Westboro Baptist Church (God Hates Fags)

Comment and Opinion

Westboro Baptist Church (God Hates Fags)

This site received an Encouragement Award in the 1999 Millenium Project Awards. The award was announced in the following words:

Once one of the most reviled sites on the web, the Westboro Baptist Church is now a tame shadow of its former self. I remember when you couldn't read a page there without being told a dozen times what it said in Leviticus about who you could lie down with. I am giving this site an Encouragement Award in the hope that they can lift their game and restore the site to its former glory. Come on, Fred, get in off the streets and back in front of the computer, fire up the Rantomatic™ and give us some of that old-time gay bashing. Everybody needs somebody to hate, and we want you back.

Highly Commended 2004 In 2004, this site did even better by being Highly Commended. The citation read:

This site was given an Encouragement Award in 1999, and this year that encouragement has paid off and the site is in a new category. This was achieved by the effort put in by Pastor Fred Phelps after the tsunami which devastated the countries around the Indian Ocean on December 26, 2004. Fred put the blame straight onto God. He issued two press releases, one headed "Thank God for Tsunami & 2,000 dead Swedes", and one headed "Thank God for Tsunami. Thank God for 3,000 dead Americans!". Here is Rev Fred on why God sent the tsunami. Remember that Phelps is a Christian.

The tsunami was an adumbration of the wrath of God, a harbinger of things to come: that Great Day of Judgment. Amos 3:6 "Shall a trumpet be blown in the city, and the people not be afraid? shall there be evil in a city, and the LORD hath not done it?" That word translated "evil" there is means distress, misery, injury, calamity. The answer, of course, to the rhetorical question posed in this verse is a resounding "NO!" See also Romans 1:18 "For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who hold the truth in unrighteousness;" And you wonder if this is the wrath of God? The lands affected by this judgment from God aren't just full of idolatry; we're talking about places (think Thailand) that are hot spots where American businessmen travel for the express purpose of fornicating with young Asian children. It is a thriving industry over there; many of these girls are taken into that business when they are seven years old or younger. "Mortify therefore your members which are upon the earth; fornication, uncleanness, inordinate affection, evil concupiscence, and covetousness, which is idolatry: For which things' sake the wrath of God cometh on the children of disobedience:" Col 3:5-6. And you wonder if this is the wrath of God? Not to mention the fact that those Asian countries weren't the only ones affected by the tsunami. Do you realize that among the dead and missing are 3,500 Swedes and over 3,000 Americans? Sweden, who recently jailed a Gospel preacher for a month because he preached Bible verses and sentiments about the abomination that is the homosexual lifestyle from his own pulpit to his own congregation. America, who is awash in diseased fag feces & semen, and is an apostate land of the sodomite damned. And you wonder if this is the wrath of God?

Appearing one more time, this site was a joint winner with the Eisenstein Medical Centers in winning an Encouragement Award in the 2014 Millenium Awards. The citation read:

Both these organisations lost their figureheads during 2014 and need encouragement to continue with their good works. It is sometimes difficult to carry on after the death of the founder, but I am sure that someone will take up Fred Phelps's cudgel against the tidal wave of faggotry threatening civilisation and will ensure that soldiers' funerals continue to be picketed, just as I am sure that someone will step into Mayer Eisenstein's shoes to make sure that autistic children will continue to be placed at risk of sterilisation by very expensive castration medications.

The loss of these two men is a loss for us all. We all need people to look down on and despise.

They object too much (18/5/2002)
I sometimes find myself having a small chuckle at web sites which really should appal and offend me. The usual reason for this is that something is so outrageous that the site starts to look like parody. These sites are actually less dangerous than the ones which present bigotry or lies in a calm, dispassionate manner, but they often attract a lot of attention. Two examples floated past me this week, although both have been listed here for a long time. The first is the famous Westboro Baptist Church, better known as "God Hates Fags", owned by Fred Phelps. This site used to be a lot crazier than it is now, but it is still pretty badly unhinged. The second site is The Hal Turner Show owned, obviously, by mad radio announcer Hal Turner. While Fred is a single-issue hater and ranter, Hal is a bit more eclectic and adds racism to the religious bigotry and homophobia. (Hal seems to be having some trouble deciding whose side he is on in the Middle East at the moment. As he hates both Arabs and Jews, he doesn't know quite what to do about the Palestinians.) I'm not condoning or supporting what either Phelps or Turner has to say (although I will defend etc – Voltaire), but I think the attention and reaction they get is out of proportion to the harm they can cause. The ones we can laugh at are far less dangerous than the slick, reasonable sounding ones who politely spread hate on talk shows, in books and on the Internet.

