'Most-Hated,' Anti-Gay Preacher Once Fought for Civil Rights

ahh, the hippocracy, isn't it so refreshing in this day and age of being "politically correct"?
Maybe someday he'll realize he's the racist George Wallace to gays/lesbians.

I doubt it.

You know, Phelps, God is a little gay too. :)

I like Fred Phelps and his kin. Wait...hear me out. He basically extends the accepted discrimination and insanity of Christianity to a more extreme level, but he isn't saying anything that can't be justified by the bible. I guess that is one of the things people like about it...its so damn ambiguous that any human behavior can be both supported and condemned by it.

But the main reason I like this cat is that he is normalizing society's acceptance of homosexuals. When confronted by the living embodiment of hate, people are force to confront their own feelings. What I mean is, has anyone ever seen the Westboro protests and thought "Hey...I want to be apart of that"...no of course not. Whether Phelps realizes this or not, he has done more for the acceptance of homosexuals than any other single entity just by the fact he makes intolerance look fucking batshit crazy.

He has a right to look like a complete ass and be the living face of ignorance. Its easy to defend speech you agree with...its the stupid shit you disagree with that needs to be defended. Not supported...but the right to say it needs to be defended. Rock on you crazy fucking bastard...

Sometimes the symptoms of paranoid schizophrenia don't manifest until later in life. Black people benefited from his health, gays are suffering from his illness.

This is absolutely ridiculous. It is not his place to cast judgment on ANYONE.
It is our job to love thy enemy, not show up at their funeral and make this rough time for their family even worse.
It is our job to love 'em, and God's job to judge them.
Such Christianly people should be aware of that and act on it.

"You're born black. It's something you can't change even if you're Michael Jackson," she says. "God never said it was an abomination to be black."

.... Yet the Bible says it's okay to own slaves. And the Religious used that fact as justification to buy & sell Blacks, back in the day. And now they've just shifted their focus to Gays. So it's really just a case of "SSDD" (same sh*t, different day).

you know, if it wasnt the gays, it would be some other work of the devil they dont approve of. Christianity is a hypocritical religion. Like the Crusades, and many other "holy wars" have killed countless amounts of live yet they preach thou shall not kill. not thou shall kill a infidel. They should have let them self be killed in the dark ages when fighting over Jerusalem, they would be going to a better place then earth right? Religion is a system to keep us all in line, even though if people just stopped and think about how much of a physiological attack religion is and is not needed.

His daughter goes 'God never said it was an abomination to be black'
I believe he did say something about casting judgement on others though and something else about how the only way to God is through Jesus and Jesus is actually just love but the RIGHT KIND DAMNIT!

This church even picketed Virginia Tech, saying that they deserved what happened there. It's very upsetting, and I don't know if I'll ever understand preaching through hatred. It is all very confusing to me.

shouldn't a rogue biker gang be riding around with wbc skulls on their motorcycles by now?

Read
animalia_libero's post: Thank you for that info.. Now there is a perfectly logical explanation: HE WANTS to be SUED. He can Profit from it with counter lawsuits. Dont be manipulated. You have to admit though, there is no better way to hit a nerve than what he is doing. Granted I would have no choice but to feed him his eyes if he arrived at a loved ones funeral. Love is the only effective weapon against people like this. Thankfully THEY are the true minority.

Yeah I have heard of this guy and his church. I am from Missouri so its kind of close. I am not gay but I am in the military. When this guy gets busted for picking up a male prostitute don't say I didn't warn ya. I can just image that people just want this guy to shut the Fugg up. If he ever starts picketing me for masturbating then we are gonna have problems. I can see why some guys around here are gay anyways. Most of the women are dogs... not pretty. Really I cant live in some uber up tight white washed southern inbred utopia. I gotta have some flavor baby, then hey, if that means I gotta live around some people I dont completely agree with then fine. No sweat off my back. I mean its like this
" Eternal hell and good tunes or eternal heaven and new kids on the fu*^ing block...... Im gonna be surfing on the lake of fire rockin out" Bill Hicks
I am not a redneck. I am from a suburban neighborhood and I love my freedoms. I don't like pushy people who want to shove their lifestyle on me. First its the gays but later it might be the Atheists and the people who believe in evolution. What then? Where do I go. What do I do when they want to picket me for thinking my own thoughts?

This isnt news.. ive known this for a while now...

As far as I can tell this idiot is consistent is his feeling. He doesn't think skin tone is that important. But lets be honest this guy has plenty of other problems

god says a lot of things. that doesn't mean he is right.

LOL some Christians are so stupid.

It doesn't matter what he did back then. It's what he's doing now that matters. It is deliciously ironic, however.

"And that's when he realized his true calling ...Bigotry"

lock him in a cell with bruno

I just wrote some of the most hateful things I may have ever thought of and then decided not to post it. Suffice to say that Phelps and his sad, sick, twisted, insane brood make me feel nothing but hate — especially his daughter, who may be worse than Phelps itself.

THEY are the abominations.

I bet he's gay....

god hates hate.

homophobes are so only out of personal shame. come out of the closet already! it's OK! everybody knows, nobody cares!

"God Hates Fags" lol you crack me up! I love this sort of crap! hey homophobic morons! aren't we (all humans) supposedly made in gods image? how can you say anything like that?

I don't remember the bible say anything about rape when it comes to homosexuality. If someone were to anally rape this Phelps guy (yes, I'm encouraging this), would he still have to be stoned to death? I always ask stupid questions like this because the believers never know how to answer.

Praise Zombie Jesus!

