Fred Phelps’ epic fail.
THE HOMOPHOBIC HATE EXPRESSED BY FRED PHELPS AND HIS WESTBORO BAPTIST CHURCH INADVERTENTLY INSPIRED INCREDIBLE GAY RIGHTS ADVANCES. FOR THIS EPIC FAIL, ROB WATSON WOULD LIKE TO GIVE THANKS.
I’ve been fighting for LGBT rights for a long time. Fred Phelps wasn’t always in that fight, but it feels like he was. It feels like he has always been the personification of anti-gay hatred.
In the ’90s, gay rights gains were painfully slow. Then, something happened that was so graphic and raw that it not only tore at the heart of the LGBT community but caught the attention of the broader population in a way that hundreds-of-thousands of gay men lost to AIDS had not.
A young gay man named Matthew Shepard was found beaten and crucified on a Wyoming fence. He later died of his injuries. The shock and horror of his killing was magnified by what came next: Fred Phelps.
Phelps and his Westboro Baptist Church were opportunistic. The high profile of the Matthew Shepard case was the perfect chance for them to grab the notoriety they craved. While the world reeled in horror, the Phelps clan picketed Shepard’s funeral and proclaimed that the young hate-crime victim would burn in hell. We’d never seen such bold insensitivity on the part of the homophobic voice before, and it offended not only those who disagreed with it but those who shared its sentiments.
The Westboro Baptist Church’s appearance at the funeral began a long and notorious career of protesting at as many funerals of visible AIDS victims and LGBT people and advocates as they could find. They also targeted Pride events and celebrations. They became the epitome of hatred toward gay people. When, after time, they felt they were not getting enough attention from the public, their funeral protests began to include fallen American service personnel. They could barely rationalise this activity, nakedly seeking to inflame emotions by targeting people the public honoured.
Many celebrated the death of Fred Phelps, and made comments about picketing his funeral in an eye-for-an-eye retaliation. I was not among them. I didn’t respect Fred Phelps, nor do I forgive the pain he inflicted, but I value him. I value what he contributed to the struggle for LGBT equality. I’m grateful that because of his presence, millions woke up to understand homophobia better and to confront it.
His activity had a dramatic and unintended consequence. He and his family became the mirror that many people had to face to recognise their own attitudes about LGBT people. They didn’t like what they saw. Others who did not harbor such negativity themselves were made aware that such oppression existed.
Fred Phelps’ Westboro Baptist Church believes what many who are homophobic out of religious principles espouse. Their anti-gay stance is based on a poorly thoughtout, superficial reading of the colloquially translated Bible. The Bible represents specific writings from ancient times, addressing situations in those times and places. In order to make it apply to our current life, antigay Christians have to take passages out of historical or cultural context and demand only a calculated, literal understanding. Fred Phelps was their undoing.
There is no way to approach biblical interpretation literally, stay true to it, and not conclude that God not only hates gay people but wishes us dead – stoned, specifically. The Westboro Baptist Church has simply expressed the extreme, but logical, extension of these “Christian principles”. Phelps held up a mirror to homophobic Christians, showing them what their principles looked like. They did not like what they saw.
They saw hatred, but did not feel like haters. It forced many to take a more educated look at scripture. They found ancient mandates that did not apply to modern life and they found that the passages they had applied to gay people did not reflect their greater core principles of love. No self-respecting Christian wanted to become Fred Phelps. Many actively readdressed their values and public tolerance of LGBT rights began to surge.
One of my blog posts inspired this tweet from Fred’s daughter: “Fag marriage is not about ideology or who’s ‘nice’. It’s about obeying God as a nation!” My response to her was, “Thanks, Margie. Your family has done more to propel gay rights forward than mine ever could. Congrats.” That is my requiem to Fred Phelps. He was a man with a mission but not only did he fail to inspire, he drove millions away in revulsion. His failure to succeed is our triumph.
His contribution is a lesson that fundamentalist Christians who seek to discriminate under the banner of religious freedom need to absorb. My hope is that they take a sober look at his legacy and seek not to emulate it. He is their wake-up call.