Anti-gay pastor seen as unlikely LGBT ally

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.

Westboro Baptist Church founder Fred Phelps dead

March 20, 2014

Nick Dutton and CNN Wire

TOPEKA, Kans. (WTVR/CNN) —  Fred Phelps, the founder of the controversial Westboro Baptist Church, died late Wednesday, according to family members.

Timothy Phelps told WIBW that his 84-year-old father passed away just before midnight.The Topeka Capital-Journal reported Shirley Phelps-Roper, Fred’s daughter, told them her father died at Midland Care Hospice.

Phelps founded the Kansas-based church best known for picketing funerals with anti-gay signs.

The church called earlier reports that its founder was near death “speculative.”

“Fred Phelps has health issues,” the church said in a statement Sunday, “but the idea that someone would suggest that he is near death, is not only highly speculative, but foolish considering that all such matters are the sole prerogative of God.”