Fred Phelps - Agent of Hate

Fred Phelps announced he was coming to the Ann Arbor area.

Again.

He has been a regular visitor over the years. That's because we believe in faggotry...including anal penetration (That verbiage comes from Fred's own press releases).

I'm not being fair to Fred's message. He doesn't believe you have to do the dirty deed to be condemned to hell. You just have to be supportive of queers to earn eternal damnation. You could belong to an inclusive church, allow a gay-straight alliance in your school, put on a production of The Laramie Project, and so much more.

For this protest he is condemning the Campus Crusade for Christ. I guess they are accepting homos now.

Y'know, if the guy was sincere I might have a little sympathy for him. But here's the real story. Fred makes his money through lawsuits. He has never gone to any seminary or religious school. He is not a minister. He is a disbarred lawyer. Keep that in mind. It is all about the money. And if you want the full-documented version check out the Southern Poverty Law Center. They did an exhaustive report on Fred's tactics.

He has been known to the gay community since the 80's when he started protesting funerals of gay men who had died of AIDS. It was sick. But the straight community figured it was a free speech issue.

More people came to know him when he protested at the funeral of Matthew Sheperd. Matthew's brutal murder touched a nerve in many parts of straight America. But again, most of straight America thought of him as the sideshow clown in this tragedy. And we believe in free speech, right?

Meanwhile, queer America was starting to figure out how irrelevant Fred was becoming. We joked about him, made fun of him in movies, and our own strategy which we have named Every Minute Counts. Fred came to protest the \aut\ BAR. We marginalized him economically by pledging money for every minute he was protesting. The money went to the LGBT Community Center. In other words, the longer he protested, the more money he helped us raise for a cause that he cannot stand. It preserves his free speech, and let the message be about our response, not about his hate. And I think it really kills him since it is all about the money. We are raising it at peaceful counter-demonstrations and he is not.

He needed to change his strategy. His hateful message was not provoking the attacks that let him get those lucrative lawsuits. He had to push more buttons.

Fred was the first of the wacko evangelicals to claim that 9/11 was God's revenge on America for allowing all that anal penetration to happen. But evangelicals with a lot more press and media coverage than Fred were making the same claim.

That is when he hit upon the idea of protesting soldier's funerals. Rather ironic since our forays into Afghanistan and Iraq can be seen as America's holy wars. But Fred saw it differently. He claimed that these American boys were dying because other American boys were diddling with each other. It did not need to make sense. It just had to push some buttons.

And it did.

Suddenly straight America cared. Suddenly it was no longer a free speech issue. Laws were passed to preserve the dignity of military funerals.

I actually believe that some of these laws are well-crafted. They let Fred hold his signs, they just demand a certain distance from the actual services. Its a good compromise that allows Fred his free speech, and gives mourners at least a little space from his vitriole. I just wish that they had enacted these statutes about twenty years ago so that all those men who were perishing during the height of the AIDS epidemic could have been allowed peaceful and respectful memorials.

As it happens, Fred was a no-show at his announced Ann Arbor area appearance. Too bad. The Eastern Michigan University LGBT Resource Center ran an "Every Minute Counts" pledge drive. They had received pledges totaling nearly $27 for every minute he would have been there. In addition, the Coors Brewing Company jumped in and said they'd match the first $1000 raised. They could have raised $2600 for a fund that usually struggles to raise a couple hundred dollars per year. Not bad for a fund drive that lasted less than 24 hours.

I plan on fulfilling my pledge, as if Fred had been picketing 60 minutes (his usual picketing time). I hope others do the same.



Its never too late to support a good cause. You can still pledge at http://spreadsheets.google.com/viewform?key=p6iEihoV53KGmpS1zcgh7Zg. The EMU LGBT Office will contact you to fulfill a 60 minute pledge.