lifeonq.com

Phelps Family Won’t Let Heath Ledger Rest in Peace

Fred Phelps and his family cult are at it again. His Westboro Baptist Church announced their intention to protest at actor Heath Ledger’s U.S. memorial services. The actor, who was found dead in his Manhattan apartment on Tuesday, is expected to be buried in his native Australia.

Classified as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center, the Westboro Baptist Church has picketed thousands of LGBT events, including funerals. The Topeka, Kansas group has more recently turned its rage toward the U.S. military, protesting the funerals of soldiers killed in action in Iraq. Their clearly irrational “rationale” is that God is punishing America for being tolerant of gays and lesbians by killing U.S. soldiers with IEDs.

Phelps’ church posted a bulletin on one of its many hate Websites announcing their intention to picket the actor’s U.S. memorial services, because he portrayed a gay cowboy in the ground-breaking film Brokeback Mountain. Heath Ledger was not a homosexual; he just played one in the movies.

And again, the media is covering Phelps’ announcement as a “church’s” protest. Yet Westboro Baptist “Church” is attended only by members of Fred Phelps’ immediate family. (Read my post about the Showtime documentary Fall from Grace for a full rant on the Phelps clan.) Just because Phelps twists the pages of the bible, picking and choosing the passages to follow, doesn’t make him a minister and doesn’t make his family a church. There is a more accurate term for Westboro. It’s clearly a cult built around the rage and abuse of one father, from which only four of his 13 children managed to escape.

From all media accounts (which, in their own right, have gone way overboard in sensationalizing the actor’s death), Heath Ledger was a tolerant man. His love for his daughter and family were obvious. If only those who were moved by Ledger’s art were less tolerant of the kind of hate and hurt that the Phelps family plans to interject into the actor’s memory. May Heath rest in peace.