While the immediate tendency would be to say “good riddance,” I take my hat off to GetEQUAL for noting the passing of Fred Phelps Sr. with uncommon grace:
There will always be those who are so in pain themselves that they feel compelled to inflict pain on others. We re-commit ourselves today to loving those who hate us. We re-commit ourselves today to seeing the humanity in those who cannot or will not see it in us. And we re-commit ourselves today to working toward an America that is free of that pain — an America in which LGBTQ folks can live and love openly.
In all, Phelps helped expose visceral anti-gay prejudice, often (though not always) grounded in a gross distortion of religious principles, for all its ugly nastiness, which others usually conceal behind for more polite facades. For that, we can all be thankful.
The trap, however, is viewing all disagreements about gay rights matters as if our opponents were all crypto Fred Phelpses. Some conservatives have real concerns about social stability amidst social change — I think they’re wrong in this instance, but they’re not “haters.” And certainly, issues such as using the state to force expressive service providers to do our bidding can cast certain LGBT activists and their supporters in the role of the mean-spirited bully. GetEQUAL’s reminder to recognize the humanity of our opponents would serve us, and them, far better.
21 Comments for “Dust to Dust”
posted by Doug on
I am not glad that Phelps is dead because of his anti-gay crusade. I am glad Phelps is dead because of his intentionally inflicting great pain on the families of our heroic military members by picketing their funerals. Phelps is as close to pure evil as any human can get.
posted by Tom Scharbach on
Tony Perkins, Scott Lively, Brian Fischer, Peter LaBarbera, Linda Harvey, Franklin Graham, Janet Mefferd and the rest do more harm in a year than Fred Phelps and Westboro Baptist could have done in a hundred years.
We can recognize the harm that these men and women do without doubting their humanity.
Dead silence is an appropriate response to Phelps’ demise.
posted by Doug on
Not to quibble about who got hurt and how much but the LGBT community was the focus of Phelps dislike. Picketing military funerals is intentionally inflicting great pain on families that are totally innocent and really divorced from the LGBT community for the most part.
Inflicting pain and misery on your enemy, the LGBT community from Phelps perspective, is one thing. Intentionally inflicting pain and misery on the totally innocent is quite evil IMHO.
posted by Houndentenor on
The Phelpses picketed the funerals of gay people for well over a decade and the media hardly noticed. The funerals of fallen soldiers got them the hate and infamy they were looking for. It actually made me angry when conservatives suddenly noticed that after it had been going on for a long time. No one’s family should be subjected to being screamed at by religious nutjobs.
posted by Jorge on
I’ve always taken the events of the anti-gay church moving on to picketing the military and the country mobilizing into a very effective counter-response as an embarassment that we failed to keep the battle to our own kind, and that pain has been caused to others over such an insignificant thing.
But no one seems to be particularly bothered on our account.
posted by Houndentenor on
I will grant you that there are many people who vote against gay marriage in those ballot initiatives that could be won over by just meeting an actual person and realize that we’re not some big evil cabal out to destroy America. But I will not refrain from calling out the people who make a living or who maintain power by exploiting the fear and ignorance of millions of Americans. They are worse that bigots. They are professional hate-mongers. It’s been a lucrative profession for far too long.
posted by Jorge on
So I see the idea that Fred Phelps inadvertently served the cause of right is not just my own. To protest the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy because it permitted gays in the military! He forced more of the silent majority to pay attention. They swung our way. Now we are in negotiations with religious merchants for them to sell cakes and take photographs at gay weddings.
If I may speak as a relatively young person for whom the God Hates ***s church was a commodity for almost my entire adult life (and certainly my entire life that I’ve seen myself as gay), I am reminded slightly of the ending of Zero Dark Thirty, about a young CIA analyst who worked on the project of finding Osama bin Laden for basically her entire professional life. A feeling of, now what? Or now what am I doing next?
All those old generals and cabinet heads lived through all kinds of disasters and turmoils, they have wives and children and accolates, 9/11 and WBC are but an eyeblink to them. Were I not as grounded as I am, not to mention as far removed from the vanguard, my identity might be swallowed up, as traumatized by peace as by war. Yet this was my fight, too.
I encountered the Westboro Baptist Church a little over a year ago, when they chose to protest my old college on the very day my Pope was to step down. I brought a sign with two quotes from him. One of them was:
“It is deplorable that homosexual persons have been and are the object of violent malice in speech or in action. Such treatment deserves condemnation from the Church’s pastors wherever it occurs. It reveals a kind of disregard for others which endangers the most fundamental principles of a healthy society. The intrinsic dignity of each person must always be respected in word, in action and in law.”
And I would like to say that I had a fascinating day today that reminded me of all this.
