10:28, October the 15th, 1998

I believe that the so-called "Reverend" Fred W. Phelps (and perhaps others at his Westboro Baptist Church, Topeka, Kansas) is a classic case study in the bizarre & not completely successful lengths that some homosexuals and bisexuals will go to in trying to conceal & suppress their own overpowering & unwanted homosexual attractions --in this case by projecting them as hatred towards others. The bizarre extent of their hatred is directly related to their enormous frustration, anger & resentment at just knowi ng that there are others out there who are having homosexual sex when their beliefs prohibit and condemn it. I believe that Phelps, like so many other tortured bisexuals & homosexuals, uses religion in an attempt to make sense of the internal struggle between his indoctrinated belief that people should have only male-female sexual attractions and the reality that he does not. In short, I believe he is a "fag" (his terminology) with a myopic obsession with and attraction to his fello w "fags", but who hates & attacks them rather than admit --especially to himself-- that he is a "fag" too. I also believe that he gets sadistic sexual pleasure out of intimidating, dominating & attacking his fellow "fags".

[Note: although I deplore his methods, I do credit Lorenzo Gonzalez, Publisher/Editor of the LA Bisexual Resource Guide, for pointing out prior wording in the previous paragraph which he misconstrued as an attack on all bisexuals. Although I wrote that I believed that Fred Phelps is probably bisexual (meaning only that he is also sexually attracted to females), I also tried to make it clear that this was a very tenuous conclusion and he could very well be a homosexual --and that my admittedly speculative an alysis of what drives Phelps would be the same whether he is a homosexual or bisexual. Apparently I didn't make this point clear enough, so the paragraph has been revised to address his concerns. Of course, the part below dealing with Phelps and his cult's misuse of the Bible to justify their anti-gay bigotry and hatemongering is applicable regardless of sexual orientation.]

Below is a typical example of their pronouncements. Please especially note how:

Objective reality & facts are irrelevant to their ego-defensive bulwark of beliefs.

They quote certain people & authors with no regard to their meaning in context.

They selectively accept certain portions of the Bible as true for others but not themselves, as well as accept other portions of the Bible as true for themselves but not others.

They ignore & knowingly violate other portions of the Bible, some completely & others at their whim --even while claiming that the entire Bible is literally true. [I don't accept the whole Bible to be true either, but at least I admit it. I don't even accept everything Jesus supposedly said. For example, if he truly said it, Jesus's statement that a woman whose husband divorces her commits adultery if she remarries (even though the man does not commit adultery if he remarries): although probably trying to use guilt to get husbands to remain within the marriage (especially in his culture where only men had the right to divorce their spouses and could do so for any reason --or none at all), adultery requires an existing marriage by definition --not an ex-marriage, and it is so fundamentally irrational & unjust to the woman that it simply isn't true.]

They ignore the fact that Jesus, who they falsely claim is the centerpiece of their beliefs, never once singled out homosexuals or their relationships for condemnation --and in fact made it clear through his more general statements that it is not only wrong to judge & condemn them, but that they are equal to heterosexuals & heterosexual relationships.

They love to quote such suspect authors as:

PAUL: who "converted" many years after Jesus died and apparently knew and understood little of what Jesus taught and therefore repeatedly introduced dogma which Jesus clearly rejected or said nothing about, thereby fundamentally altering Jesus's teachings. Even if Jesus appeared to and chastised Paul for persecuting his followers, it was absurd for Paul to interpret this to mean that all of his other personal beliefs and prejudices were somehow true and approved by Jesus: beliefs and prejudices which heavil y influenced his selection of what Judaic dogma to include in or reject from his particular version of Christianity --including some parts of Leviticus, but not others.

those who wrote LEVITICUS: who repeatedly contradict the Ten Commandments; who cynically manipulated the people into accepting their authority by proclaiming common superstitions, prejudices & scapegoating as legally mandated "truths" falsely attributed to God; & who were essentially involved in a power consolidation & grab by the Priest Class --giving them sweeping control over the daily lives of the people & assuring for themselves material wealth in the guise of demanding for themselves valuable "sacrifi ces" falsely claimed to be required by & given to God. That's why Jesus stopped the Phelps-like mob from the Leviticus-mandated murder of the woman for adultery --with both the adultery & the murder (unlike homosexuality) prohibited by the Ten Commandments, deftly using the only argument to stop her murder which might appeal to such a mob. That's also why Jesus attacked & condemned the lucrative trading in such "sacrifices" at the Temple].

those who wrote the mythological story of Sodom & Gomorrah: even if such cities existed and were destroyed in some natural disaster, the description of the people in those cities and attributing the disasters to God punishing them for wickedness prove only that an enemy or competing culture which survived them wrote the account and were using mythology/religion to bolster up & refine common irrational beliefs & prejudices --so those in power could further consolidate and amass even more power & wealth, as well as officially designate a convenient and useful scapegoat class.

