Funerals of fallen soldiers. Gay pride parades. High school proms. And now Fred Phelps’ Westboro clan is heading to Comic-Con on July 22 because … oh who the hell cares. This group is so over-saturated they’ve blown their wad when it comes to effectively countering any movement they target. What’s next: Protesting the opening of a new Starbucks? Playground ribbon cutting ceremonies? Thursdays? [image via]
Tomer
Definitely, their next target should be – GOD HATES THE WESTBORO BAFTIST CHURCH.
Lanjier
They are doing God’s work, for God will strike down the Batman and the Catgirl when he cometh again! 5:10. So as he demands loose-fitting garments on they precious gifts. 7:3 As Christopher Walken pushed Michelle Pfeiffer out the window, so shall Jesus come again and be reborn in the spirit, but without the claws, to drop wrath on the spooging infidels and same-sex visigoths. 7:9
hardvice
This saddens me.
Knowing that God hated me—me, personally!—used to make me feel special and different. Nowadays, it seems like he hates everybody and I have to ask myself “was the whole thing just a lie? was God just using me?”
These days, God hates dead soldiers, Sweden, Lady Gaga, America, Comic-Con, and who knows what else. The hateful honeymoon is over.
Now that there’s just a place in hell for me, not a *special* place in hell, the thrill is gone.
ron
@hardvice: LOL…..I feel the same way. Now that I found out a cousin of mine is gay also, I’m not the only “special” one in my family. The thrill is gone.
Mike
Can’t someone go an protest outside their “church building” ?
GEW
@Mike: Sure, but they’d take it as a badge of honour glorifying in the “persecution” as proof that they’re doing god’s will because only the righteous get persecuted. 😛
If ANYthing, they should be the poster family for the perils of rampant inbreeding.
Steve
Fred Phelps decides to visit a new vacation destination every few weeks. He takes a few members of his family and a few signs, and finds some plausible protest target near the destination. They spend a couple hours during their vacation waving signs at the cameras, and charge the entire cost of the vacation to the church. You can be sure they go first class, especially when the cameras are not watching. When they are not traveling, he draws a salary, preaches essentially the same sermon every Sunday, and plans the next trip.
Seems like a pretty good scam. Each trip only needs to generate enough publicity to keep the donations coming in for another month. He can get national publicity without having to pay for it, so he doesn’t have much trouble convincing a few thousand people to send money.
To bad he is harming so many people in the process.
Dollie
I reside in Denver, which seems to have become their home-away-from-home. Nobody even takes them seriously anymore. Protesting at funerals/high schools is certainly morally wrong, but nobody is listening. Bigots hate them (including the KKK), your average Republican suburbanites don’t care, and anyone with a conscience knows that they are malevolent and say nothing worth taking to heart. They don’t have the capacity to recruit, nor do they want to. I cannot think of a less threatening hate group.
Enron
You know, I have been doing some bible studies with Jehovah’s witnesses lately (no way to escape it, they come as they please, so I have to tolerate them for the 3 hours). Yes, they do disagree with homosexuality too, but hey at least they are not acting like the Westboro clan. Anyway, one of things I am really accepting and believing in this religion is the belief in Gods idea of creation.
Why would a God of love, a God who wants the best for all his human creations, send his “own” human creation to hell and have them burnt in fire just because they have an attraction for the opposite sex? Then, it would be proving that God is imperfect since he is the one who creates us – unless its some automated system up there and a summer intern who doesn’t know how to run it. If God is powerful and almighty, then that means he would know that what is being conceived is going to turn out Gay no matter what. Seriously, you are trying to tell me there are persons out there who specifically choose to be gay? Taking into account, this is a ‘practice’ that has been around for ages, from Sodom and Gomorrah, Greeks, into every single culture that exist on earth. It can’t be coincidence or the ‘wrong’ environment’ so many times over now.
Why would a person purposely choose this “lifestyle”, knowing that they have the deluxe ‘free will’ that God gave them to change and stick to the opposite sex which others see as right. I am sorry to disappoint, but I just don’t have any sexual attractions to a woman, never have, never will, I can’t help it and I can’t change it, its just who I am.
