More on the Bob Hope protest
Speaking of child abuse, here’s a photo taken by one of my coworkers at the Fred Phelps protest the other day :
Photo by Mario Zavala
The rhetoric of Rev. Fred Phelps and the rest of the bastards at Westboro Baptist Church is some of the most awful hate-speech you can possibly imagine. Here’s a few examples from their homepage, godhatesfags.com :
- “WBC to picket opening of sodomite whorehouse masquerading as Harvey Milk High School — first high school exclusively for filthy little teenage fags & dykes”
“The Constitution of The United States is now A Covenant with Death and An Agreement with Hell! (Isaiah 28:15)”
“Matthew Shepard has been in hell for 1782 days.”
It’s times like these I hope I’m wrong about this whole religion thing and that there’s a hell for people like Rev. Phelps to rot in. I’ve read most of the Bible and I have a really, really hard time understanding how anyone who claims to be a follower of Jesus could be this filled with hate. The last time I checked, Jesus didn’t say a single word about homosexuality in any of the gospels. Sure there are some mentions in the Old Testament and Paul denounces it a number of times in the New Testament, but I have yet to see anyone wearing a “What Would Paul Do?” shirt. Of course, that hasn’t stopped Rev. Phelps from picketing funerals and harassing the families of the dead.
Before you think Fred Phelps is just a lone nutcase, consider these quotes from Pat Robertson :
- ?When lawlessness is abroad in the land, the same thing will happen here that happened in Nazi Germany. Many of those people involved in Adolph Hitler were Satanists. Many of them were homosexuals. The two things seem to go together.?
“[Homosexuals]want to come into churches and disrupt church services and throw blood all around and try to give people AIDS and spit in the face of ministers.”
?It?s one thing to say, `We have rights to jobs…we have rights to be left alone in out little corner of the world to do our thing.? It?s an entirely different thing to say, well, `We?re not only going to go into the schools and we?re going to take your children and your grandchildren and turn them into homosexuals.? Now that?s wrong.?
?Since our nation was founded, we have discriminated against certain things. We discriminate against kidnappers. We discriminate against murderers. We discriminate against thieves…There are laws that prohibit that kind of conduct. And there have been laws since the founding of our country against what are considered unnatural sex acts, sex between members of the same sex.?
As much as I’d love to think that Rev. Fred Phelps is just a crazy, bigot whose views don’t represent mainstream fundamentalist Christianity, the homophobic views of Pat Robertson and others make me think that fundamentalists tacitly approve of the activities of Westboro Baptist Church the same way that many on the left approved of the Earth Liberation Front’s Hummer firebombings.
By the way, in case you missed it, here’s another picture from Rev. Phelps’s Bob Hope flyer :
Is this picture supposed to be funny or do they really believe in a sneering, red-faced devil complete with horns and a forked-tongue? This picture looks more like something a teenage metalhead would draw on his frayed jean-jacket, than a dire warning about the hellfire awaiting those who don’t hate homosexuality.
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I think God hates that kid’s generic Old Navy T-shirt a little more than America.
Comment by Kyle — August 29, 2003 @ 12:49 pm
Hey! Is that little Katie Hanks?
–Kynn
Comment by Kynn Bartlett — August 29, 2003 @ 12:56 pm
As much as I’d love to think that Rev. Fred Phelps is just a crazy, bigot whose views don’t represent mainstream fundamentalist Christianity, the homophobic views of Pat Robertson and others make me think that fundamentalists tacitly approve of the activities of Westboro Baptist Church the same way that many on the left approved of the Earth Liberation Front’s Hummer firebombings.
By the way — c’mon, that’s dorky. Phelps really is way out of the mainstream. The majority of fundamentalists think of him as such a non-entity that it’s not even funny, and in fact the average extremist protofascist — the ones I’ve been ranting about as Nationalistic Christianists — would very much OBJECT to the notion that “God Hates America.”
The threat of fundamentalism-out-of-control is not Fred Phelps’ blind hatred of everything; it’s in the other direction, with a co-option of patriotic symbols. It’s more likely to arise from “hate the sin, love the sinner” philosophy than from “God hates fags.”
Plus, which lefties, exactly, were cheering on ELF?
–Kynn
Comment by Kynn Bartlett — August 29, 2003 @ 1:39 pm
Shorter Kynn Bartlett: Fundies think Phelps is a nutjob, and lefties think ELF are nutjobs, so what point are you trying to make?
Comment by Kynn Bartlett — August 29, 2003 @ 1:40 pm
Your site aside, I didn’t notice that many people on the left speaking out about the ELF’s firebombings. Nobody came out in support, but I think the fact that they were on “our side” made quite a few lefties who hate SUVs bite their tongues. Check out the comments on this thread for a good example of what I’m talking about. I’m not saying Pat Robertson is going to start picketing funerals or anything, but I think his outspoken opposition to homosexuality is probably causing him and many other Christian fundamentalist leaders to look the other way rather than call this for what it is, a psychotic and hateful twisting of Christianity.
Comment by greg — August 29, 2003 @ 1:50 pm
Kynn is right about your analogy, I think. Phelps is way outside the mainstream. A better metaphor might be vandals who make arson or graffiti (spelling) attacks on abortion clinics. There is a lot of sympathy for this sort of thing among both fundamentalist protestants and right-wing Catholics. Yet when you move to the next level, which is the murder of abortion providers, these otherwise normal people have a lot less sympathy. One of the reasons the ELF still gets sympathy from people is that they have yet to kill anybody. Sadly, it may only be a matter of time.
I wrote a paper on this a couple of years ago, so I could go on…
You could make a connection between these beliefs and the beliefs of more mainstream Christian Nationalist groups.
After all, if you really belive we’re surrounded by demons, governed by a vengeful, bigoted God, and required to guess his will based on a collection of myths, wild tales, lies and gibberish written down over a period of centuries, garbled, embroidered, mutilated and translated through several languages successively, then no one should be surprised when you beat an autistic child to death or picket that sodomite Bob Hope’s funeral. No one should be surprised because anyone who reasons this way is a fucking whistle ass.
Comment by JoeW — August 29, 2003 @ 3:53 pm
“The threat of fundamentalism-out-of-control is not Fred Phelps’ blind hatred of everything; it’s in the other direction, with a co-option of patriotic symbols. It’s more likely to arise from ‘hate the sin, love the sinner’ philosophy than from ‘God hates fags.’”
assuming phelp’s is right of the mainstream, the majority of christians still don’t live according to “hate the sin, love the sinner”… when was the last time you heard a fundamentalist preacher say, “homosexuals, come to our church so you can be one with God. we may not like what you do, but we love you because Jesus loves you?” Never! you saw the absolute uproar when homosexuals were given a constitutional right to have sex in their beds or when, god forbid, alabama adheres to separation of church and state. it’s naive to think most people can separate the act from the actor or one’s beliefs from objectivity… people love hate speech if it validates their beliefs– rush limbaugh has a HUGE following
Comment by Erin — August 29, 2003 @ 4:22 pm
could somebody with some digital wizardry change the little girl’s sign to “GOP hates america” and begin wide distribution, please?
Comment by josh — September 1, 2003 @ 7:35 pm