“God hates fags.” “Thank God for 9/11.” “God bless Hurricane Katrina.”
The Westboro Baptist Church, the organization responsible for the endearing quotes above, is a group of bigoted individuals who follow the five points of Calvinism from the solace of their church in Topeka, Kan.
Their interpretations of the five points basically say the following: most of us are destined to burn in the fiery pits of eternal hellfire, most of us deserve it, and those precious few who are going to heaven had better avoid the rest (them sodomizin’ gays, homo-enablers, Catholics, Americans, Swedes and yer little dog too).
On a serious note, the WBC is a hardcore group of religious fanatics. There are roughly 100 of them, and in some surely disassociated way, the majority of them are related.
Their Web sites, the most popular being www.godhatesfags.com, www.godhatessweden.com, and www.priestsrapeboys.net, consist of documents using the Bible as evidence of their quasi-Nazi beliefs.
On www.godhatesfags.com, there is a link in the top left corner of the site which will direct aspiring followers to a page detailing the times and dates of future funerals at which to picket. Why not kick off your spring break and go to a marine sergeant’s funeral this Sunday?
The WBC picketed at the funeral of Matthew Shepard, a homosexual who was brutally killed in a hate crime nine years ago, and today’s pickets take place mainly at the funerals of soldiers who died in Iraq.
I could go on with my feelings about the war in Iraq and how it is an arbitrary result of a deeply flawed government, but my Bush-bashing sermon will have to wait; at least the government doesn’t publicly pride itself on invading a family’s natural right to mourn.
Headed by the WBC is Fred Phelps, who began his gay-bashing career in 1991 when “sodomites” went to a park near his church and didn’t leave.
Since his transition from civil rights lawyer to God warrior/media whore, Phelps has evolved his brothel of “Christians” into one of the most hated in the history of humanity. This comes to no shock for anyone who has seen their cold-blooded activism or heard their racist slurs.
What also bothers me is that if pre-destination is such an authentic principle, then why are they bothering with the elaborate signs praising AIDS and 9/11 as they tell us to repent or burn in hell?
This contradiction combined with the utterly heartless methods of preaching is enough to help drown out the hatred behind their words and protests. If the Westboro Baptist Church will ever prove anything in its history of one-dimensional stupidity, it is this: the only thing that will ever truly be almighty is the power of shock value.
Such absolutism and anger is going to get the WBC attention from across the nation, which is exactly what they want.
Shirley Phelps, a result of Phelps’ previous engagements in the sins of the flesh, recently went on the Tyra Banks Show to express her views as to why Hurricane Katrina was a blessing. “God is punishing us,” said Phelps as she stared into the soul of “America’s Next Top Model.”
Seeing people such as Phelps maintain the ability to exist is evidence enough that Phelps speaks the truth. We are being punished for our inability to stand up and rid the world of its easily curable diseases – racism, sexism, and religious intolerance.
With people like those in the WBC scrambling from funeral to funeral with hatred in their hearts, with people treating each other with cruelty instead of acceptance, and with people being mutilated across the world for nauseatingly irrational reasons, we need not question the existence of an eternal hell. We are already there.

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