Date:         Wed, 27 Apr 1994 11:58:32 -0400
From: "David B. O'Donnell" <atropos@aol.net>

[ Ed. Note: Due to the relevance of this article, I am cross-posting
it to the Belief-L mailing list. ]

Perhaps this should be renamed the Phelps FAQ?

---------- Forwarded message ----------
[Anonymous Sender info omitted]

Kansas minister fights a holy war against homosexuals

By Brenda You

Mercury Tribune Staff Writer

Rev. Fred Phelps is not a popular guy. He is booed on TV talk shows, egged
when he steps out to preach and watched by law officers at every step as
they wait for him to do anything that will allow them to press charges.

Phelps, a disbarred lawyer from Topeka, Kan., has reason to be hated. He
pickets funerals.

When two gay men in Kansas were killed in a car crash earlier this year,
Phelps and his family marched around their funerals carrying signs
decorated with slogans such as "Fags deserve death."

The men were young and not public figures. Their families were devastated.
But that was just another funeral in the life of Fred Phelps. Since then
he has picketed the funeral of journalist Randy Shilts, who died of AIDS
in February. Phelps' flock even traveled to Little Rock earlier this year
to picket the funeral of President Clinton's mother, Virginia Kelley, whom
Phelps blames for leading her son--and thus the country--on the path to
moral decay. And Phelps is planning to picket the funeral of "Bewitched"
actor Dick Sargent, a gay activist who isn't even dead but is suffering
from advanced cancer. "He could go at any minute," Phelps says.

Phelps, 64, started the Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka 38 years ago.
The church, which claims a Primitive Baptist affiliation, has about 50
members, all of them family.

Phelps has run for mayor of Topeka and U.S. senator from Kansas, and he's
planning to announce his second campaign for governor, which will be
decided in November. He has never received more than 7 percent of the
vote.

When he's not bicycling around the state to promote his political
yearnings, Phelps and his family travel around the country protesting what
he calls "the sodomite agenda"--that is, anything Phelps believes promotes
homosexuality.

At the Shilts funeral, Phelps and 12 followers picketed for all of 50
seconds. Phelps' supporters were so handily targeted with eggs and verbal
abuse (and, they claim, one brick) that they piled back into their van
before the last member had even emerged.

To the chagrin of Kansans, however, the media coverage went far beyond one
minute, and there on CNN was Phelps, wearing his bright red-and-gold
Kansas City Chiefs jacket.

The Kelley funeral received less attention, but after the picketing Phelps
sent the president and the national media a fax containing a picture of
Clinton and his mother with the words, "AntiChrist Bill Clinton & His Evil
Jezebellian Mother."

Phelps went on to explain that "Virginia Kelley is mostly to blame for
Bill's moral/religious principles," which "have reduced our nation to a
slime pit of sexual perversion."

According to one of Phelps' 13 children, Shirley Phelps-Roper, the Phelps
family spends about 30 hours each week picketing "the sodomite agenda"--at
funerals, as well as parks, restaurants and retail stores where gays
allegedly hang out or work.

"We've been in 10 states," Phelps-Roper says. "We picketed the fag March
on Washington, we picket fag funerals." Phelps-Roper, a Topeka lawyer,
says her seven children also work long hours sending the church's venomous
faxes.

Why do they do it?

"Because homosexuality is at the heart of the downfall of society," Phelps
says. He seldom does print interviews--preferring to preach or fight
talk-show audiences--but during a phone interview he was calm, almost
pleasant, at least for a man who uses the words "fags" and "whores"
("Bible words," he says) in almost every other sentence.

"Fags caused the demise of Sodom," he explains. "They destroyed the idea
of one man, one woman, one lifetime. They have driven a stake into the
heart of that."

NOTORIOUS IN TOPEKA

Such ideas and attacks haven't made Phelps a favorite in Topeka.

"People here pretty well hate me," he says. "And I couldn't like it
better. 'Blessed are ye when men shall hate you."'

The 11 of his children who have stayed with the church and all 31 of his
grandchildren also are hated. "The kids get a hard time at school, and
they rejoice in that," the proud grandfather says. "They are celebrities."

But not all the family rejoices over the notoriety.

"Two of my sons left the church and moved to southern California," says
Phelps, who no longer communicates with the sons. "They chose to enjoy the
pleasure of sin." He notes that one son committed the sin of "marrying
another man's wife" (a divorcee) while the other "is determined not to
have children, the fruit of the womb." The sons, who have desperately
tried to distance themselves from the family, couldn't be reached for
comment.

According to Phelps, funerals are the perfect time to persuade people to
change their evil ways. "It's a watershed time. People are thinking about
heaven and hell. We're trying to help them so they won't go to hell also.
And I know, if those dead fags could come back, they would stand with me
and say: 'Don't do what I did. You don't want to end up like me.' It's all
there in Luke 16."

Ironically, Phelps says he doesn't hate gays. "I have friends that are
gay," he says. "Oh, they don't know I know they're gay, but I do. And I
preach to them. When you care about someone, you don't let that person
drive off a cliff. I just want them to change their ways and save
themselves."