If God has a problem with that (which I am sure he doesn’t), then let it be between me and him, stop deciding for him and judging for him. We don’t even know if he has some special preference for the Gays. Look how he pulled a Ricky Martin and Critiano Ronaldo, by having Jesus through a surrogate birth. Its just because Queerty and Perez weren’t around back then to speculate and report on things. 😉
B
QUEERTY: “What Won’t Westboro Baptist Protest?”
…. the answer is obviously Fred Phelps!
Aaron in Honolulu
@hardvice: fucking hilarious…
PLAYS WELL WITH OTHERS
Good Gawd, these band of inbred vile reprehensive savage scumbags are nothing more than pathetic attention whores. They stage a demonstration with sometimes as few as five of them they get coverage in the local media as if there were a thousand of these maggots converging. I had the absolute pleasue one year at Gay pride where hundreds of the Gays suddenly in unison began chanting at them “FUCK YOU” over and over again. Suddenly these bold, brave rightous defenders of all things right began to cry like bitches demanding the Police “protect them from the mob” Yet no one was physically touching them nor threatning to do so. The Police said they could do nothing, and they slithered away cowering like the cowards they are………
If like a spoiled bratty child demanding attention, everyone simply ignore them they would slither away to the vile rocks they crawled out from under………
Lars
I wish you homosexuals would admit that many people are not happy with their homosexuality or lesbianism, and that this conflict is internal, based on legitimate, intelligent rational conclusions–not just the result of a so-called “homophobic” society which is forcing guilt upon people who don’t conform to a heterosexual ethic.
Stop throwing out the cheap, inaccurate labels like “internalized homophobia” to explain our motivations.
Argos
@No.13-
YOUR motivations really don’t have jack shit to do with other people living their lives the way that THEY see fit. And regardless of your baseless opinion that ‘many’ gay people just hate homosexuality in general, and it has nothing to do with a society that treats them like 2nd class trash (worse really in many cases, as some LGBT’s have been murdered merely because they exist), the FACT is that one of the most basic understandings of human psychology is that when a large percentage of people are unaccepting of certain behaviors (regardless of how benign those behaviors may be), the person exhibiting such behaviors generally suffers psychologically for it. Nobody wants to be treated as a pariah simply for existing.
It’s no coincidence that as acceptance of the LGBT community continues to increase, there are more out, happy, well-adjusted LGBT’s around than ever before. Deal with it.
Argos
@No.7
The Westboro Baptist Church primarily consists of the Phelps extended family. Many of them are fairly successful lawyers (and Freddy himself was actually on the CORRECT side of some of the civil rights battles many years ago), and that is how they fund their church, through their own money.
They probably do receive some donations here and there (from people that are probably extremely paranoid about anyone ever finding out about it, especially in light of their claims about how ‘God’ loves killing American soldiers), but the vast majority of their funding comes from their own family.
One of the tactics that they’ve become quite used to employing over the past few years is threatening to protest at a location, and then when people find out that they are going to be there, promising not to protest if they are allowed on on-air interview (mostly done by that vile hag, Shirley), which basically amounts to free press. I’m always happier when they protest anyway and they are outnumbered by counter-protesters 10 to 1. It makes my day. =)
the crustybastard
It’s not a protest. It’s just more anti-gay harassment.
rlsegura
It is stuff like this that makes other people realize how stupid it is to associate themselves with beliefs similar to these people. So I would say it is a good thing. 🙂
SDDinDallas
It’s funny that I saw this article posted on Queerty today. The Westboro Baptist Church was actually just here visiting us in Dallas. They protested the Holocaust museum, a couple churches they disagreed with, then finished out their day at the LGBT Resource Center of Dallas.
The Resource Center found, what I think to be, a great way to use the WBC protests against them. The center helps provide services, food, housing, etc to people living with HIV/AIDS. Their ice machine had recently broken. They decided to turn the protest into a fundrasier. They asked people to donate a certain amount of money for every so many minutes that WBC protested. Donations came in from all over the country from people who heard about this. So, because of the Westboro Baptist Church the center was able to get a new ice machine, get new brakes on thier van, and buy a plethora of other supplies that the center needed.
Gigi
I feel sorry for their children. They worried about The Gays raising kids, how about the Phelps family? The youngsters don’t stand a chance.