We need a world where everyone leaves each other alone along with tolerance.

This cannot come through coercion and force, this cannot come through government.

Muthafucka gotz it .

He is obviously not a Christian. Christ's love is absent from his religion.

seriously psychologically ill people - filled with hatred, fear, and anger. I am shocked that they haven't poisoned themselves to death yet with their vile way of life. they indoctrinate their children into this - holding "god hates fags" signs, etc...couldn't something be done about this, for social services to take the children away?

a man filled with so much selfish hate has little room for compassion, love or understanding.

This guy is dangerously intelligent. Eleven children are attorneys and he made money on civil rights lawsuits. Seems opportunistic. I think his true God is money and power over his little church.

I can't help bust suspect these Westbro people of trolling... With the weird way they do things, I don't think they're entirely sincere. I wouldn't be surprised if their whole purpose was to deliberately make homophobia look really, really bad by making themselves an extreme example.

PART TWO...

In Topeka, longtime civil rights activists say they were accustomed to seeing Phelps fight another type of battle in the courts.

By the time Phelps moved to Topeka in 1954, it had become the launching ground for the modern civil rights movement. That was the year the U.S. Supreme Court banned segregation in public schools with its historic Brown vs. Topeka Board of Education decision.

Jack Alexander, a Topeka native and civil rights activist, says the Brown decision opened the door for discrimination suits. Phelps would take cases in the 1960s that other lawyers, black and white, wouldn't touch, he says.

"Back in that era, most black attorneys were busy trying to make a living," says Alexander, who attended Topeka's high school when the Brown case was filed and went on to become the first black person elected to Topeka's water commission.

"They couldn't take those cases on the chance they wouldn't get paid. But Fred was taking those cases."

Phelps was so successful that he became the first lawyer blacks would call when they thought they were being discriminated against, says the NAACP's Scott.

"Most blacks -- that's who they went to," Scott says. "I don't know if he was cheaper or if he had that stick-to-it-ness, but Fred didn't lose many back then."

Douglas, the Topeka civil rights activist and former fire chief, says Phelps was such a "brilliant attorney" that he made enemies.

"He made a fortune on all those cases," Douglas says. "All the businesses hated him because he was so successful. I think if they discriminated against Martians, he would have done those cases. He could make money."

Douglas says he had no clue then about Phelps' attitude toward gays and lesbians.
God never said it was an abomination to be black.
--Shirley Phelps-Roper, Phelps' daughter

"He didn't even talk about that," Douglas says. "As long as I've known him, I never heard him discuss it, but now it's his whole life."

Phelps' daughter says her father took up civil rights cases because of his upbringing. Phelps was born in the Deep South during segregation.

"He grew up in Mississippi seeing the way they treated black people," Phelps-Roper says.

Her father didn't adopt the same racist beliefs only "because of the mercy of God."

Having people hate them is nothing new for Phelps and his family, she says. People shot out their windows and threatened her father because he stood up for blacks in Kansas.

After her father delivered an editorial on local television one night bemoaning white racism, she says, the phone rang.

"When I picked up that phone, somebody is screaming nigger lover in my ear," she says. "That sticks with you. That's not the first time nor the last time I heard that."

Phelps was disbarred in 1979 by the Kansas Supreme Court after he became the subject of a complaint alleging witness badgering. The court wrote: "The seriousness of the present case coupled with his previous record leads this court to the conclusion that respondent has little regard for the ethics of his profession."

Phelps-Roper contends her father was disbarred in Kansas state court for standing up for blacks.

"Those people hated us for that work," she says. "The state hated us for it. They could hardly bring themselves to be civil because we won those verdicts."

Phelps' critics now despise him for another reason -- his anti-gay activism.

It has earned him so much notoriety that he is internationally known. In 2007, the BBC produced a documentary on Phelps and his church entitled "The Most Hated Family in America."

Phelps' anti-gay pickets continue even though his case is pending before the U.S. Supreme Court. The family plans to visit Atlanta, Georgia, starting Wednesday for two days of protests, including one at a Jewish community center and a playhouse staging a production in honor of Shepard, the slain gay college student.

The Southern Poverty Law Center, which monitors extremist organizations, has classified Phelps' church as a hate group. It calls Phelps America's most notorious anti-gay activist.

Mark Potok, a center spokesman, says Phelps uses anti-Semitic language in the fliers and tracts he dispatches from his church today.

"I don't think he gives a damn about civil rights; maybe he once did," Potok says. "Whatever atom of sympathy he had for the civil rights movement is clearly gone now."

Nate Phelps, the estranged son, says his father held racist attitudes even during his work as a civil rights attorney.

He says his father didn't believe blacks were equal to whites, and often insulted blacks out of earshot.

"They would come into his office and after they left, he would talk about how stupid they were and call them dumb niggers," Phelps says.

But Phelps-Roper, Nathan's sister, says their father was no racist. She says that Potok doesn't know her father. And she calls her brother Nathan a "rebel of God." She says her father didn't use racist language and Nathan wouldn't have been in a position to know.

"Nathan is a tortured soul," she says. "He has no grace. God had no mercy upon him. He's hardened his heart."

Phelps-Roper says her father and family have eked out a modest living and her father's church doesn't take money from anyone.

God said the world would hate believers like her father in the last hours, she says.

People may judge her father; the courts may do the same. But she says in an e-mail message filled with scriptural references that she is waiting for another judgment.

"This nation is on a short path to her full, final and complete destruction!" Phelps-Roper says. "It will be beautiful and it will be righteous."