Anti-gay preacher Phelps dies

He formed Westboro church, which picketed funerals

TOPEKA, Kan. - The Rev. Fred Phelps, the virulently anti-gay preacher who drew attention for staging demonstrations at military funerals as a way to proclaim his belief that God was punishingAmerica for its tolerance of homosexuality, died late Wednesday. He was 84.

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

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

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

He believed 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.” He was highly litigious and employed crude language to call attention to his cause. The slogan “God Hates Fags” appeared on the church’s picket signs and remains in its Web address.

He sued President Ronald Reagan for establishing diplomatic relations with the Vatican, denounced the Rev. Jerry Falwell, who called Phelps a “first-class nut,” and picketed the funerals of former Vice President Al Gore’s father and former President Bill Clinton’s mother.

Phelps began protesting the funerals of people with AIDS in 1991. In 1998, he attracted global attention and condemnation when he picketed the funeral of Matthew Shepard, a gay Wyoming college student whose beating death led to a national debate over hate crimes.

In 2006, Phelps explained his thinking by describing his analysis of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

“We told you, right after it happened five years ago,” he said, “that the deadly events of 9/11 were direct outpourings of divine retribution, the immediate visitation of God’s wrath and vengeance and punishment for America’s horrendous sodomite sins, that worse and more of it was on the way.”

He added: “God is no longer with America but is now America’s enemy. God himselfis now America’s terrorist.”

Phelps’ tactics prompted a variety of legislative bodies to establish buffer zones to limit the ability of protesters to interfere with mourners at funerals.

In 2011, Phelps won a legal victory when the Supreme Court ruled, 8-1, that his church’s protests were a protected form of speech. The ruling preserved the buffer zones but found that the father of a slain soldier was not entitled to damages for emotional distress caused by the protest.

Fred Waldron Phelps was born Nov. 13, 1929, in Meridian, Miss. He said he had been admitted to the U.S. Military Academy at West Point but that after high school he had what his official biography called “a profound religious experience” and decided instead to pursue a Christian higher education - first at Bob Jones College in Tennessee and then, when the institution moved, at Bob Jon es University in South Carolina. He did not graduate.

He married Margie Marie Simms in 1952, and in 1954 the couple moved to Topeka. They had 13 children, 54 grandchildren and seven great-grandchildren, according to the church’s website. Phelps established Westboro Baptist in 1955. He earned a law degree in 1964 from Washburn University School of Law in Topeka. He succeeded in winning settlements in discrimination cases he filed as a civil-rights lawyer.

Phelps was disbarred in Kansas in 1979 for professional misconduct in connection with a lawsuit he filed against a court clerk who he said had failed to have a transcript ready in time. In 1989, after being accused of misconduct by nine federal judges, he agreed to stop practicing law in the federal courts as well.

His focus on protests since 1991 was relentless: His church claimed to hold multiple events a day while issuing news releases using coarse and inflammatory language, some of which celebrated the deaths of U.S. soldiers, saying they were God’s way of punishing America for enabling homosexuality.

This week, an estranged son of Phelps said his father had been excommunicated from his own church. The church did not respond to that assertion.

Answering inquiries about Phelps’ health, however, the church summed up its message, saying: “God still hates fags, God still hates fag enablers and any nation that embraces that sin as an ‘innocent’ lifestyle can expect to incur the wrath of God. Repent or Perish.”

Front Section, Pages 2 on 03/21/2014

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