F.G. "Chico" Manzanares, 60, a Wichita lawyer and longtime friend of
Phelps' who attended Washburn University Law School with him in the 1960s,
says that while he personally likes Phelps, he's in the minority.

"The community does not like them," he says.

Manzanares says that while he can still like Phelps ("You don't have to
agree with everything your friends do"), he has distanced himself from
him. "We are still friends, but I don't go around telling people that,
because if I did, I'd never get off the phone.

"I will say he is very honest, very dedicated to his beliefs, and he does
not give up. But I will also say I know I don't want my funeral picketed."

Adds Phelps, "Publicly, people say they hate me, but state politicians,
City Council members, they call me regularly for my advice."

Boston lawyer Mel Dahl, who writes a column that is syndicated to more
than a dozen gay publications nationwide, has been a Phelps watcher for a
long time. "Nothing would please me more than to have him drop off the
face of the Earth," says Dahl, who is gay. "But I write about him because
he is, indeed, newsworthy."

UNINTENDED BENEFIT

Dahl says that despite the hurt Phelps has inflicted on families of those
picketed, he thinks what Phelps has really accomplished is to "galvanize a
group of people.

"He has generated a lot of sympathy for gays," Dahl says. "It's like the
Nazis marching on Skokie. You don't have to love Jewish people to be
offended by people with swastikas."

Dahl says the people most hurt are those in Phelps' hometown. "There are a
lot of people in Topeka who have lost jobs because of Phelps," Dahl says,
recalling an incident in which an employee in a hardware store lost his
job because the Phelps group picketed the store on a rumor that the
employee was gay.

"If they find a gay person working in a restaurant or store, they'll
picket outside the shop every day," Dahl notes. "And even if the business
owner supports gay rights, he has to think of the business first."

When state charges, most of them for criminal defamation, were filed
against Phelps last year by Shawnee County District Atty. Joan Hamilton of
Topeka, Phelps challenged the state defamation laws in federal court and
succeeded in having some of them declared unconstitutional. The case is
being appealed, but the charges against Phelps in state court were
dropped.

Earlier this year, Hamilton charged Phelps and three of his children with
11 criminal counts, including defamation, disorderly conduct, battery,
falsely reporting a crime, criminal damage to property and aggravated
intimidation of a witness who was to go to court against Phelps in the
earlier arrests.

Phelps responded by sending the state media a three-page fax denouncing
Hamilton as a "demon-possessed vixen," among other names, and by having
his 11 children and five of their spouses, all of whom are lawyers, try to
have state laws on phone/fax harassment and stalking declared
unconstitutional. He lost that battle in federal court, but the county
charges are on hold until his appeals in federal court are finished. If
the laws are ultimately declared constitutional, Hamilton says she will
prosecute the Phelpses on the charges.

Phelps says that each time a member of his clan has been "put in the
hospital" by angry Kansans, the district attorney has done nothing.

Hamilton says police records prove this is untrue. "I will not ignore
criminal activity," she says, "either by the Phelpses or against them.

"They've filed charges, and my job is to make the determination whether or
not the cases should be prosecuted," she says. "In some cases in which the
Phelpses are the victims, I have prosecuted. In others, we haven't."

To protect residents from Phelps, the Topeka City Council in 1993 passed a
law banning picketing outside churches before, during or after services--a
move that was made in direct response to his funeral picketing. The ban
was supported by 47 clerics from 32 congregations and 13 denominations.
Phelps also fought that law in court and lost--another decision he is
appealing. Charges against Phelps concerning this law are still pending.

PHELPS HAS PLANS

Court battles are nothing new to Phelps. He was criticized by opponents
during his political campaigns for filing excessive lawsuits, and the
state Supreme Court disbarred him in 1979, finding that he had made false
statements in court documents. Court records from the disbarment trial
report that Phelps was "abusive, repetitive, irrelevant" to witnesses on
the opposite side.

Manzanares agrees with Phelps that he has been unjustly accused of many
wrongdoings.

"The state would do anything to get rid of him," Manzanares says. "Phelps
will go to any extremes necessary to get his point across, but, as far as
I know, he's never violated the law. And that family knows the law."

The law has everything to do with why Phelps wants to be governor. He
doesn't have strong plans regarding education or taxes. But he does have a
strong plan regarding gays.

"When I am governor, I will enforce the anti-sodomy laws of this state and
use my position as a bully pulpit to bring down Bill Clinton and his fag
administration," Phelps says.

"I would persecute gays under the full extent of the law and prosecute
media who encourage crime by promoting that lifestyle." One of his
campaign platforms is to quarantine people with AIDS.

Kansas Gov. Joan Finney has not commented on Phelps. "She never
communicates with him. We never speak of him," says her spokeswoman, Ann
Cook.

Whatever hassles he goes through, Phelps says it's worth it, even if
one--or all--of his children or grandchildren is hurt--or even killed--in
the process. "But that's not likely," he adds. "We take great
precautions."

Besides the precautions, Phelps says he has God on his side.

"People try to destroy my message, but it's all in the Bible. I'm a Bible
preacher, and that means I'm a hate preacher."