Fred Phelps, Westboro Pastor, Ex-communicated, "at death's door" (NOT SATIRE)

You know Fred Phelps. You loathe Fred Phelps. You despise everything he stands for, like his family members’ infamous protests at soldiers’ funerals with their awful “God Hates Fags” signs. They’ve been a symbol for many years of the religion-based animosity against the LGBT community — to the point that they’ve been labeled a “hate group” and even the most fundamentalist Christian groups denounce his church’s activities....

Tonight, on Facebook, Nate (one of Fred's sons, excommunicated from the church) posted this:

I’ve learned that my father, Fred Phelps, Sr., pastor of the “God Hates Fags” Westboro Baptist Church, was ex-communicated from the “church” back in August of 2013. He is now on the edge of death at Midland Hospice house in Topeka, Kansas. I’m not sure how I feel about this. Terribly ironic that his devotion to his god ends this way. Destroyed by the monster he made. I feel sad for all the hurt he’s caused so many. I feel sad for those who will lose the grandfather and father they loved. And I’m bitterly angry that my family is blocking the family members who left from seeing him, and saying their good-byes.

Exactly. I never heard that they protested actual gay people’s funerals. They chose the military to dump their hatred on. Gay people can forgive him all they want....it’s the military families whose funerals were disrupted.

That is not exactly true. Keep in mind that they came to the national spotlight in 1998 for picketing at the funeral of Matthew Shepard and I believe there were others. They also protested at Michael Jackson’s funeral and they have protested at gay “pride” parades and other venues like concerts (Lady Ga Ga, the Foo Fighters) and plays (they protested at a various performances of the Laramie Project) and at sporting events that they think promote gays. They recently showed up at the University of Missouri to protest the presence Michael Sam at an NCAA basketball game. They most recently protested at the Golden Globe awards.

They have also protested a various high schools over gay-straight alliance “clubs” and such.

http://www.wesh.com/news/central-florida/osceola-county/westboro-baptist-church-protests-celebration-high-schools-gaystraight-alliance/22473744

Not that I’m advocating gay pride parades or promoting gay-straight alliances in public schools an such, but it is not true that the never protest at anything but military funerals. I think they protest or more recently just threaten to protest at military funerals and the funerals of celebrities and those who died in tornados or school shootings, etc. because that will create the most outrage and get them the most amount of national press coverage. They often now threaten but don’t show up or show up in such small numbers that they are blocked by counter protesters and folks like those from the Patriot Guard. But what they are hoping for is either a physical confrontation or being prevented from protesting all together so they can file lawsuits.

Another Al Gore campaign leader bites the dust.

Support for Al Gore:

Phelps supported Al Gore in the 1988 Democratic Party presidential primary election.;[46] in his 1984 Senate race, Gore had opposed a "gay bill of rights" and stated that homosexuality was not something that "society should affirm"), a position he had changed by 2000 when he had the support of homosexual advocacy groups for his presidential campaign. Phelps has stated that he supported Gore because of these earlier comments.[47] According to Phelps, members of the Westboro Baptist Church helped run Gore's 1988 campaign in Kansas.

Opposition to Al Gore, Bill Clinton, and Hillary Rodham Clinton:

During the 1992 presidential campaign, Phelps criticized Hillary Rodham Clinton during a speech he gave endorsing Bill Clinton's presidential campaign at the University of Kansas on October 14, 1992. In 1996 Phelps and the Westboro church opposed Clinton's re-election because of the administration's support for gay rights. The entire Westboro congregation picketed a 1997 inaugural ball,[48] denouncing Vice President Al Gore as a "famous fag pimp" (Gore had changed his positions on gay rights since 1984). In 1998, Westboro picketed the funeral of Gore's father, screaming vulgarities at Gore and telling him, "your dad's in Hell".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_Phelps#Support_for_Al_Gore

It doesn’t sound like their support for Gore lasted all that long.

I did not know that. The only time I would hear about them would be at a military funeral. I could never figure out why they were protesting them if their mission was to protest gays (other than the obvious notoriety they would receive).

I found this interesting: Westboro Baptist Church

In March 2014, reports emerged that the founder of WBC was in very poor health.[12][5] Phelps' estranged son Nathan has predicted the Westboro Baptist Church may fall into both leadership and theological crisis when Fred dies, because he is the binding figure and because their beliefs hold that they are immortal, which will be disproven with the death of a member, although this is not necessarily the case since other reports indicated that Phelps may have been excommunicated from the church, which would render him no longer immortal according to their theology.[13][14]

Maybe he was excommunicated because he was dying. They're going to have to excommunicate everyone eventually since death is an inevitability last time I checked.

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