I respect GetEQUAL’s decision on how to observe his death and at the end of the day I come to their concluion. However as to what my first reaction was, I do not celebrate death, and so once again upon the death or dying of a terrible person, I find that Bill O’Reilly speaks for me:
http://www.politico.com/story/2014/03/bill-oreilly-fred-phelps-104802.html
“Reports are that Fred Phelps is near death,” O’Reilly said. “He is the loathsome preacher who funded the Westboro Baptist Church. The 84-year-old Phelps is a hater.”
…
“For those who believe in an afterlife, Mr. Phelps may have some explaining to do,” O’Reilly said. “As Christian theology makes it quite clear, only God is to render judgment and we are to love our neighbor. I’m not judging Phelps, I’m just opining he might have a problem. However, here’s a ‘Factor’ tip of the day, redemption is always possible.”
I think it is quite fitting that after Osama bin Laden got what he deserved at the end of a gun and buried, with some respect, where no one will ever find him, that Fred Phelps and those who know him should have had a chance to know he was dying. And reportedly kicked out of his own church, although that’s sketchy. We know know that when he was killed, Osama bin Laden was still actively planning terror attacks. But we will never know if Fred Phelps took advantage of the time offered for him to seek redemption.
To grant quarter to my enemies is painful because it exposes me to witness the harm they have committed onto others. Is it not only just that I pay the innocent my mind, too?
There are people who don’t look like they have what Mr. Phelps had: a family, longevity, a mission that he accepted for life, national noteriety. I want them to believe they have everything he has. Even the mission… I think of being gay as a sign of something important in this day and age, but there are people younger than me who do not want it because of shame.
posted by Jorge on
Anyway, I will allow this upstart GetEQUAL to be magnanimous for a day.
But it is nothing, nothing at all, to the reason for its existence, and others. As long as there are trends of suicide, of depression and substance abuse, of violence, of AIDS, of a stifling of voices that despairs even to reach out to God, as long as the Way Things Are causes people distress and unhealth, and indeed, so long as our own backs ache under burdens that Should Not Be, there is a need for hands to act.
People need to understand and love the greatness that is their birthright.
The duties of peace are important next to those of battle, and treacherous. To decide what to do to make this country a better place instead of having that decision forced on you. To decide to do what you have to do now, instead of being forced to act now. To finish a job without any way of knowing if you have succeeded. How I hate it sometimes. I hate the fear, I hate the shame of second-guessing how well I have done. But then the calling calls back to me…
posted by Lori Heine on
We can’t control how anybody else behaves. Not even other people in the LGBT community. We can control how we behave, period.
I never felt that when the Phelps clan made jackasses out of themselves, it did much besides rebound onto them. It actually made some people realize — finally — how nuts the anti-gay movement is.
Picketing soldiers’ funerals was a terrible thing. But straight people take care of their own, and there was never any question they were going to let that go by. I seem to recall them recruiting Hell’s Angels and everybody else to stand with them against the Phelpses.
The only thing dancing on old Fred’s grave is going to do is get the anti-gay nuts, and the GP crowd that toadies to them, crowing, “See! The gay Left is absolutely graceless!”
He had a long life to prepare to meet his Maker. If he chose to waste it telling other people they were going to Hell, then that’s his loss.
posted by Tom Scharbach on
The only thing dancing on old Fred’s grave is going to do is get the anti-gay nuts, and the GP crowd that toadies to them, crowing, “See! The gay Left is absolutely graceless!”
Stephen has already started beating that drum. Oddly, he and others in his camp said not a word about the motorcycle clubs that showed up every time Westboro did, drowning them out in the noise of 50 Harleys, and you won’t hear a word from Stephen about any of the statements that the motorcycle crowd or anyone else who is straight is making about Phelp’s demise. Not a word. It is only gays and lesbians who are called out.
It is the usual double standard.
Fred Phelps served primarily as cover for Tony Perkins, Scott Lively, Brian Fischer, Peter LaBarbera, Linda Harvey, Franklin Graham, Janet Mefferd and the rest of the anti-gay crowd: “How can SPLC classify us as spreading hate? We aren’t like Fred Phelps!”
Fred Phelps never amounted to much except a lot of noise.
He was a lot less dangerous than Tony Perkins. Fred Phelps did not write the 2012 Republican platform. He was a lot less dangerous than Scott Lively. Fred Phelps did not export his hate to other countries. He was a lot less dangerous than Franklin Graham. Fred Phelps did not use his father’s good name to praise Putin and his policies. And so on.
I have not one word to say about Fred Phelps’s death other than that he is now dead. The dead don’t get to call the shots.
