IT’S always heartening to hear news that bully-boy tactics, so beloved of religious organisations like our very own Christian Voice, don’t always work.
The late Matthew Shepard
Take the case of Michigan-based Grosse Pointe South High School, which later this month will stage the controversial play, The Laramie Project – an account of the torture and beating death of gay college student Matthew Shepard in Laramie, Wyoming in 1998.
According to this report, the play has enraged the Phelps clan – Kansas’ real-life equivalent of the ghastly inbreds who raged across the screen in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.
The Phelps, who operate the Topeka-based Westboro Baptist Church, and the notorious God Hates Fags website, have threatened to disrupt the performance with their answer to chainsaws – an array of obscene placards.
Shirley Phelps-Roper, the deranged daughter of the monstrous child-beating founder of the church – Pastor Fred Phelps – declared:
That play has one purpose … to teach rebellion to the sons and daughters of this generation against the standards of God …
A counter-protester takes the piss out of a Phelps picket
But the school, to its credit, says it has no intention of backing down. Principal D Allan Diver regards the play as a real-life lesson in the need for tolerance, and said:
If a hate group shows up, it would concern me a lot. But no, I would not cancel the play. That would be exactly what they want.
He added:
I would use the protest as a teachable moment, because it is.
Said senior Jon Manganello, 17, a member of the 20-student cast who plays multiple roles:
It makes us all more passionate about the work we’re doing. It will heighten the message, and show there are still people out there who feel so passionately that homosexuality is so wrong. By performing the show we are teaching people that (gay-bashing) is not OK.
The Westboro Baptist Church has staged loud protests against the play nationwide, including at about 20 high schools, Phelps-Roper said, adding between four and 10 of the church’s 71 members will travel to the school to protest the play.
The mad Fred Phelps and his equally deranged daughter, Shirley
The church has conducted more than 35,000 protests in more than 600 cities in the past 18 years, she said, most notably for disrupting services with raucous protests at funerals for soldiers who have died in Iraq.
They claim God allows soldiers to die in Iraq as punishment on the nation for tolerating homosexuality. The church, which is not associated with any known Baptist conventions or associations, is classified as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Centre.
The horrific events that befell Mattew occurred shortly after midnight on October 7, 1998. Two men, Aaron McKinney and Russell Henderson, lead him to a remote area east of Laramie where they demonstrated unimaginable acts of hate. Matthew was tied to a split-rail fence where he was beaten and left to die in the cold of the night. Almost 18 hours later he was found by a cyclist who initially mistook him for a scarecrow.
Matthew died five days ater at a hospital in Fort Collins, Colorado.
One of the Phelps clan, Nate Phelps, endured horrible cruelty at the hands of Fred Phelps until he escaped the clutches of this certifiable family in 1980, when he was in his 20s. Today, in this horrendous account of child abuse, Nate describes himself as an atheist.
Scroll down to the bottom of the report, where you will find a long riposte by Shirley Phelps-Roper which proves – as if proof were needed – that religion is all it takes to drive you utterly insane.
The Freethinker was founded in 1881 by GW Foote, an outspoken critic of religion. After the publication of 
November 7th, 2008 at 12:20 am
Okay, I give up. Where do the barmy Phelps clan get the money? I mean, I couldn’t have gone out to stage 35,000 displays of ignorant bigotry and scripture-fuelled hate in my entire adult even if I wanted to. I have to get up and go to friggin’ work.
So who finances these bastards? What right-wing nutjob is sending cheques to crazy ol’ Fred’s numbered account in the KKK Bank of Zurich, Alabama? My money’s on either Mel Gibson or Melanie Phillips. (If indeed they are two different people. Note the oddly similar names…)
November 7th, 2008 at 12:40 am
Valdemar -Melanie Phillips may be a right winger but she is of the wrong abrahamic religion. To be saved by Phelps homosexual hateing god she would need to convert. As far as the Phelps freaks are concerned shes just as destined for hell as the rest of us-unless shes some kind of masocist i doubt shes coughing up the dosh. As for Mel Gibson well that may be a different story
November 7th, 2008 at 1:01 am
Unfortunately, there is no shortage of people who hate, and some of them have closed minds, money to burn and too much spare time on their hands.
November 7th, 2008 at 9:42 am
Michael – yes, I was joking. Mel P. is always banging on about being Jewish, as if the persecution suffered by other Jews in other countries at other times somehow entitles her to be an ignorant lying bigot in England today. I still fume when I think of the damage she helped do during the MMR scare.
November 7th, 2008 at 7:49 pm
The Pastafarians seem to have found the way to cut Phelps and his inbreeds down to size.
There’s a cracking report at
http://www.arktimes.com/blogs/.....matie.aspx which describes the Central Arkansas Pastafarians mounting a ‘God Hates Shrimp’ counter-demo that not only got Phelps to pack up and go home in total confusion but effectively ensure the silly bastards were laughed out of town and will never go back there.
You can’t talk sense to someone who’s a complete headcase – but you CAN outweird them! They thrive on anger and encourage violence as it feeds their martyr complex, but just don’t know how to react to being mercilessly ridiculed.
November 8th, 2008 at 3:43 pm
There’s also a “God Hates Globes” group which uses “Biblical evidence” to prove that the world is flat and square. This lot also protest alongside Phelps, and then write reports saying that “The Phelps clan where there riding our coat-tails again. They claim to beleive in the truth of the bible but i haven’t ever heard them mention the shape of the world, they are no doubt brainwashed by the liberal ’spherist’ media”
November 9th, 2008 at 11:22 am
…”religion is all it takes to drive you utterly insane”
I couldn’t agree more!
What sickens me the most is the picture you have with everyone holding signs, and that boy holding the one that is so hateful. He is totally brainwashed.
God doesn’t hate anyone, because god doesn’t exist. But that young boy will grow up hating and bullying people in the name of an invisible man in the sky.
April 27th, 2009 at 3:18 am
You shouldn't judge a whole religion on one person. Just like you shouldnt hate a whole race because of one person who happens to be that race is a bad person. Religion is the one thing that keeps me from going insane. The Phelps obviously have mental problems. Being a Christain isn't about hating or judging. It's about loving and accepting everyone just like Jesus Christ would. In the bible there's a story about a woman who's going to be stoned to death by a group of men because she cheated on her husband and Jesus walks up and says whoever here hasn't sinned can throw the first stone. That's what Christianity is all about, no one has the right to judge anyone because we all sin and in Gods eyes no sin is worse than another.