I disagree. The unbelievably disgusting members of the Westboro Baptist Church are all about money. Hate has zero to do with it.
Remember, they also show up at military funerals (and other things).
I think Robert Frost nailed it, in his “Fire and Ice”
I think the worst hatred I ever saw was outside a church that Fred Phelps and his own Westboro Baptist Church were picketing. It was Pentecost, perhaps the second most important religious festival of the church year.
So a little old lady in a white blouse and bright red skirt was shuffling into church with a walker cane. A young man from the Phelps group hollered at her “You’re wearing that red skirt to hide the blood that’s pouring from your rectum, aren’t you?”
Ugh.
He lived?
Again, not hate. They just hope and pray that someone hits them, or forces them to leave, or in any way infringes on their right to free speech. Then they sue and rake in the money.
Notice that this particular incident had nothing to do with gays or the military.
That is simultaneously horrifyingly disgusting and hysterically funny.
My biological father, my last week of 10th grade at my old high school. I had to bring him a bill from my orthopedist (found out he was not paying the $5 copayment for my visits)
I was told in no uncertain terms that I was not supposed to bring him any bills. My mother was supposed to take care of them on the “so generous” child support he was sending ($100 per month). He then lit into me about seeing an orthopedist, and asked me if I thought he was going to pay for the hospital bill if I had the corrective surgery I needed.
I was called a mistake, told that if I had been born a boy that my parents never would have gotten divorced, that if I was born “perfect” that they would still be together, and that I should never have been born at all.
This all took place in a hallway at the high school I attended and he worked as a custodian. I am surprised that I did not get myself tossed out of school for the remainder of the time. I cursed him out, called him every name in the book. (A few teachers came out of their classrooms to see what was going on).
I never spoke to him after that. My niece emailed me to let me know he died back in 2003. No tears were shed for him.
My “imperfection” is congenital hip dysplasia. My right leg is an inch and a half shorter than my left due to it. I walk with a noticeable limp. I had 2 surgeries to repair it, one when I was an infant and one when I was about 2. A friend of the family was involved with the Shriners and wanted to sponsor me to have my final surgery done at the local Shriners’ hospital, and the March of Dimes also wanted to help pay for a final surgery. The s-o-b said that no one in his family would ever be known as a “charity case”.
Hope he is enjoying the eternal barbecue…
You weren’t there. It was hate. I saw it, I heard the voice. And this was in the mid-nineties, before they started picking on the military.
I live in the same city as the WBC. I’m of the same age as Fred’s older kids. I’ve stood close enough to their pickets, when I was counter-picketing, to be able to reach out my hand and touch one of them. I’ve been called a “church whore” by them.
Don’t lecture me on what hate is or isn’t. I know it when I see it. I invite you to come to Topeka and see the WBC in it’s natural habitat.
I hate my father. He was both physically and emotionally abusive and mean and a terrible human being. For as far as I could remember, he would say mean and hurtful things to me. Things that damaged my self esteem and things that still affect me to this day. I am 32 now and the abuse started when I was around seven. I haven’t spoken to him for a few years now and now that he’s getting older he is trying to make amends but I am not ready for his drama right now. He is also a dick to my mother and her family members but my mother still remains married to him although they have not spoken for almost a year now and they live under the same roof in separate bedrooms. That’s her decision and culture has a lot to do with it. They live in India. Even though I hate him for the things he did and said to me there are two particular events that stand out in my mind as personal expressions of hatred: both my hatred toward my father and his hatred toward humanity in general.
I grew up in India where it is common to have servants/maids who lived with us. One day when I came home from school our maid’s daughter who I used to play with, had a broken arm which was in a cast. I was around 13 or 14 and she was younger, maybe 11 or 12. I asked her what happened to her and she said that she fell in the bathroom and broke it and refused to tell me anything more. I helped her with her chores for the next few days and we played like we always used to. She was like a sister to me. Months later, she told me that my dad had broken her arm by hitting or pushing her (still unclear) and had asked her to keep her mouth shut by telling her that her mother would lose her job at our home if she said said something. I was LIVID!!! I have never felt so much hate toward him like I did at that moment. I confronted him when he came home and told him I would call the cops on him and I also went around telling our relatives about what he had done so I could continue to shame him. But of course nothing ever happened. Our maid continued to work for us and I watched out for her daughter as much as I could. I had no respect for my father. I am still ANGRY as I type it now.
