by Patrick Appel
Matt Sigl calls Fred Phelps “a great friend to the gay rights movement”:
In his outrageous lunacy, his relentless desire for media attention, and the purity of his hatefulness, Phelps did something that the gay rights movement couldn’t accomplish on its own: expose the utter depravity and heartlessness of homophobia. … Phelps probably secretly troubled the pious and faithful more than he ever got underneath any homosexual’s skin, for in him the conservative Christian had to confront just what God really thought of homosexuals after all. The subject is not a pleasant one for many leading religious leaders; just watch the milquetoast Joel Osteen wince when forced to comment on it. Or Cardinal Dolan for that matter.
Alyssa Rosenberg is on the same page:
[A]s the gay rights movement has worked to define lesbian, gay, and bisexual Americans as people who want the same things as their heterosexual counterparts, including marriage and family stability, Fred Phelps and his followers gave organizers a perfect image to organize in opposition to. If Americans had to choose between getting comfortable with the idea of homosexuality or being seen as extreme, hateful, and rude, in increasing numbers, they seem to be choosing the former. Fred Phelps has caused many people enormous amounts of agony. But in doing so, he played a critical role in defining the choice between hatred and acceptance, and in accidentally expanding the tolerance of the very people he feared so much.
Jay Michaelson adds:
As symbol, Phelps was the reductio ad absurdum of many conservative beliefs. Tea Partiers think Obama is a socialist, Birthers think he’s a Kenyan, and Phelps said he was the antichrist. Tea Partiers think America has lost its way, Glenn Beck thinks it’s time for revolution, and Phelps said America will be destroyed by God for losing its moral grounding.
Erica Cook is against cheering Phelps’s death:
This is the chance to show the world how we are better people. We aren’t people who make the death of a man the reason to celebrate, no matter who that man is. We are the better people. And no matter who he is to us, he was someone’s father, grandfather, brother, and uncle. We may still be fighting against them, but today they need the respect they didn’t have the capacity to give when it was us. If we act in any way other than respectful we become no better than them. In stooping to that we relinquish the right to call what they do wrong.
Russell Saunders is declares to “hell with all that”:
Fred Phelps was a blight. He was a receptacle for the absolute worst, most despicable kind of hatred humanity is capable of producing. The god of his imagining was a demon of bile, and his appearance before the public eye was a festering sore.
I do not regret the happiness I feel knowing I no longer share an oxygen supply with him. I do not believe in the existence of a hell, even for the likes of people like him. If there is a judgment that awaits him, let his loved ones hope it is before a judge more merciful than the one he worshiped.
Richard Kim unpacks Phelps’s worldview:
Especially in recent years, he possessed almost no followers, no influence, no allies. What distinguishes him from any other raving street-corner prophet is the simple-mindedness of his message. In the place of the modern religious emphasis on God’s love, Phelps ranted on about God’s hate—for fags, for America, for Muslims, for Catholics, gun massacre victims and US troops. If American exceptionalism is in some way an attempt to sacralize the profane (America is blessed, its soliders and citizens blessed), Phelps merely reversed polarities, swapping in eternal damnation. It was a juvenile substitution. And to discuss Phelps as if he were a morally vexing and profound evil is to dignify him with a complexity he lacked. His hatred was banal.
Tom Junod met the Westboro Baptist Church clan once:
I don’t remember anything they said. What I do remember was how their children looked, and the keen and nearly overwhelming sense of loss the appearance of their children elicited. There were so many of them, for one thing; the Westboro congregation turned out to be a young one, and even some of the lank-haired women holding signs and spitting epithets turned out be, on closer inspection, teenagers. And they were all so poor. I’m not speaking simply of their clothes, and their teeth, and their grammar, or any of the other markers of class in America. I’m speaking of their poverty of spirit. Whether they were sixteen or six, they looked to be already exhausted, already depleted, with greasy hair, dirty faces, and circles under their eyes that had already hardened into purplish dents. They looked as if they were far from home, and didn’t know where they were going next. They looked, in truth, not just poorly taken care of, but abused, if not physically then by a belief inimical to childhood—the belief that to be alive is to hate and be hated.
Dave Weigel notes the relationship Phelps had with the media:
We can agree on this: He was hilariously stupid, and stupid people provide good copy. For a generation, ever since his flamboyant “God Hates Fags” signs went viral (before there was even a modern Internet for things to go viral on), journalists would explore Phelps’ sad little world and bait him.
David Von Drehle wishes Westboro hadn’t gotten so much coverage:
As a reporter and editor in some big newsrooms over the past 30 years, I watched as one journalist after another took Phelps’s bait, then tried to spit out the hook once the dishonesty and shabbiness of the man’s enterprise grew clear. You could fill a gymnasium with the scribes who swore off coverage of Westboro over the years. The only problem was, new and naïve reporters were being minted all the time, ready to believe that Phelps represented some larger darkness beyond the pit of his own person.
Donald McCarthy joins the conversation:
When even Rush Limbaugh rejects the group, you know it’s a rather pathetic target to take on. At this point, saying you hate the Westboro Baptist Church is about as easy as saying you hate the Ku Klux Klan; not exactly a profound statement worthy of approval. A blasting of the WBC is the equivalent of a late night talk show host joking about Kim Kardashian.
The WBC is a target that makes everyone feel good and allows them to ignore mainstream religions’ homophobic tendencies that are more subtle than the signs the WBC members hold. It’s great that the church has provided such a horrible face for homophobia that people now balk from homophobia much more than they used to, but at some point the group’s exposure helps them infinitely more than it helps society.
Scott Shackford hopes the media will finally stop paying attention to the Phelps family:
[T]he death of Fred Phelps probably won’t result in any changes from the family, but it’s a good excuse for the rest of us to move on. I’m sure that right now some dreadful editorial cartoonist is sketching Phelps being met at the pearly gates by all the soldiers his family picketed. It’s true that the solution for bad speech is more speech. But the solution to crazy obsession is not becoming obsessed right back at them. Stop picking at this scab.
(Photo: Fred Phelps, former leader of the Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka, KS. By Michael S. Williamson/The Washington Post via Getty Images)
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