Westboro Baptist Church=Left Wing Cult?

[TaraJo]

Anything that they don't like must be left wing,

But, why don't they like him? Phelps is such a fascist shitball he should have a show on FOX.

Interestingly enough, it wasn't that long ago that the far right was praising Freddy and his happy band of crazies.

Yes, he did used to be a Democrat, but Reagan was a Democrat at one time, too; he was even a lawyer for the ACLU, a group that the far right loves to condemn at every opportunity. However, starting in the 80's, his opinions started to change. Most notaly, he started to turn strongly against homosexuality. He supported Al Gore in the 1988 Democratic convention specifically because Gore didn't support a gay bill of rights. For years later, when Bill Clinton ran for president (with Al Gore as his VP candidate) and one of his issues was ending the ban on homosexuals in the military, Fred Phelps condemned him for it. He ran for Governor of Kansas a few times after that, but rarely got very much of the vote. Through most of the late 90's, he was simply protesting at funerals of people who died of AIDS or known homosexuals. The strategy was pretty simple: go to a conservative part of the country, protest at a gay funeral and harass the people there. Get one of them to punch you and sue their pants off. When it went to court, you get a judge who hates fags as much as Phelps, so things already start to look good for you. It didn't hurt them that most the people in that church/family were lawyers.

Then, when we invaded Iraq, things changed. Before, the right didn't really embrase Westboro, but they didn't condemn them, either. If anything, they did agree with them on homosexuality, just to a much lesser degree. Then they started protesting at military funerals and things changed. The same people who are less-than gay friendly have a tendancy to worship the military. So, take those same judges who loved Phelps when he attacked homosexuals, and all of a sudden, they aren't quite so sympathetic when he's attacking the US military or the United States itself. Things started changing for them, big time. Before, they were able to make their protests into a kind of full-time job. They traveled all over the country, carrying their signs all over and inflaming a lot of people. The income they needed to continue this was funded by the lawsuits. When they couldn't get any sympathy from the right, they started losing lawsuits and laws were passed that prevented them from protesting and they even got sued a few times themselves.

Nowadays, they don't travel much. Mostly, they stick to their territory in Kansas and travel a little in the midwest. Whenever they protest, everyone knows about it in advance and precautions are taken. Counter protests are orgaized specifically to prevent lawsuits. Police will often even be there to keep the two groups apart.

Also, I think their days are going to end soon anyway. I heard an interview from one of the people who used to be a part of the Westboro cult but now is an atheist. He said that one of the things they believe is that a truly good person won't die, but they'll just ascend to heaven. The problem there is that Fred Phelps is 83 and his daughter Shirley is 55. Their health is going to start going south and one of them is probably going to die before long; when that happens, the church will either be forced to say that their patriarch was full of shit or he's in Hell.