Fred's back! (7/1/2006)
Just when you think that things can't get any worse, the Reverend Fred Phelps from the Westboro Baptist Church makes a reappearance. His latest stunt is to threaten to protest at the memorial service for the twelve miners killed in the recent mine collapse in West Virginia. Please remember that this man claims to be a Christian and to live strictly according to God's rules as set out in the Bible. You can click here to see the whole thing in all its vileness. I was pleased that he didn't picket my Christmas lunch because I was violating the instructions in Leviticus, where it says "Whatsoever hath no fins nor scales in the waters, that shall be an abomination unto you".

A death (26/1/2008)
It has been impossible to pick up a newspaper or turn on the television news around my place this week without hearing the name Heath Ledger. His death hasn't just driven the media cult of celebrity to heights of frenzy not seen since Britney Spears' underwear was not seen, but has also triggered outbursts of lunacy from some of the other usual suspects. (This was not too surprising, as Ledger died on the day of a full moon.) First out of the blocks were the 911 Truthers, who knew for certain that he was murdered because he was about to reveal the truth about September 11, 2001. Why an Australian actor who wasn't in New York at the time might know something was not explained, but I am prepared to predict that similar claims will be made about any celebrity who dies in New York at any time. (I am going to suggest that John Lennon was murdered because he was about to write a song about the very early planning stages of the attack. He had joined the conspiracy in order to get revenge for the years when he was denied entry to the USA because of a conviction for marijuana possession.)

Then I turned on my television to see the awe-inspiring sight of the Reverend Fred Phelps sentencing all Australians to eternity in hell because one of us dared to act in a fictional work which contained scenes of homosexual activity. Fred has promised to picket Heath Ledger's funeral, but I have two messages for Fred: Perth is a long way from Topeka, and Australians might be a lot less tolerant of his idiocy than the folks at home.

No limit should be placed on the disgust (21/2/2009)
I mentioned recently that a loony "Christian" group had blamed the more than 200 deaths in the recent Australian bushfires on a change in the laws relating to abortion. It didn't take long for someone to trump that idiocy, and it was no surprise that the new outrage should come from the rotting brain cells of Fred Phelps from the Westboro Baptist Church. You can see his latest media release here.

I have just finished watching the memorial service on television, and what I saw was people from every part of the country's political, religious and ethnic spectra united in a common cause. I don't know if the promised delegation from the Phelps asylum turned up, but if they did I hope that the crowd temporarily abandoned the almost universal Australian trait of tolerance and threw them into the Yarra River to the accompaniment of loud cries of "Go fornicate yourself". I try not to think ill about people, but I can see how an argument could be made that the world would be a better place without Fred Phelps and his followers. In a spirit of charity, of course, I would hope that if he dies his death is soon, protracted and very, very painful.

[You can see more about the fires here.]

Inside the asylum (27/6/2009)
I'm not sure how isolated from the English-speaking world you would have to have been in the last week not to be aware that singer Michael Jackson and actor Farrah Fawcett had died. Predictably, Fred Phelps and his disgusting acolytes immediately declared that both were whoremongers and fag enablers and promised to picket their funerals. I hope that if he does turn up at either the fans can put aside their grief for a few moments in order to engage in some good old fashioned lynching. (In a wonderful moment of Schadenfreude I discovered that for a short period this week the abhorrent godhatesfags.com site had been hijacked by a pornography site. Unfortunately the next time I looked it was back in its normal, much more offensive form.)

Puke!

Phelps might despise Michael Jackson, but that didn't stop him from stealing one of Jackson's songs. If anyone needed any evidence of the insanity of the Westboro Baptist Church, this is it. You should watch the lot, but get the vomit bucket out for some child abuse starting at about the five-minute mark.

Have you ever wondered how the Westboro Baptists might react to a suggestion that one of their number was gay? The Australian satirical television program The Chaser's War on Everything decided to find out, and who better to accuse of a touch of fagness than the son of Saint Fred himself?

Speaking of Christmas songs … (19/12/2009)
The good folks at Westboro Baptist Church have got together again to record a song for Christmas. Here it is.

See more Matt Bors here

Coincidence? (3/11/2012)
I was watching Louis Theroux's excellent television show about the asylum that is the Westboro Baptist Church, and a few minutes later I saw this portrait of Shirley Phelps on Facebook. Spooky. Both Shirley and the coincidence..