Interestingly, the Phelps also frequently refer to homosexual attraction as a "fleshly lust" in the same category as heterosexual attraction --which I believe is a personal admission for them. Of course, we will never know this with any degree of certainty until they either admit it, or unless their sexual arousal is monitored carefully using sophisticated measuring devices while they watch graphic male-male "pornography". But given the existing evidence (including recent evidence that a large percentage -- perhaps even a substantial majority-- of those males who label themselves as both heterosexual AND anti-gay are in fact sexually aroused by other males --which of course makes them liars, frauds & hypocrites), I believe that truly objective people will come to the same conclusion. Judge for yourself.

I also encourage any males who have ever had sex with Fred or Benjamin --or anyone else who has had homosexual or any non-marital sex with any of the Phelps clan or members of their Westboro Baptist Church-- to publicly tell their stories now, to publicize their hypocrisy and stop the Phelps from doing any more damage.

For my fellow Utahns, Fred Phelps has an old Utah connection. In the summer of 1947, at the age of 17, he came to Vernal Utah to convert the Mormon heathens with daily tent revivals. When several Mormons --after listening respectfully to an anti-Mormon speech which had been advertised on a local radio staion-- started asking questions & showed some unhappiness with being cut off after just one question, Phelps lunged at one of them while screaming threats, insults & damnation; he had to be bodily restrained by a co-preacher who now believes that Phelps, although brilliant & now a masterful lawyer [Note: Unibomber Theodore Koczinsky is brilliant & a masterful mathematician], showed signs of serious mental illness even back then and long ago became heretical even within their own shared fundamentalist Christian sect.

[Oh yes, one of the favorite Halloween costumes of gays in Topeka, Kansas, is to dress up as Fred Phelps --with tire tracks running across him-- while holding hands with someone similarly attired. Of course, with no sense of humor & having become a mere shell & caricature of himself over the years, he certainly wouldn't get the joke --primarily because he arrogantly & falsely equates mocking of him with mocking of God.]

Here it is:

"Billed as 'the largest AIDS-related event in history', The Quilt in the Capital will have all 45,000 panels with 70,000 names covering 15 city blocks spread over the National Mall from the Capitol Building to the Washington Monument. Maudlin fags will again work this tear-jerking quilt scam before 750,000 visitors (including 50,000 captive and propagandized school children), in another shameless ploy to evoke sympathy in a bid to rape the taxpayers. These promiscuous, disease-ridden, anal-copulating fag ve rmin could easily stop the AIDS epidemic cold, by heeding the Bible admonition, 'Abstain from fleshly lusts, which war against the soul!' 1 Pet. 2:11. They must be preached to -- not coddled. 'If God peradventure will give them repentance to the acknowledging of the truth, and that they may recover themselves out of the snare of the devil, who are taken captive by him at his will.' 2 Tim. 2:25,26. WBC [Westboro Baptist Church] will also picket sodomite Ann Richards, fo rmer Texas governor, at the fag 'A Nigh t to Remember' at D.C.'s Pension Building -- the National Bldg. Museum, Oct. 11. Also, the fag Candlelight March Against AIDS, Oct. 12. God hates fags. Guilty aids-spreading fags must be quarantined. 'Be not deceived; God is not mocked. Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.' Gal. 6:7 Guilty fags killed Ryan White, Kimberly Bergalis and many more innocent people, by deliberately tainting all the nation's blood supply with AIDS. Militant fag s, following Hitler's 'BIG LIE' propaganda (tell a lie bi g enough often enough & people will believe it), pretend that AIDS isn't their fault, & that they deserve sympathy, not censuring, for their filthy, sinful, promiscuous anal sex practices. WBC will picket this FAG-LIE QUILT to warn sinners."

--From their official Topeka, Kansas, Westboro Baptist Church "God Hates Fags" Web site

by Stuart McDonald