Wikipedia has a pretty good writeup. The short version is that it probably stems from childhood issues, then was exacerbated by professional rivalry.
And they are in their 90’s, not 80’s.
More on Phelps, then I’ll let you get back to discussing actual hatred:
And Suzanne James, who recently resigned after eight years in the Shawnee County District Attorney’s office as director of victim services, says Phelps’s opposition to homosexuality obscures a deeper purpose — promoting himself and hurting others.
“I’m so tired of people calling him an ‘anti-gay activist’,” James told the Report. “He’s not an anti-gay activist. He’s a human abuse machine.”
The most striking aspect of Westboro Baptist pickets is the relentlessly personal nature of their taunts. Their targets are only sometimes homosexuals; as often as not, they are simply people who somehow crossed the Phelpses, often unintentionally.
WBC members have picketed the funerals of Bill Clinton’s mother, Sonny Bono and Frank Sinatra. Even Bob Dole, Jerry Falwell, the Ku Klux Klan, Santa Claus and the 17 sailors killed aboard the U.S.S. Cole in Yemen last October have been attacked as “fags” or “supporters of the fag agenda.”
One little girl, going with her parents to see the “Nutcracker” ballet in a Topeka hall, had WBC pickets hiss at her: “Did your Daddy stick in his prick in your ass last night?”
Typically, targets are Topeka locals, whose names are memorialized in lurid WBC picket signs protesting “Fag Meneley” (for former sheriff Dave Meneley), “Bull Dyke James” (Suzanne James), “Jo*ANus Hamilton” (Shawnee County District Attorney Joan Hamilton). Once the signs are made, the WBC congregants go to work.
and
The Phelpses don’t just picket, they also fax. And what faxes. Sent out to dozens of government offices, law firms, businesses and homes across Kansas several times a week, the faxes are grotesque, non-stop political commentary lambasting local and national figures.
Joe Lieberman, Al Gore’s Democratic running mate last fall, is “an anti-Christ Jew” who “has sold his soul to fags.” Elizabeth Taylor is “an evil woman” who led a “wicked, Christ-rejecting, Satan-worshipping life.” Jesse Jackson is a “fag” and a “black Judas goat leading his people to hell.”
Thanksgiving was established as a “pagan feast” so the Massachusetts governor could “lust after the semi-naked bodies of the Indians he invited.” Poet Maya Angelou is the “filthy face of fag evil.”
and
And then there are the lawsuits. Phelps himself is a disbarred attorney who was long known for massive litigation; at one point, he personally had almost 200 lawsuits pending in federal court. Although his congregation includes only about 22 adults, at least 14 of those have law degrees.
The church has its own law firm, Phelps Chartered, which is staffed by church members and which has repeatedly filed suit against its perceived enemies (see Halting Abusive Lawyers).
In addition to suing the chief of police and various Kansas judges and politicians, it has sued one district attorney three times for “malicious prosecution.” Even private citizens who filed criminal complaints against the picketers found themselves embroiled in lawsuits — or, perhaps by coincidence, with roofing nails littering their driveways.
“We should stand up and be counted against this hatred, but I can recognize a moral dilemma to being courageous,” concedes Randy Austin, former head of the Concerned Citizens of Topeka, a group established to counter WBC.
I can hold myself up for the picketing, the lawsuits, the harassment, " says Austin, a lawyer who manages a trust that owns shopping centers. “But what if I stand up to them and they put one of my tenants out of business? That’s not okay.”
Hate as a Family Value
Although four of his 13 children are estranged from Phelps and the church, nine — all attorneys — remain loyal. Most of those live on or near the same city block that holds their church.
It should be mentioned that Shirley “holier-than-thou” Phelps’s oldest son Sam is an illegitimate bastard. Maybe she should have taken it up the ass.
You better watch out.
She thinks that she’s so holy,
tdn:
I recently watched a documentary about the Holocaust. A person speaking about it was not astonished at the inhumanity shown by death camp workers, but by the humanity. These people would kill a few thousand Jews, then party down after a good day’s work. Is that hatred, or indifference?
I suspect the partying down was an attempt at keeping emotionally numb with alcohol. Alcoholism and suicide rates were very high among camp guards.
tdn
December 8, 2011, 3:33pm
45
I wondered about that too. Or maybe they were just trying really hard to feel human again.
My first husband truly hated his abusive, alcoholic father. When I learned that he died (sister-in-law called me at work), I called my husband’s job to get a message to him. He worked construction, and his foreman had to go find him.
When my husband came to the phone and I told him his dad died, he said “You could have waited until I got home to tell me.” He finished his shift, came home, shed not a tear, didn’t even consider going home for the funeral.
Nothing of the usual “We had a rocky relationship but deep down I guess I loved him”. There was no forgiveness, no sympathy, no making excuses, no wishing things could have been different, no wondering why his dad was the way he was. Just hate and contempt.