The second incident…I forget how old I was, but we used to have young college students from low income families go door to door selling things so that they could raise money to go to college. It was some sort of government funded program. A young man, maybe 19-20 came to our door trying to sell something. My asshole father opens the door. I was in the front room reading and saw the whole thing. They young man politely gives his talk about this thing he was trying to sell and was trying to convince my dad to buy it. My dad could have just said no but instead…he slaps the guy HARD across his face and asks him to fuck off. The young man was speechless but he was still polite and he walked away while my dad slammed the front door shut. I cry and wonder what happened to this young man every now and then.
Yeah…I don’t know if I can ever have a relationship with my father because it is so hard for me to respect him. Sometimes I am ashamed that I am genetically related to that man.
My brith mother, who told me that I was lieing about my stepfather fucking me, emailed me a couple of months ago. She said that fuckhead was sick and not working and that they needed money. I divorced them when I was 16. The only time I hate them is when they contact me and it makes me happy to read the email and then delete it. Mostly I don’t think about them, so my rage and hate comes out when I get contacted. I don’t want them to have a place in my mind. I want them to just go away and die.
I remember reading an article about protesters at an appearance of Richard Nixon (it may have been the David Frost interviews, which was Nixon’s first major contact with the public following his resignation).
One of the protesters had a sign that read, “Hurry Up Nixon and Die”. Ouch.
I was in a 7th grade social studies class. We were divided into groups of 5-6 and separated as such within the classroom. We were discussing some game we were about to play. The teacher, normally a really nice, personable guy, noticed us chattering amongst ourselves while he was talking.
Obviously, when you’re ~13, getting yelled at for idle chatter during a lesson/etc. is a common occurrence. What does he do? He lifts up one of those chair/desk assemblies roughly 3-4 feet and slams it back down followed closely by some of the loudest shouting I’ve ever heard in my life.
I can’t believe that incident went seemingly unreported. He was later promoted to a principal of another school, so go figure. I’ll never forget that.
:rolleyes:
Histrionics aside, the Westboro clan could be said to hate everyone equally, if they think they can make of buck off of it.
Gays, military, LDS members, rock singers, churches, Steve Jobs, Micheal Jackson, shooting victims, Jews, the Marines, China, tornado victims, brain tumor victims, Dio- all protested by the Phelps and his followers (to name only a few). They protest Catholics, Protestants, Mormons, Muslims, Hindu, Jews, orthodox Christians, and others.
I didn’t see this, but my daughter was helping with my terminally ill MIL in a hospital in Honolulu 6-7 years ago. MIL had been born in Korea in 1930. Another patient, an elderly Japanese woman, was put in the room with her. Although a rasping, emaciated bag of brittle sticks, MIL came back to full strength with an amazing rage in her heart, until the Japanese woman was removed.
I know we need to let things go, forgive, realize everyone is human and we all love our children, etc., but sometimes hatred deserves to be respected as something not to be overcome easily.
I don’t understand – how do they make money off of their activities?
Most of them are lawyers, and they are forever suing people.
ETA: Wiki has a section on this subject.
For me, the opposite of love isn’t hatred, it’s not caring. At all.
Having been beaten and choked in lifetime by someone who was supposed to love me when I was young and also truly loved, held and cherished by my husband, the most damaging thing that’s ever been done to me is being given the knowledge that someone I loved didn’t care if I lived or died.
I listened to an interview with one of the “escaped” Phelps sons (Nate, I think - via the now-defunct podcast Irreligiosophy) who talked about the days starting in the 1960s when Fred Phelps was a respected civil rights lawyer. The son said he did it because no one else was doing it, and there was a big unserved group with a lot of potential for making money off lawsuits for discrimination. It’s the same thing; they’re suing the hell out of anyone they can.
Those of you posting about your horrible parents, I feel your hatred towards them – but I also feel a certain amount of pity. How can a person be so utterly broken?
I have two stepkids. Their bio-dad is a walking waste of skin. He has four kids with two ex-wives and three stepkids with current wife. If his brain caught on fire tomorrow, not a single one of the kids would piss in his ear to put it out.
Example: his mother died and left a trust fund for the children’s educations. He demanded it as part of the divorce settlement and has raided it dry. He agreed to pay half of stepdaughter’s college education. She had a bad spell one semester and flunked four of five courses. When she went to him to “discuss” the next semester where she was re-taking the courses, he called her a sorry fuck-up and said that he wasn’t paying another cent for her education, since all she was doing was screwing around.
Real peach of a guy. There have been many, many nights where I have gone to bed and drifted off to sleep while amusing myself with figuring out ways to do things like beat on him with a tire iron, or pour gas on him and light it and then laugh while he ran around turning into a crispy critter, or…you get the idea.