Westboro Baptist Church to protest funerals of those killed in Boston bombing

Westboro Baptist Church to protest funerals of those killed in Boston bombing

"God sent the Boston Marathon Bombs for the sin of Massachusetts passing same-sex marriage.”

I know the world is full of assholes and douchebags, but these people stand head and shoulders above the rest.

Reader comment:

It’s actually worse than it looks, Scoop.

Fred Phelps is a lawyer before he’s a minister. Almost the entire membership of Westboro, mostly the Phelps family, are lawyers. Their protests are painstakingly calculated to stay within the boundaries of constitutionally protected speech, while provoking maximum public outrage pressuring government to clamp down on them in some way. When they are prevented from protesting, they sue, and when they sue, they win and collect damages. This is where the money for his nonsense comes from. The original motivation for his protests was anti-gay fervor, but at some point it mutated and this new form of nastiness was developed as the most bizarre perversion of civil law the I’ve ever heard of.

It’s hard to tell where the calculated cynicism and the religious insanity segue together, since Calvinist prosperity theology allows that old YHWH shows his favor on the elect he has decided in advance to save from Hell through worldly success. Phelps began his career as a Democrat and a Civil Rights Attorney, and was recognized by the NAACP in the 1980s for his work on behalf of his Black clients. I suppose it is possible that at some point being a target for public disgust from the racist community of Kansas City created a man who revels in public contempt and holding the position of a crusader for “right” in a badly morally compromised world. In association with genuine religious fanaticism it’s conceivable that by finding a way to profit from standing up for “principles” he’s come by this strange practice by natural evolution. He’s still a Democrat and seems to have opposed Bush (and thus the Iraq War) on some sort of principle as well. Combining Sodom theology with anti-gay protesting with anti-war protesting may work in “Insane Troll Logic”. From “Bush’s America is bad and Liberal gay loving America is bad” it’s a small leap to “everything is bad”. Simply because his apparent justifications are batshit insane and he manages to profit from his activities doesn’t necessarily mean that he isn’t completely “honest” in the sense that he actually believes what he says and came by these insane beliefs through batshit insanity, but crazy like a fox must also be considered.

However you slice it, ingenuous or disingenuous, Westboro Baptist Church are the greatest and most successful trolls in history.