Get out your crying towels - very sad news

[Gaybutton]

Westboro Baptist Church founder Fred Phelps Sr. “on the edge of death,” son says

March 16, 2014

The estranged son of the founder of the Westboro Baptist Church said his father is "on the edge of death."

Fred Phelps Sr. became famous for organizing picket lines of brightly-colored signs carrying hateful messages against tolerance during the funerals of military personnel and famous figures. His actions led to at least two federal and several state laws restricting protests during military funerals.

In a statement on his Facebook page, Nathan Phelps, who has been estranged from his father for 30 years, said the senior Phelps was dying in hospice care in Topeka, Kan., and that he had been ex-communicated from his own church in August of 2013.

"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," Nathan Phelps wrote.

"I feel sad for all the hurt he's caused so many," he continued. "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."

Just last week, a federal judge upheld a Missouri law requiring protesters to stay at least a football-field length away from funeral sites, beginning an hour before they start until an hour after the services end.

The ruling by U.S. District Judge Fernando Gaitan Jr. caps a nearly eight-year legal fight over Missouri's funeral protest restrictions that were prompted after members of a Kansas church opposed to homosexuality protested at the funeral of a Missouri solider who had been killed in Iraq.

Missouri Attorney General Chris Koster said the law is now in effect.

"No parent who has lost a child should be confronted by the hate and intolerance of strangers, and today's ruling means parents and other loved ones will have a protective boundary from protesters," Koster said Tuesday in a written statement.

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/westboro-ba ... -son-says/



The Good Reverend Phelps

[Bob]

Please advise when he dies. I don't actually drink very often and I don't think I've ever actually had a drink to honor a given event; however, for this bastard, I'll make an exception and celebrate the world being rid of this trash.

[Gaybutton]

Please advise when he dies.

You know what I'd love to see? A group of demonstrators disrupting and making a mockery of his funeral.

[lvdkeyes]

Hell, why wait for him to die? Let's just have the funeral and bury the bastard now.

[Gaybutton]

bury the bastard now.

Why bury him while he's still alive? Cremate him. That would give him a preview of what's in store for him next . . .

[lvdkeyes]

Cremation is too quick.

[Gaybutton]

Cremation is too quick.

True - that's a good point. Maybe there is a slow cook setting . . .

[Bob]

He's finally, thankfully, taking the ultimate dirt nap. I don't believe in fairy tales but, presuming St. Peter is doing the incoming interviews, I sure as hell hope there's a rainbow flag flying over the entry desk.

[Gaybutton]

What a shame. What a terrible loss for the world. I will always remember him - every time I flush a toilet or encounter one somebody else forgot to flush.
______________________________________________________

Fred Phelps, Founder of Westboro Baptist Church, Dies at 84

By MICHAEL PAULSON

March 20, 2014

TOPEKA, Kan. — The Rev. Fred Phelps, the virulently antigay preacher who drew wide, scornful attention for staging demonstrations at military funerals as a way to proclaim his belief that God is punishing America for its tolerance of homosexuality, died here early Thursday. He was 84.

The Westboro Baptist Church confirmed the death, declaring on one of its websites, “Fred W. Phelps Sr. has gone the way of all flesh.” The church did not give a cause of death, but Mr. Phelps had been living under hospice care.

Mr. Phelps, who founded and led Westboro, a small nondenominational church in Topeka, was a much-loathed figure at the fringe of the American religious scene, denounced across the theological and political spectrum for his beliefs, his language and his tactics.

His congregation, which claims to have staged tens of thousands of demonstrations, is made up almost entirely of his family members, many of whom lived together in a small Topeka compound, although in recent years some of his children and grandchildren had broken with the group.

A disbarred civil rights lawyer who had once been honored by the N.A.A.C.P. and who ran for office repeatedly, and unsuccessfully, as a Democrat, Mr. Phelps seemed to accept the criticism if not relish it.

He believed that the United States was beyond saving, and he devoted his life to traveling with a small band of protesters to highlight what he saw as America’s sinfulness and damnation. His church’s website maintains a running tally of “people whom God has cast into hell since you loaded this page.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/21/us/fr ... at-84.html

[Maple]

Fred Phelps dies
Washington Blade March 21, 2014

The founder of a Kansas church that stages anti-LGBT pickets across the country has died.

Shirley Phelps-Roper, daughter of Fred Phelps, confirmed to the Topeka Capital-Journal that her father passed away earlier on Thursday. The founder of the Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka, Kan., had been in a local hospice for several days.

Nathan Phelps, the estranged son of Fred Phelps, wrote on his Facebook page on March 15 that his father was “on the edge of the death.”

Fred Phelps, 84, became the pastor of the Westboro Baptist Church shortly after its founding in 1955.

The small congregation gained national notoriety in 1998 after members picketed the funeral of Matthew Shepard, who was beaten to death outside Laramie, Wyo. Romaine Patterson, Jim Osborn and other friends of the gay college student used angel wings to shield his parents from Fred Phelps as he protested outside the courthouse in which the trials of the two men whom prosecutors said killed him took place.

“All the cameras and reporters turned toward them, and I cried as I saw this brave group of people stride toward him with love and strength in their hearts,” wrote Cathy Renna, a then-GLAAD staffer who worked with the Shepard family, in the Huffington Post after Fred Phelps’ death. “And that was what made the news – not him but the amazing response.”

Westboro Baptist Church members protested gay journalist Randy Shilts’ funeral and now retired New Hampshire Bishop V. Gene Robinson’s 2003 consecration.

They picketed outside the U.S. Supreme Court last March as the justices heard oral arguments in cases challenging the constitutionality of the Defense of Marriage Act and California’s Proposition 8. Members of the Westboro Baptist Church last July also gathered outside the New Castle County offices in Wilmington, Del., before state Sen. Karen Peterson and her partner, Vikki Bandy, exchanged vows on the first day same-sex couples could legally marry in Delaware.

A Maryland man, Albert Snyder, in 2006 sued Fred Phelps and other Westboro Baptist Church members after they protested the funeral of his son, U.S. Marine Lance Corporal Matthew A. Snyder, who died in a non-combat car accident in Iraq. The U.S. Supreme Court in 2008 cited the right to freedom of speech under the First Amendment in their ruling in favor of the church.

“MCC members do not celebrate the coming death of Fred Phelps,” said Rev. Nancy Wilson, moderator of the Metropolitan Community Churches, on Wednesday before Fred Phelps passed away. “We have lived under the shadow of his hateful messages, and we will not follow in his footsteps. Today, we pray for his soul and for his whole family.”

Rev. Darlene Nipper, deputy executive director of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, said in a statement that Fred Phelps and members of the Westboro Baptist Church brought “needless pain and suffering” to thousands of military families and others “at their time of greatest pain and grieving.”

“Fred Phelps will not be missed by the LGBT community, people with HIV/AIDS and the millions of decent people across the world,” said Nipper. “While it is hard to find anything good to say about his views or actions, we do give our condolences to his family members at what must be a painful time for them.”

“So his legacy will be exactly the opposite of what he dreamed, and I think we should all take a moment to remember the lives of the people he has hurt and not waste a second dancing on his grave,” added Renna in the Huffington Post. “I know I will take a moment to remember those angels turning the corner and think about how our community has turned an even bigger corner to create a world where that kind of hate no longer exists.”

http://www.washingtonblade.com/2014/03/ ... elps-dies/