From kevyn@KSUVM.KSU.EDUFri Jul 14 14:22:40 1995 Date: Fri, 14 Jul 1995 14:08:53 -0500 (CDT) From: Kevyn Jacobs To: "Kansas Queer News [KQN]" Subject: (SAN DIEGO, PHELPS) Fred Phelps interview [ Send all responses to Gayeditor@AOL.COM only. Any responses to the list or list-owners will be returned to you. ] The following is reprinted with permission from Update, Southern California's Gay and Lesbian weekly newspaper email gayeditor@aol.com for reprint permission Kansas Preacher Brings His Message Of Hate To San Diego By Petr Pronsati Editor SAN DIEGO - His phone number is listed; his wife answers the phone. He is soft spoken and almost friendly, with a fatherly chuckle in his voice when he talks. He almost sounds like your favorite uncle when he chats about the "humongous signs" he and his group will be carrying at this Saturday's Gay Pride Parade. He will not be marching with P-FLAG, however. He will lead his own group of 25-30 people, most of whom will be flying in from Topeka, Kansas. He told Update that his favorite sign is "God Hates Fags." He is the Reverend Fred Phelps of Westboro Baptist Church and he is most widely known for picketing funerals of people who have died of AIDS. He has already taken his followers to Pride celebrations in New York, Washington, D.C., San Francisco and many other major cities across the nation. His flyers say that his group pickets "to educate and warn" about how "the queer lifestyle leads into the jaws of death." His manner is so calm and matter of fact that you momentarily wonder to yourself whether you find him repulsive or fascinating. In a phone conversation on Monday, Phelps was direct and eloquent in his delivery. When asked how he could preach that God hates anyone, he said, "Because that is the plain teaching of the almighty Bible.... You can preach the Bible without preaching the hatred of God toward the impenitent." He then quoted Romans 9:13 to prove his point: "Jacob have I loved, but Esau have I hated." Phelps asserts that God hated Esau because he was impenitent. It is that message that the 75,000 attendees of the parade will be faced with on Saturday. How will they react? Brenda Schumacher, executive director of Pride, feels they will be up to the challenge. She said, "I think that this will have a galvanizing effect on the community." She went on to say that the best reaction to Phelps's group is no response. "A unified, dignified and restrained response is really the best defense strategy we can implement." It won't be easy though. "I think," Schumacher added, "the community should expect to see some of the most vile, hate-filled provocative attacks, which could elicit a great deal of rage. This is not your run-of-the-mill hate monger." Phelps tells a different story. "I'm not mad at fags," he says, casually tossing off a word that can make some of the most docile in our community see red. "In fact, I got an award last year from a Christian group that said I love fags more than anyone else because I love them enough to tell them the truth." He has "told them the truth" in more than 5,500 pickets over the last 213 weeks. He explained, "Any important fag affair, we are there to tell the other side of the story." More than once during the conversation, Phelps would add, as an aside, "I'm just a Bible preacher, my friend," as if to diffuse any hostility that might be headed his way. Ironically, it is his subdued demeanor that can be the most infuriating. And that is what worries Schumacher a bit. "Their strategy," she told Update, "and what makes their protests so successful, is their ability to provoke a hysterical response from individuals within the Gay and Lesbian community. And those are precisely the images and representations of a Lesbian or Gay person that [Phelps] would like to present to the world. "So, what I would ask the community is that we don't fall into that trap - that we allow their stinging message of hate stand alone as an example of why we need to march each year. An image of them frothing at the mouth and holding up misspelled, hate-filled signs is really to our advantage. "So," she concluded, "ignore the taunting. Stay cool, calm, dignified and proud."