The Liberal Bias: God Hates Phelps

Fred Phelps died on March 19, the year of our lord 2014. I’ve been sitting in front of my computer for several hours trying to write about something else. I tried to write about healthcare, NSA data collection, and even the Tea party, but nothing comes out. All I can seem to do is keep going back to Fred Phelps’ death and what it means.

First, I’m sure those of you who have been following the story have seen the headline, “Westboro Asks Public Not to Picket Phelps’ Funeral” by the Daily Currant. It went viral pretty fast, but the article itself is just satire. The truth of the situation is (as it happens) stranger than the fiction.

The Westboro Baptist Church does not believe in funerals. Read that again and then give yourself a moment to come to terms with it. The group that is most famous for protesting funerals of US soldiers (and the death of Phelps isn’t slowing them down either) would not be caught dead holding a funeral for any of its members. Margie Jean Phelps, Phelps’ oldest daughter, confirmed this to a local news outlet in Kansas.

Anyway, enough of the good news for now. There may be some of you reading this that are thinking, “Well, the leader is gone and now we won’t have to deal with anymore of this ‘God Hates Fags’ stuff and get on with our lives.” Well, not so fast. Phelps had been recently ex-communicated by the WBC before his death.

How did the WBC end up shunning its own founding father? In a nutshell, Fred Phelps suggested that they all be a bit nicer. It seems that he was just suggesting this niceness not even to the outside world, but just amongst them. Obviously the church elders had to throw Phelps out because… (I can’t even make a joke here so let’s all just slowly back away from the paragraph).

Phelps had not been the main figure of the church since last summer and they have been somewhat active since then. There is a waning of church participants but the WBC has always been a fairly small but very vocal group. If you imagined a Dr. Frankenstein artic funeral scene between Phelps and the Creature, sadly, you’re going to have to save that image for a rainy day.

The Creature is alive, doing well and inspiring hate. It even has a new potential figure head in a man named Steve Drain. He is reportedly the closest friend Fred Phelps had in the church but there’s a pretty good chance that he might have been behind Phelps’ ex-communication. Say what you will about Phelps (Try it, seriously. It’s a lot of fun), but it takes a special kind crazy to pull a coup in a group that once picketed a store for selling Swedish vacuum cleaners.

Drain is not officially the new mascot of the WBC, but there’s a good chance that you’ll be hearing his name later.

My point is that we still have a long way to go, those of us on the equal rights movement that is. The mean man is gone, but another one is on the way. It would be wonderful if I could tell you that the WBC will dwindle out of existence without its father, but the world is never that fair. The WBC has a full month of picketing already scheduled for April. They’ll be going to schools, sporting events, and churches over about five states.

And if you were a supporter of the WBC and Phelps’ philosophy then you probably shouldn’t have read this article because it was pretty offensive.

As always, comments, questions and other stuff can be sent to me directly at csullery0@frostburg.edu.