' 13 children, held a sign declaring, "JR in Fag Hell." On it was a blow-up photo of Arthur "JR" Warren, a retiring black man who happened to be gay and was beaten and stomped to death a week earlier by a pair of teen-age boys who then dumped his body on a road and drove over it.
God has yet to be charged as an accessory.
The people of Fairmont had organized a candlelight vigil in memory of Warren. Phelps, whose hatred of Catholics, Jews, and Protestants other than Phelps is surpassed only by his hatred of gays, picked up the phone to tell the sheriff the Westboro Baptist Church would be attending the vigil.
Sheriff Ron Watson, to whom Baptist means something very different, got the call.
"I said, 'Baptist church? Brother, we'll roll out the red carpet for you,' " Watson said. He started rolling the carpet back up after someone in his office found Phelps' Web site and its name turned out to be godhatesfags.com.
Jeremy Thomas, a local man, wanted to know how Hockenbarger has a line on precisely who goes to hell.
"Anybody who studiously studies the Bible knows you can't live this kind of sin and not be condemned," Hockenbarger replied. "You've got to understand that the majority of the human race is in hell."
That would correspond with the Phelps theology. He began his street ministry in 1991 by picketing an opponent in the Kansas gubernatorial election. His appetite for publicity whetted, he moved on to picket the funerals of AIDS victims, usually with semifluorescent signs saying "God Hates Fags" and "Thank God for AIDS." When Mother Teresa died, he issued a press release announcing "Mother Teresa in Hell," as if all that remained was for her luggage to pass through Atlanta.
Phelps has terrorized neighbors in Topeka. He pickets local churches because, he says, they are too lenient about homosexuality. He picketed a local restaurant because it employed a lesbian. He picketed the funerals of Bill Clinton's mother, Frank Sinatra, Sonny Bono, Barry Goldwater, Al Gore Sr. -- wherever destiny called for a TV camera.
He picketed the funeral of Matthew Shepard, the gay man who was pistol whipped and crucified on a fencepost in Wyoming. Last month, he announced plans to picket the funerals of both Sen. Strom Thurmond, R-S.C., and Billy Graham, Baptist-N.C. The fact that neither man is dead appears to be of no consequence. When they are dead, he will picket them. When Graham went to the Mayo Clinic in an effort to stay alive, Phelps announced plans to picket there.
In his storied career, Phelps and his congregation have racked up an impressive array of offenses against public comity. Last summer, possessed of the notion that Canada was little more than Sodom with a better hockey team, Phelps and company traveled to Ottawa to burn a Canadian flag. When it wouldn't light, they had to ask for advice from a nearby police officer, and a Phelps grandson nearly ignited himself.
When one of the federal judges who signed the order disbarring Phelps joined his terminally ill wife in a suicide pact, Westboro Baptist's Web site commemorated the event this way:
"WBC to celebrate first anniversary of U.S. Chief Judge Earl O'Connor murdering (he gut-shot) his ugly wife and committing suicide."
With these people, we share the First Amendment.
Phelps spent much of last Tuesday standing atop a Gay Pride flag with his hate signs. His minotaur of a daughter, lawyer Shirley Phelps-Roper, argued bitterly with police Chief Ted Offutt, who had the temerity to object to the Phelps grandchildren holding signs that showed stick figures in various sex positions.
The protest's game ball went to the gay activist who went face to face with Shirley, in her shorts and ball cap, and shouted, "God hates people with no fashion sense, honey."
Frankly, I doubt God hates anybody. But if he ever gets back into the business of smiting folks, don't stand too close to a certain minister from Topeka, Kansas.