Tribute to the Most Hated Man in America

by Taylor Higgins

Fred Phelps, pastor of Westboro Baptist Church, died earlier this week.
Photo credit: CNN

In 1954, Fred Phelps was a civil rights attorney leading the charge for desegregation in Kansas public schools. Inspired by the landmark Brown vs. Board of Education case, he was honored by the NAACP among many other organizations.

Sixty years later, Phelps passed peacefully in his home of natural causes at the age of 84, surrounded by his large family, loving church members, and a library of placards that read: “God Hates Fags.” “God Hates You.” “Thank God for Dead Soldiers.”

At the time of his death on March 19, Phelps held proudly to his title as the most hated man in America.

"So Fred Phelps has gone to live with the big fag-hater in the sky, but let’s at least remember him as he would have wanted us to: as a psychotic, sadistic life-wrecker and overall bad egg," said  Gavin Haynes, reporter for Vice.com.

Phelps died at age 84.
Photo credit: Getty Images

Phelps was the founding pastor of Westboro Baptist Church of Topeka, Kan., a church known for its virulent anti-gay protests and the picketing of military funerals. The church was catapulted into fame in 2010, when the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear the case Snyder v. Phelps. He was being sued for invasion of privacy for picketing the funeral of a dead soldier by the soldier’s father.

Phelps was represented by a team of lawyers – his children. He won 8-1.

“As a Nation, we have chosen a different course — to protect even hurtful speech on public issues to ensure that we do not stifle public debate.” Chief Justice John Roberts,U.S. Supreme Court, Snyder v. Phelps

Constitutional freedoms are often championed for all by bad people – even by the most hated man is America.

Joseph Russomanno, a TIME magazine journalist who interviewed Phelps and his family in 2010, calls Phelps a “necessary evil.”

“Larry Flynt, the pornographer who also won his Supreme Court case, said that if the First Amendment can protect someone like him, it protects all of us,” Russomanno said. “Phelps was an accidental First Amendment champion who ended up strengthening the safeguards of liberty.”

 I first learned about Fred Phelps in a BBC documentary by reporter Louis Theroux.  I was outraged, like most other viewers, by footage I saw.

Phelps' grandchildren protest the funeral of a dead soldier.
Photo Credit: Associated Press

Signs reading “God Hates Fags” and “Thank God for IEDs,” in the hands of children too young to read.  Kids parading images of homosexual intercourse down on streets of Topeka.

"Their main scriptural inspiration is the passage in Leviticus that mandates the death penalty for gay sex though for some reason the adjacent verses that proscribe astrology in similar terms never seem to excite the WBC quite so much," said Theroux in a recent Facebook post. "Not to mention that Jesus Christ himself – something of an authority on Christian affairs, one would think – had literally nothing to say on the subject of gay sex or shouting at funerals and plenty to say about kindness and humility."

Phelps was regarded by the church as one of the patriarchs of the Old Testament – when he arrived, all were quiet and reverent. Despite the name “Baptist,” he delivered a sermon akin to no other. With his thick Mississippi accent, Phelps’ tongue became a sword as he preached one thing – hate.

“You're not going to get nowhere with that slop that 'God loves you,’” Phelps told Jim Lewis of The Patriot-News. “That's a diabolical lie from hell without biblical warrant.”

Phelp’s career as a civil rights attorney and pastor took a hard right turn when he reportedly witnessed his five-year-old grandson being lured by a predator (what he claims was a homosexual) at a park in Topeka. 

After an unsuccessful series of complaints and lack of action, the protests began.

Two of Phelps' attorney children represent
 him at his Supreme Court hearing.
Photo credit: Associated Press

In 1989, he was disbarred by the Kansas Supreme Court for having little regard for the ethics of his profession. He surrendered his license after nine U.S. District Court judges filed disciplinary complaints against him.

The Church, which now has about 40 members, is often seen at the funerals of soldiers killed in Iraq and Afghanistan carrying signs that claim the deaths are God’s punishment for the U.S.’s tolerance of homosexuality. Their website boasts that they have picketed more than 53,000 events, ranging from Lady Gaga concerts to the funerals of Sandy Hook Elementary victims.

Immediately following their patriarch’s death, the church released a statement that there would be no funeral held for Phelps – “We do not worship the dead.”

Several days later, however, the church recanted. Shirley Phelps-Roper, daughter of Phelps and the church’s spokeswoman released this statement asking the public not to picket her father’s funeral out of respect.

“This is a very difficult time for us,” the statement reads, “so we ask that the public have a little decency and respect by allowing us to mourn a great man who served God and tried to protect America from the threat of fags and perverts (i.e. gays and U.S. soldiers).”

She also quickly dismissed the claim that the church’s request was in any way hypocritical.

Fred Phelps sits in prayer on the front
pew of his church in Topeka, Kan.
Photo Credit: Associated Press

 “It would be in extremely poor taste if someone were to protest my father’s funeral just because they disagreed with him,” she said. “Everyone is entitled to respect in death. What monster would go out of their way to upset my family when we’re grieving?”

Most of the members of Westboro Baptist are also members of Phelps’ family; 11 of his 13 children and their families live on the church’s compound-style property. They are all attorneys.

One son, Nathan, is estranged from his father and from organized religion – he is an atheist. According to Nathan Phelps, physical and psychological abuse was common in the Phelps house.

“You have to have some rules, you have to enforce the rules and sometimes, in an extreme case, you have to spank a child,” Fred Phelps said in an interview with TIME Magazine. “The Bible says to do that.”

The “spankings,” Nate said, involved beatings with a garden tool.

"My father was a great man who did no harm to anyone," Shirley Phelps-Roper said in a statement on the church’s website. "So what if he beat his own wife and children? Doesn't any good, loving father do that?”