LifeSite.net has an informative article about Fred Phelps and how his extreme hate actually helps homosexual causes because he engenders sympathy for them.
The article also includes some information, and links to other information, that casts some new light on the Fred Phelps.
It turns out that Fred Phelps is not a Baptist Minister, his actions, however, do raise sympathy for the homosexual cause and at the same time bring into disrepute and ridicule the Christian faith. Further, according to Wikipedia and Kansas Voter View, Mr. Phelps is a registered Democrat who ran in five Kansas Democratic primaries including Senator and campaigned for the then Senator Al Gore in the 1988 presidential campaign (photos back this up) culminating in invitations to both Clinton-Gore inaugurations.
Mr. Phelps lives in a large upscale home with his grown children, several of whom are graduate lawyers. Mr. Phelps and his family mysteriously arrive to picket across the country during sensitive times in the cultural war between homosexuals and mainstream society.
Wow. I thought the Democrat Party was the party of tolerance, diversity and inclusion. Something's wrong with somebody somewhere!
I also found it interesting that while this guy seems to have no visible income, he has money to run all over the country, protesting not only homosexuals, but soldiers and pretty much anybody he gets an itch to hate.
In fact, Phelps is so wacked that some like Illinois Family Institute Executive Director Peter LaBarbera have wondered if he might be a "plant" by homosexual activists to make people of traditional values look bad (after all, he does claim to be in a Baptist church in Kansas).
“Politically and culturally speaking, Phelps and his protesters serve as a crude caricature of pro-family traditionalists who oppose the normalization of homosexuality,” LaBarbera stated in his column Monday. “Fred makes an easy target for the media and secularists who are tempted (partly by their own prejudices) to paint any opposition to ‘gay rights’ as hateful. For this reason, I have sometimes wondered if Phelps and his lawyerly clan are ‘gay plants.’”
If the Answers.com article about Phelps is accurate, it seems more likely that he's just completely off his rocker:
During 1993–94 interviews with the Topeka Capital-Journal, the four Phelps children (out of thirteen, Mark, Nate, Katherine and Dotty) who had left the church asserted that their father's religious beliefs were either nonexistent to begin with or have dwindled down to nearly nothing. They insist that Westboro actually serves to enable a paraphilia of Phelps, wherein he is literally addicted to hatred.
And
Two of his sons, Mark and Nate, insist that the church is actually a carefully planned cult that allows Phelps to see himself as a demigod, wielding absolute control over the lives of his family and congregants, essentially turning them into slaves that he can use for the sole purpose of gratifying his every whim and acting as the structure for his delusion that he is the only righteous man on Earth.[17] In 1995, Mark Phelps wrote a letter to the people of Topeka to this effect; it was run in the Topeka Capital-Journal.[18] The children's claim is partially backed up by B.H. McAllister, the Baptist minister who ordained Phelps. McAllister said in a 1993 interview that Phelps developed a delusion wherein he was one of the few people on Earth worthy of God's grace and that everyone else in the world was going to Hell, and that salvation or damnation could be directly obtained by either aligning with or opposing Phelps. As of 2006, Phelps maintains this belief.
The Answers.com article goes on to point out that Phelps is not only anti-homosexual, but is anti-Swedish, anti-flag, and is a Clinton/Gore/Castro/Saddam Hussein supporter.
Whatever Fred Phelps is, he is definitely not a Christian in good standing, his his "God hates fags" philosophy denies the love and grace that God has expressed toward all sinners throughout the Bible. He is not representative of Christians, Baptists, Republicans or conservatives by any stretch of the imagination.
2 comments:
>Wow. I thought the Democrat Party
>was the party of tolerance,
>diversity and inclusion. Something's
>wrong with somebody somewhere!
Come on... To suggest that Phelps is a good representative of the democratic party is as ludacris would be saying that, because he's a baptist member, he is well a represents conservative Christian ideals. Something is WRONG: Phelps' viewpoints are reflective of a tiny, tiny extreme minority and to group him with a political party is meaningless.
You're right, Banjo Bob. I was just having a little dig at the Left, which never misses an opportunity to paint Fred Phelps as representative of Christians since Felps says he's the pastor of a Baptist Church.
When there's a large number of a certain segment that acts a certain way, there's some legitimacy in painting with a broader brush, but that's not the case with Phelps. He's not representative of Democrats, Republicans, Christians or atheists.
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