John Hanna, David Crary
AP
March 22, 2014
Fred Phelps Sr. led his small Topeka church
for more than two decades in a bellicose crusade against gays and lesbians,
saying they were worthy of death and openly declaring - often at military
funerals - that the U.S. was doomed because of its tolerance of homosexuality.
But in targeting grieving families of troops
killed overseas, taunting people entering other churches and carrying signs
with anti-gay slurs and vulgar language or symbols, Phelps and his Westboro
Baptist congregation created public circuses that may have helped the
gay-rights movement.
Following Phelps's death Wednesday at age 84,
some gay-rights advocates suggested that he and his church created sympathy for
lesbians, gays, bisexuals and transgenders. Religious leaders who oppose gay
marriage also said the pastor's tactics clouded the debate over such issues and
put them on the defensive in discussing both policy and faith.
"The world lost someone who did a whole
lot more for the LGBT community than we realize or understand," said Cathy
Renna, a longtime consultant to LGBT groups. "He has brought along allies
who are horrified by the hate. So his legacy will be exactly the opposite of
what he dreamed." Phelps founded the church in the 1950s, and it has drawn
much of its small congregation from his extended family. Its rise to national
and even international notoriety began in the early 1990s, as it picketed
against gays and lesbians, then protested funerals of AIDS victims and,
eventually, fallen soldiers.
The protests sparked outrage, with the
federal government and lawmakers in more than 40 U.S. states passing specific
laws to limit the protests and local residents using various tactics -
including lining up to block views of the protesters - to protect grieving
families.
Conservative religious leaders regularly
denounced Phelps, worried that his relentless attacks would be perceived as
representing the Christian case against same-sex relationships. At the 2003 annual
Southern Baptist Convention, leaders spent a session drawing a distinction
between their opposition to same-sex unions and Phelps's protests.
Phelps called his church Baptist but had no
ties with the Southern Baptist Convention or any other mainstream Baptist
group.
"Westboro Baptist is to Baptist
Christianity what the Book of Mormon Broadway play was to the Latter-Day
Saints," said Rev. Russell Moore, who leads the Southern Baptist
Convention's Ethics and Religious Liberties Commission.
"They were kind of a performance art of
vitriolic hatred rather than any kind of religious organization."
Phelps professed not to care what anyone
thought of his church. He said in a 2006 interview with The Associated Press
that no minister could "preach the Bible" without preaching God's
hate. Westboro spokesman Steve Drain said in an email a few days before
Phelps's death that the church's doctrines weren't changing. "The church
of the Lord Jesus Christ does not rise or fall with any man - in fact, the Lord
doesn't need ANY of us," Drain wrote. "Any nation that embraces that
sin as an 'innocent' lifestyle can expect to incur the wrath of God."
Phelps often reserved especially caustic
comments for evangelical Christians and Catholics who view homosexual behavior as sinful but also preach that God also loves and reaches out to gays and
lesbians. Phelps dismissed them as "enablers," and his congregation
often picketed their churches.
Rev. Terry Fox, a Southern Baptist minister
who is pastor of Wichita's non-denominational-leaning Summit Church, once felt
compelled to apologize for Phelps's shocking behaviour on television. Fox
called Phelps "a false prophet" and said Satan "greatly used
him." Fox was prominent in a successful effort in 2005 to persuade voters
to amend the Kansas Constitution to ban gay marriage and said Phelps "was
an embarrassment" but had "become the face of Christian work in
Kansas."
Michael Schuttloffel, executive director of
the Kansas Catholic Conference, said Phelps and his congregation still represent
"an easy device" for gay-marriage supporters to "short-circuit
the conversation" on that and related issues in recent years.