Fred Phelps Westboro Baptist church traveled all the way to Michigan to protest a school play. Grosse Pointe High was running a school play “the Laramie Project” . It is a play about the gay kid 'Mathew Shepherd ,who got killed because he was gay. Westboro traveled all the way from Kansas just to protest the play which ran one night. How much money do those pricks have to go all that way to protest the only night of a high school play? Is that what baptist people donate to their church for? Is that a church at all?Yes it is on the local news.
Where do they get the money for all this stupid shit? Seriously … what the OP said. I’m baffled.
I’m from Topeka, which the WBC calls home.(Phred himself comes from Mississipi, way back)
They do have a law firm, don’t know what kind of business they do. And quite a number of them live together in a sort of compound, the houses all connected by a security fence. They try to get tax breaks by claiming it’s all church related, like the house/church that Fred calls home. Maybe they pool their resources. And I’ve long suspected they get money from folks who aren’t quite as “out of the closet” as they are about going public about their bigotry.
We see them all the time around Topeka. In fact they picket the church I attend at least once a month. But they’ve been backing off from real confrontations. Recently they went to Nebraska to picket at the funeral of some teens who died, and when the Freedom Riders showed up the WBC didn’t even bother to set up shop, and slunk home, leaving a trail of slime behind them.
If they went to picket at a school play(which does depict Fred too) it’s probably because they felt they would encounter no organized opposition. The travel expenses are probably written off as church work. Seriously, since it’s related to their religion, they do that.
Sounds like the Freedom Riders arrived a little too early. 
gonzomax, you don’t actually believe WBC is representative of Baptists or their churches, do you?
Pitting the WBC is kind of like pitting Jack Chick. Who cares? These people are all world class pricks who love the attention. Ignore them and they’ll pretty much go away.
If I’m not mistaken, almost all of the adult Phelps are lawyers and they have made quite a lot of money suing people for defamation.
Anyone heard anything about the progress of the lawsuit in which they lose their homes yet?
How do I know? Actually my family has a huge baptist component. I have gone to several baptist funerals. I can not relate to them either. They strike me as pretty goofy too. Not as bad as Westboro ,but goofy.
I respecfully disagree that ignoring them will make them go away. They’ve been at this for nearly sixteen years, and take it from me, everything, including ignoring, has been tried. So far nothing has made them go away. Although as I said in my earlier post, they’re showing signs of getting really tired.
Whether we want to or not we have to keep our eye on them because they are dangerous. They’ve physically attacked people, like the pastor of the church I used to attend.
Not sure about how that case is going, but the following link is to an article from today’s Capital_Journal about how things are progressing with the flag desecration case in Nebraska.
All that way. All that trouble. Just to protest a high school play. How did they know about it? What kind of meeting did they have to decide to dedicate the time and money to a few minutes of protesting in another state? I do not understand them at all.I don’t get angry at them,just confused by the idea that they could convince themselves that they were accomplishing something. A waste of time,trouble and money.
Probably from their congregation, who donate 10% of their income (as the Bible commands!) out of fear of winding up in hell when they die.
Christianity has always been one big pyramid scheme. WBC is way further out there than most, but even your local community church on the downtown corner only exists due to greed, fearmongering, and outright scam tactics which have been de rigeur for the past 2,000 years.
Here’s a response to that article by Margie Phelps
No comment needed
I guess you don’t. But they come up on the boards pretty frequently. They’ve been Pitted scores of times.
As far as them being representative of Baptists, even the craziest of crazy homophobic fundamentalists have deemed these people too crazy and homophobic. Pat Robertson has denounced them as a bunch of wackjob homophobes.
As far as how they make their money, it seems that they provoke violence and then sue. There is some speculation that they’re not really even as homophobic as they let on – they just troll for money.
According to the Free Press this morning, they pretty well phoned it in; they only sent three people, versus a quiet counter-protest of over a hundred. And judging by the comments of local kids who saw them, they only served to solidify people against their brand of hate.
And battery! Don’t forget that they love to provoke confrontations, then sue the crap outta the poor schnook who takes the fist swing. Deserved as it may have been.
And inre Marjorie’s response: That’s some authentic frontier gibberish. To which I doubt anyone could adequately respond. Wow. Just. . .wow.
“The Laramie Project” is something that they will usually go outta their way to protest. They couldn’t stop the authors, who only have Phred’s character speaking the words that dribbled from his lips, from producing it initially, so they show up to protest it. I’ve seen them at high schools and community theatres, dunno if they bother showing up for more professional productions.
I like the WBC in some ways, even as I am disgusted by them. At least when people see that brand of fundamentalism up close in the US, it turns a lot of even devoutly religious folks away from extremism. WBC does us the service of displaying, at home, just how idiotic and unacceptable that path of religious pickling really is.
But yes, they are outrageous assholes. I’m just glad they pick doing this kind of thing over bombing abortion clinics, gay pride parades, etc.
Well, really, they probably wanted to vacation in Michigan, or to visit some relatives there or something. Because they could certainly have found a high school closer to home that is putting on this play – it’s become one of the more popular ones with high school and junior college theatre groups.
Because it works well:[ul][li]it has lots of characters but a variable number of them, so you can accommodate all your potential actors (and please their taxpaying parents)[/li][li]some are very minor roles, so you can put your ‘developing’ actors in those roles[/li][li]it’s an impressionistic play, so you can get by with simple, suggested sets (cheap, easy to do!)[/li][li]it’s ‘controversial’, so you get more local publicity than if you presented Arsenic and Old Lace and get points for being ‘edgy’, but not so controversial that you offend your audience, because nobody will complain about an anti-violence play (except Westboro Baptist types, of course)[/li][li]and I believe the authors are encouraging this frequent performance by charging pretty low royalties for presenting it (especially important for small, rural schools with low budgets)[/ul][/li]
And a meeting to decide on this – come on! That church is run pretty much as a dictatorship by Fred – he makes all such decisions. Or maybe his one daughter now – I hear that she’s taking over the leadership role, as Fred slips into senility.
Is she actually suggesting that Obama is gay?
Further into senility, you mean.
Didn’t Jerry Falwell make broadly similar comments about how 9/11 was America’s comeuppance for being too tolerant of homosexuality?
Dude, these are people who picket and harass funerals. A high school play doesn’t sound so bad this time.
And while I think fundies like Falwell can be assholes, he was saint compared to these assholes.