But I think that we should similarly ignore Stephen and the “GOP toadies” who are using the occasion to trash gays and lesbians yet again, and keep our eye on the ball. We are in a fight for equality.
posted by Jorge on
Oddly, he and others in his camp said not a word about the motorcycle clubs that showed up every time Westboro did, drowning them out in the noise of 50 Harleys, and you won’t hear a word from Stephen about any of the statements that the motorcycle crowd or anyone else who is straight is making about Phelp’s demise.
Well, yes, that’s part of the embarassment. I realize the straight allies and gays came up with noise and deflection tactics first but I don’t know if we did it in such an organized fashion (maybe I worry too much). These guys became a network. The one I am most aware of is the Patriot Guard Riders, which I think is the umbrella organization. Their leadership would never countenance dancing on his grave. But individual riders in the privacy of their own communities:
http://pnwriders.com/portland-region/193022-fred-dead.html
“Fred is DEAD !!! [smiley of devil red grinning face with two middle fingers up]
Foxboro Baptist church leader Fred Phelps is DEAD !!!
Time for the Patriot Guard to attend HIS funeral ?!? Maybe not . . .”
Who can blame people who just can’t resist being silly?
“No, because then we would be no better than he and his family. And the last thing we need to be is hypocrites.
This is when we show them how decent people behave.”
“NO because they only attend as invited guests and I really don’t think they will be invited.”
“Karma, if nothing else, will be a bitch for that clown.”
posted by Houndentenor on
There are a number of groups who over the years worked to form a barrier between families and the Phelpses. People dressed as angels with very large wings for Matthew Shepard’s funeral. There was a group of pro and semi-pro singers that sang hymns in front of churches where the Phelpses had announced they were going to protest to drown them out so families could not hear the insane screaming or see the awful signs. And yes motorcycle clubs. There were many such groups over the years. It’s a shame that such things were necessary but it also proves that in the end there are far more decent, caring, kind and compassionate people than there are assholes. It’s just that the assholes are so loud it’s easy to remember that they aren’t always the majority. Sometimes they are a tiny minority that has learned that tantrums will attract attention.
posted by Jorge on
It’s just that the assholes are so loud it’s easy to remember that they aren’t always the majority. Sometimes they are a tiny minority that has learned that tantrums will attract attention.
Reminds me of k-r-o-w. But I have them beat, because I have two assholes, and I know how to hold it in.
posted by Tom Scharbach on
We can’t control how anybody else behaves. Not even other people in the LGBT community. We can control how we behave, period.
Exactly.
Roughly 5-6 million adult gays and lesbians live in the United States. A handful have used the law, for whatever reason, in ways that most of us would not.
We have no way to stop them, nor, if we are serious about allowing people the freedom to act according to their own lights, would we want to do so.
We certainly have no business ascribing, as Stephen does and the anti-gay right delights in doing, the behavior of the handful to the many, using the behavior of the handful as an excuse to excoriate gays and lesbians as a class.
I sometimes wonder if Stephen understands how closely his words and behaviors, born not of anti-gay sentiment so much as burning resentment against progressive gays and lesbians, mimics and reinforces the words and behaviors of the social conservatives. Perhaps he does, and perhaps that is his intent, but my guess is not.
posted by Doug on
It is sometimes hard to believe that Stephen is really gay. Given some of his statements and positions the only rational explanation is that he is filled internalized homophobia.
posted by Lori Heine on
Tom, your insight on the subject is probably typical of most in the LGBT world — including the majority of liberals. Which means that Gay Conservative Inc. will not quote it, or in any way acknowledge that it exists.
The GP crowd decided how to spin Phelps’ death when they first heard it was imminent. They began combing the Internet to find “justification” for their latest excuse to eat their own — which is, of course, exactly what this is.
What sort of a movement requires members of an embattled minority group to attack its fellow embattled minorities? Certainly not one that wishes them well, or in which they will ever be permitted to play any constructive part.
Don’t try to post any comments on their sites saying this, however. You’ll be blocked for saying “hurtful things.”
posted by Kosh III on
“Some conservatives have real concerns about social stability amidst social change — I think they’re wrong in this instance, but they’re not “haters.”
Really? Who? Pat Robertson? Tony Perkins? Most Southern Baptist clerics?
Spare me.
—————————————–
And certainly, issues such as using the state to force expressive service providers to do our bidding can cast certain LGBT activists and their supporters in the role of the mean-spirited bully.
What exactly has McCain, Bush, Mehlman, Perkins, Falwell and all the other “haters” done? They have consistently used the coercive power of the state to compel gay people to conform to their religious/social OPINION.
Dont blame a few folks if they feel led to rejoice that a demon has gone home to be with the “Father of lies.”
posted by Tom Scharbach on
As a side note, the Michigan anti-marriage amendment was ruled unconstitutional this afternoon. The Michigan AG announced that he will appeal.
