Fred Phelps may be gone, but his reputation lives on. It is easy to ridicule Phelps and portraying him as this evil monster. He was a pain in the rear and extremely obnoxious when he picketed funerals. Almost no one liked that except his band of followers and loonies.
He was probably Kansas most famous personality, next to Dorothy of the Wizard of Oz. He was also the equivalent of a circus freak. People enjoyed hating him, but he was not a real threat to anyone. Despite stepping on flags and blaming homosexuals for 9/11, there are far more sophisticated politicians who have been in place who could have done some real damage to our society. Phelps was more of a distraction. While were all focused on Phelps as a villain, real Republicans in our Kansas House, overwhelmingly tried to pass an anti-gay segregation bill recently. The bill was killed in the Senate. But it should have never been passed in the first place. And it would have had terrible consequences on the state if this bill had passed.
Phelps is a nuisance and he offends people. But the Kansas Republican Representatives actually threatened gay people much more than Phelps ever did.
According to Yahoo News;
“By the time you saw one of his outrageous and hate-filled signs — "You're Going to Hell" was among the more benign — you were already doomed.
Tall, thin and increasingly spectral as he aged, the Rev. Fred Phelps and the Westboro Baptist Church, a small congregation made up almost entirely of his extended family, tested the boundaries of the free speech guarantees by violating accepted societal standards for decency in their unapologetic assault on gays and lesbians. In the process, some believe he even helped the cause of gay rights by serving as such a provocative symbol of intolerance.”
Some of us will miss Fred with all his crazy shenanigans. Some gays may want to dance on his grave. The rest of us are just hoping his hate filled messages will slowly fade away.
He was probably Kansas most famous personality, next to Dorothy of the Wizard of Oz. He was also the equivalent of a circus freak. People enjoyed hating him, but he was not a real threat to anyone. Despite stepping on flags and blaming homosexuals for 9/11, there are far more sophisticated politicians who have been in place who could have done some real damage to our society. Phelps was more of a distraction. While were all focused on Phelps as a villain, real Republicans in our Kansas House, overwhelmingly tried to pass an anti-gay segregation bill recently. The bill was killed in the Senate. But it should have never been passed in the first place. And it would have had terrible consequences on the state if this bill had passed.
Phelps is a nuisance and he offends people. But the Kansas Republican Representatives actually threatened gay people much more than Phelps ever did.
According to Yahoo News;
“By the time you saw one of his outrageous and hate-filled signs — "You're Going to Hell" was among the more benign — you were already doomed.
Tall, thin and increasingly spectral as he aged, the Rev. Fred Phelps and the Westboro Baptist Church, a small congregation made up almost entirely of his extended family, tested the boundaries of the free speech guarantees by violating accepted societal standards for decency in their unapologetic assault on gays and lesbians. In the process, some believe he even helped the cause of gay rights by serving as such a provocative symbol of intolerance.”
Some of us will miss Fred with all his crazy shenanigans. Some gays may want to dance on his grave. The rest of us are just hoping his hate filled messages will slowly fade away.
