This is so interesting, and surprising, to me. Do any dopers know if he still ardently holds these beliefs about racial equality, simultaneous to his views about the evils of homosexuality? Or is racial equality no longer one of his soapboxes? If so, what changed his mind?
Anybody else shocked by this?
I could have sworn that Southren Poverty Law Center classfied the Phelpses as a Christian Identity cult. The Phelpses are EXTREME Baptists. Like the kind that would see Bob Jones University as " too libral" or the ones who still believe that segregation was fine and dandy or the kind that approve of domestic violence.
It really boogles the mind that both MLK and Phelps came from the same church background.
You know, as much as I’d like to agree with you here, Guin, I just can’t. Phelps’s fight on behalf of blacks overcoming Jim Crowe was very real. He has a plaque from the NAACP, and I remember reading about at least one black person writing him a letter to thank him for his help in court.
I’ve read Addicted to Hate many times, and I accept most of it, but I’m skeptical about the passage you’ve linked to. I just cannot bring myself to believe that the easiest way for a white southern lawyer to make money would have been to defend poor blacks. Oh, I have no doubt that he did scam them and earn his disbarment. The man was an asshole nutter even then, which speaks volumes to his intelligence and competence in that he was able to carry on that fight while out of his mind. Who knows what he might have been able to accomplish if his *mentis *had been just a little more compos?
I hate Phelps, and I hate defending him, but if we are to have any hope at all of defeating him and his church one day, we have to face what we’re dealing with. Phelps is not a high school dropout with a dream for White America, an Internet connection, and “Fucked At Birth” tattooed on his forehead. He is a passionate, intelligent, and formidable enemy, and he really did go all out in his fight on behalf of blacks. . . until he fucked up and got disbarred, but again, we have to remember that his disbarment was almost beside the point when taken in the larger context of the fight itself. Dog only knows what hell he and his family went through over that alone–on top of the hellishness that is insanity and domestic abuse.
As far as his racial views today, well I’m not sure. He is said to be in league with Christian Identity, and his church–while always virulently antisemetic–has *really *started in on the Jews, so this might have changed. Still, I remember fliers from a few years ago condemning racism. They also used KKK and Nazi symbology in a negative way–i.e.-They used them as insults against people they deemed to be racists. On the other hand, Phelps and his Sawney Bean clan are crazy, so who knows.
Just remember that crazy doesn’t equal racist, and it certainly doesn’t equal stupid. These guys have experience in dealing with unpopular causes that goes back over 50 years, and they have trigger time in the courtrooms. People who don’t respect that have already lost any fight they plan to pick with the WBC.
I thougnt this fact was well known?
An analogy can be drawn between him and Charlton Heston in a way, Heston was involved in Civil Rights well before it was popular and trendy to dom so, yet in his later years IMO he went mad over other beliefs.
And secondly, dislike of homosexuality and homosexuals does not equal to being racist, indeed if it had been suggested to the average Civil Rights activist in the 1960’s that he was pro-homosexuality, good chance he would have been horrified.
His homosexuality was one of the things that forced Bayard Rustin out of the SCLC.