As I understand it, here is the scoreboard (bold indicates marriage equality or a marriage equality decision on appeal) at this point:
1ST CIRCUIT
Maine – Marriage Equality
Massachusetts – Marriage Equality
New Hampshire – Marriage Equality
Rhode Island – Marriage Equality
2ND CIRCUIT
Connecticut – Marriage Equality
New York – Marriage Equality
Vermont – Marriage Equality
3RD CIRCUIT
Deleware – Marriage Equality
New Jersey – Marriage Equality
Pennsylvania
– Whitewood v. Wolf
– Palladino v. Corbett
– Pennsylvania Health Dept. v. Hanes
– Ballen v. Corbett
– Baus v. Gibbs
4TH CIRCUIT
North Carolina
– Fisher-Borne v. Smith
South Carolina
– Bradacs v. Haley
Virginia – Equality Decision
– Bostic v. Schaefer – On Appeal
– Harris v. Rainey
West Virginia
– McGee v. Cole
5TH CIRCUIT
Louisiana
– Forum for Equality Louisiana v. Barfield
– Robicheaux v. George
– In Re Costanza and Brewer
Mississippi
– Czekala-Chatham v. Melancon
Texas – Equality Decision
– De Leon v. Perry – On Appeal
– McNosky v. Perry
– Zahrn v. Perry
– J.B. v. Dallas County and Texas v. Naylor
6TH CIRCUIT
Kentucky – Equality Decision
– Bourke v. Beshear – On Appeal
– Kentucky Equality Federation v. Beshear
– Romero v. Romero
Michigan – Equality Decision
– DeBoer v. Snyder – On Appeal
Ohio – Equality Decision
– Obergefell v. Wymyslo – On Appeal
– Henry v. Wymyslo
– Cowger and Wesley v. Kasich
Tennessee – Equality TRO
– Tanco v. Haslam – Equality TRO
7TH CIRCUIT
Illinois – Marriage Equality
Indiana
– Bowling v. Pence
– Officer Pamela Lee v. Pence
– Midori Fujii v. Indiana Governor
– Baskin v. Bogan
– Love v. Pence
Wisconsin
– Wolf v. Walker
8TH CIRCUIT
Arkansas
– Jernigan v. Crane
– Wright v. Arkansas
Iowa – Marriage Equality
Minnesota – Marriage Equality
Missouri
– Barrier v. Vasterling
Nebraska
North Dakota
South Dakota
9TH CIRCUIT
Alaska
Arizona
– Majors v. Roche
– Connolly v. Roche
California – Marriage Equality
Hawaii – Marriage Equality
Idaho
– Latta v. Otter
Montana
Nevada – Equality Decision
– Sevcik v. Sandoval – On Appeal
Oregon
– Geiger v. Kitzhaber
– Rummel and West v. Kitzhaber
Washington – Marriage Equality
10TH CIRCUIT
Colorado
– McDaniel-Miccio v. Hickenlooper
– Brinkman v. Long
Kansas
– Nelson v. Kansas Department of Revenue
New Mexico – Marriage Equality
Oklahoma – Equality Decision
– Bishop v. United States – On Appeal
Utah – Equality Decision
– Kitchen v. Herbert – On Appeal
Wyoming
–
11TH CIRCUIT
Alabama
– Hard v. Bentley
Florida – Litigation
– Grimsley and Albu v. Scott
– Brenner v. Scott
– Pareto v. Ruvin
Georgia
posted by Tom Scharbach on
From the Michigan findings of fact: “The Court finds Regnerus’s testimony entirely unbelievable and not worthy of serious consideration.” The details of how and why follow.
The Court came just short of saying that Regnerus lied under oath: “While Regnerus maintained that the funding source did not affect his impartiality as a researcher, the Court finds this testimony unbelievable. The funder clearly wanted a certain result, and Regnerus obliged.”
Regnerus is done as an expert witness in federal court.
posted by Jorge on
“The Court finds Regnerus’s testimony entirely unbelievable and not worthy of serious consideration.”
This being the first thing I read as I hit Page Down and zoomed up, I congratulate you for calling it, nailing it, and enjoying it.
And I am going to leave it at that.
posted by Tom Jefferson III on
I am not going to comment on his death.
However, I do think that — when we was alive — he did certainly provide a fair amount of cover for people that wanted to oppose anything that smelled like equality, while still being able to sell themselves as a ‘compassionate conservative’ on television. Other people have mentioned that here.
Maybe that is something of a double edged sword — people had to at least BS their way though “I’m not as bad as Fred is”.
Much like the modern day KKK, they tend to have very little credibility with liberals and conservatives alike and while they know how to get their faces in the papers, the power of Fred or the KKK to actually oppress people or get other people to oppress people was rather limited.
Other people (in power) who promote sexism, racism, homophobia do so with a bit more B.S.-ing. and well funded marketing campaigns.