Westboro Baptist Church
The Westboro Baptist Church is the lone bastion of reason and morality in a world gone mad. Logically, it is located in Topeka, Kansas, home to intelligent design and the rock supergroup of the same name. The Church, which is rumored to have in excess of twelve members and growing by no less than none every year, is headed by misunderstood idiot-savant and knight-errant of goodness Fred Phelps, attorney-at-law.
Under Phelps's utterly creative, sometimes incendiary, and always visionary leadership, the Westboro Baptist Church has successfully drawn the ire of pretty much everyone in the world. It has achieved this well-thought-out and beneficial aim by rejoicing for natural disasters, the spread of disease, and other afflictions on humankind that are generally regarded by the rest of the world as a time for compassion and mourning.
Ironically, due to its obsession with celebrating misery, the Church has itself in recent years invited what it considers unwelcome attention to its activities, including vicious beatings of its members, intermittent showerings of its compound with pig feces, and yet more vicious beatings of its members.
The concept
In 1955 Fred Phelps received a vision from God. The Lord admonished Phelps, saying unto him: "Yea, for in the eyes of the Lord God fags are no good at all, and He hates fags, and thou must condemn the fags to eternal hellfire for thy sinful buggery."
Phelps took the message to heart, and set out to form a new ministry to spread God's word. However, having only a precious few words from the Lord from which to make a covenant with the Lord, Phelps parsed the most valuable lesson the slow-witted public could wrap their minds around: "God does not like fags in the least." But this had too many words, and eventually became "God hates fags."
From this inspired wellspring of divine inspiration, Phelps became a lawyer, then a mass-marketer, but then seemingly missed a golden opportunity by not becoming a televangelist. This would have easily allowed him to reach a wider audience and enlighten more people with his simplified-yet-accessible interpretation of God's word, but Phelps clearly lost out on a marvelous chance to make himself and his ministry even more widely-beloved.[citation needed]
His tiny ministry established firmly in the basement of his modest Topeka home, Phelps set out to erase any trace of dandy dalliances and married a beautiful wife, who would bear him upwards of nine glorious children's from which would come the primary "numerical" expansion of his ministry.
The Gay 90s
Circa 1991, Phelps looked into the mostly empty pews of his ministry and realized no one except for his own children were coming to hear his fascinating and deeply intellectual sermons. Then, as if on cue, the Angel Konvinin-Tlymadapiel appeared before him and said: "Fred, taketh brightly colored signs with words written upon them and use them to spread thy wisdom to those who can read! Picket! Picket in the name of Our Lord! Do this at places such as the funerals of fags, or funerals of non-fags, or businesses that have some Kevin Bacon-like connection with fags, or anywhere, really, just so long as it pisses someone off, hopefully fags."
Thus charged by God Phelps executed his mission with flair, taking his family hither and yon, seeking out events that one would not normally consider picketing, such as groundbreaking ceremonies ("God hates fag groundbreakers!"), the opening of public buildings ("God hates fag libraries!") and funerals of newborns ("God hates fag unbaptized children!").
During the 90s Phelps and his ministry logged more than five thousand picketings, although it seems the picketing didn't stop a damned thing. It was during this golden time for Phelps that his children began intensive inbreeding, as well as ever-more colorful and creative sign-making.
Phelps's critics, however, point out that fags (which they call homosexuals) continued running around pretty much the same as they had done before, and even in instances where it could be argued that God's hatred for them resulted in fatal calamity (the death of Matthew Shepard, for example), there was no proof of this. Moreover, it could be argued that there was no point at all to any of the picketing, a view not shared by the Westboro Baptist Church or Fred Phelps.
In 1999 it was rumored that Phelps, undaunted by the hollow idiocy and clear failure of the entire undertaking, made a sign that read "God hates my fag wife" and picketed her for several weeks. She remains "in her Homeliness by his side, a good and dutiful beard".[suspicious quotes]
Turn of the Century
The turn of the century saw no change whatsoever from Phelps and his ministry, though at times they seemed directionless, picketing post office drop-off boxes, people walking their dogs, and day-care centers for special-needs children.
The media began to tire of Westboro's antics, and even people being actively picketed began to develop a robust tolerance of the ministry's hateful demonstrating. In a hand-held recording of a McDonald's in Topeka being picketed by Phelps and his clan for serving "fag hamburgers to fags", the manager of the franchise stands near the small cluster of Westboro protesters, shaking his head and smiling. The audio is muffled, but audible.
PHELPS ET AL: God hates you and your fag hamburgers!
MANAGER: Look, you guys are too much. Seriously.
PHELPS ET AL: God hates you and your fag hamburgers!
MANAGER: I'd ask you to leave, but ...
PHELPS ET AL: God hates you and your fag hamburgers!
MANAGER: I'd ask you to leave, but I think you're attracting more patrons. Could I ask you to just keep it down while the customers enjoy some Big Macs and laugh at you?
PHELPS: You're going to hell, fag!
MANAGER: Look, I'm gay and I'm comfortable with it. I'd just ask you to please keep it down.
PHELPS: Sodomite! You're going to hell to burn with you and your fag hamburgers! None will be saved!
MANAGER: Thanks ever so much.
The video cuts out soon afterwards, but Phelps appears clearly flustered at his inability to rankle anyone, at one point hitting one of his children with his picket
Theology
Westboro Baptist Church is a five-point hyper Calvinistic organisation. John Calvin often reconciled belief in an unchanging God with his changing Calvinball rules by finding loopholes, for exemple that God predestined everything so any shit he does is God's will because no one would act against their own will and make people disobey them. Phelps took this to his logical extreme and mixed it with his lawyer profession by applying it to law, often find loopholes in hate speech laws. Calvin believed that God predestined everything, and Phelps took it to its logical extreme by believing that God predestined two things at once, for X to happen at time Y and for X to not happen at non-Y time, making twice the things John Calvin believed God predestined. For example, when John Calvin believed God predestined Pope Urban II to call the Crusades in the Middle Ages, Fred believed He predestined Pope Urban II wouldn't call the crusades in other times.
After his death, the Phelps, also lawyers, followed the example and grew to declaring "God Hates Jesus", which drove out every non-Phelps member.
A new beginning
Fortunately for Westboro, the events of September 11, 2001, provided ample opportunity to protest everything in America anew, especially veterans of the War on Terror.
Subsequently, the malaise towards Westboro that the public had been stricken with at the turn of the century gave way to more of a furious, fist-swinging anger, as the grief of familial loss combined with the sight of a dozen or so braying Midwestern jackasses with nonsensical, ludicrous signs proved too much for most to take.
To this end, Phelps and many members of the Church have suffered cuts, bruises, abrasions, Indian burns, wet willies, broken bones, sprains, dislocated shoulders, lost teeth, gouged eyes and even curb stompings. Though externally the repeated beatings (which are tacitly allowed by law enforcement across the country) seem to be dampening the malicious spirit of the Westboro Baptist Church, Phelps (minus several teeth and with a severely shattered nose) continues to preach his special, pointless brand of religious hatred to anyone who will listen, which is currently his own family.
In early 2006 Phelps was seen marching around the Westboro complex wearing a suit made of bubble wrap, holding a sign aloft reading "God is a fag." It is not known if this sign signaled a daring new course of irrational hatred for Phelps and his ministry, for both Phelps and the sign were soon doused by one of the bi-weekly launchings of liquified pig feces delivered by catapult into the compound by members of the state-approved Douse Fred Phelps With Pig Shit Society.
See also
