Posted on 03/21/2014 10:42:24 AM PDT by Olog-hai
Fred Phelps Sr. led his small Topeka church for more than two decades in a bellicose crusade against gays and lesbians, saying they were worthy of death and openly declaring—often at military funerals—that the U.S. was doomed because of its tolerance of homosexuality.
But in targeting grieving families of troops killed overseas, taunting people entering other churches and carrying signs with anti-gay slurs and vulgar language or symbols, Phelps and his Westboro Baptist congregation created public circuses that may have helped the gay-rights movement.
Following Phelps’ death Wednesday at age 84, some gay-rights advocates suggested that he and his church created sympathy for lesbians, gays, bisexuals and the transgendered. Religious leaders who oppose gay marriage also said the pastor’s tactics clouded the debate over such issues and put them on the defensive in discussing both policy and faith. …
(Excerpt) Read more at hosted.ap.org ...
It is a curious question what was going on behind the scenes there. The Westburros never showed up to sound their displeasure at any “gay pride” event. They poured out their vitriol at events that were probably the least likely of any to have sympathy for the “gay movement.” They were grand distractions, colossal nuisances.
It's as if Hannibal Lector were available to represent, in the media and pop culture, epicureans.
hey...you are RIGHT about that!
No, instead they showed up at the funerals of innocent schoolchildren and war heroes.
Go Figure....
Aiding “gay rights”, yes,
but more directly, demonizing any reasonable opposition to the anti-Christian gay agenda.
I would have thought them discredited as a liberal false flag once Phelps’ affiliation with the Dems was exposed. But doublethink was in action among the libs.
Why, it’s almost as if the whole WBC thing might be a false-flag operation to make actual fundamentalist Christians look like total nut jobs, or something.
In other news, I am shocked, SHOCKED, to find gambling going on in this establishment.
I did figure, and it looks like the devil was behind this.
The devil often takes a perfectly good moral issue and leads people to a perfectly horrible conclusion about what to do with it.
Homosexuals need the love of Christ, same as all other sinners do. I could see protesting weak church outreach to this segment, but that’s not what the Westburros did.
The senior Rev. Phelps had been associated with the Democrats, which would seems to make it illogical for them to pit themselves against a cause dear to Democrats.
Because they found out early on that picketing funerals got them the most publicity. Picket a Gay-Pride parade? Big whoop. Announce that you're going to picket the funeral of a 9 year old killed at the Gabby Giffords shooting? Suddenly everyone is talking about you.
You have to remember that there aren't but a handful of Westboro Baptist members. With so much to hate and so few resources you have to go for the most bang for your buck.
False flag group set up by leftist elitists in Liberalandia to make us in flyover country look bad.
Some? You've got to be a complete moron not to see otherwise.
That might have been true earlier in the game, but now with “gay pride” being a media darling, should the Westburros want to show up at one, they’d get noticed all right. They’d probably be the center of a highly publicized fight.
Possibly. Another reason why not to go into the enemy camp, so to speak. You'll notice that in all their other activities they announce it well in advance so the police can plan on a line between them and their target. That'd be hard to do at a Gay Pride event, and while the Westboro Baptist mob may rejoice in the death of others they aren't to pay the ultimate sacrifice for their own cause.
There is a limit to their sincerity, in other words... surprise.
They aren’t trusting in a Savior. They’re gratifying their own egos.
As accurate a summary of their activities as any I guess. Regardless, Fred's passing isn't going to change anything. They'll still be out there picketing or, more often, threatening to picket every opportunity they get.
Look into Phelps’s background. He was left wing civil rights lawyer and local Democratic party official. He never had anything to do with conservatives or the religious right and his “church” was a phony operation that consisted only of his family members.
The whole thing stinks to high heaven.
At best they're a group of jerks looking for easy lawsuit money.
At worst they're a group of jerks trying to make Christianity look bad.
But smells good to low hell.
He was a Democrat and no real church wanted to associate with him, yet the media will continue to present him as an example of the “Christian Right.”
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