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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.

Fall From Grace a Prophetic Title for Showtime Documentary

We’re not in Kansas anymore. If only Fred Phelps had a heart. I TiVO’d K. Ryan Jones’ documentary about Phelps, Fall from Grace, which premiered last night on Showtime, (and will air five more showings on its networks as well as on-demand availability). Watching it over coffee this morning was a rude awakening. Seeing so much hate was so vile, I thought I would throw up my Cream of Wheat. Fred Phelps is pastor of Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka, Kansas, a congregation that consists only of his immediate family, according to the documentary. The Phelps family began picketing to publicize their hatred of homosexuals in the spring of 1991. In the 16+ years since, they have staged more than 22,000 protests, most targeting GLBT events and gatherings.

Sitting clean-shaven (forbidden by God: Leviticus 19:27) before the camera in his Golden Girls sweat suit, no doubt weaved of many fibers (forbidden by God: Leviticus 19:19), Phelps cloaks his hate in religion. He spells out his biblical justification literally, quoting Leviticus 18:22 (including clarifying the exact punctuation). “Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind SEMICOLON it is abomination.”

Apparently that’s all the bible-reading Phelps did. He missed the PARAGRAPH later in the chapter, where it says, ” “Thou shalt not hate thy brother in thine heart COLON ‘thou shalt not in any way rebuke thy neighbor COMMA and not suffer sin upon him PERIOD.” Then, in the next PARAGRAPH, the bible emphasizes the point: “Thou shalt no avenge COMMA nor bear any grudge against the children of thy people COMMA but thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself COLON I am the Lord.”

I will leave biblical scholars to debate interpretation of Leviticus, that tool of intolerance. I will leave it to ministers to justify why some Leviticus Laws are to be followed and others can be ignored. I will pause only to point out that the recently published Bible study guide, Study New Testament for Gay, Lesbian, Bi, and Transgender, is just the most recent scholarly challenge to literal Leviticus interpretation. Dr. Ann Nyland, an ancient Greek language scholar and lexicographer, indicates that “arsenokoites,” the Greek word assumed to mean homosexual, actually has a range of meanings, including one who anally penetrates another (whether female or male)–but can also mean a rapist, a murderer or an extortionist. She also asserts that the fabled fall of Sodom and Gomorrah was due to angels having sex with humans, not homosexuality.

What I found unbelievable in “Fall from Grace” was the disapproval of Phelps by other ministers. In the film, the Reverend Jeff Gannon, pastor of the Wichita, Kansas Chapel Hill Fellowship, (a different Jeff Gannon than the former gay prostitute-turned-conservative-blogger) said he “feels bad because Phelps gives Christians a bad name.” Yet Gannon and thousands of Christians like him do little to oppose their church’s official policies of intolerance, exclusion and condemnation of the LGBT community. Injustice is everywhere in the majority of Christian denominations. Dr. Martin Luther King warned us from a Birmingham jail cell more than 40 years ago: “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”

The injustice afflicted on LGBT Americans has recently threatened a different just cause: support for American troops in Iraq. The Phelps family has found a new target for their rage, and it is the right wing’s revered military forces. Phelps believes that homosexuals are taking over the U.S. military and the nation, and that soldiers killed in action in Iraq are proof of God’s vengeance. Phelps says God hates fags and is punishing America for allowing homosexuality to exist. He makes his point with protests at the funerals of American troops killed in Iraq.

While most Americans sat passively by for Phelps’ ranting against “fags,” his disrespect for American troops prompted a little more action. In May 2006, President Bush signed an amendment to U.S. law that prohibits protests within 300 feet of military funerals at national cemeteries and outlaws them altogether for an hour before and an hour after the service. In April 2007, Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius signed a similar state law. Other states added their own restrictions, including Kentucky and North Dakota. I did a little research and was unable to find any similar protections for funerals for gays and lesbians, another common Phelps family tactic. America tolerates homophobia.

But Phelps’ agenda seems more sinister than simple homophobia. In the documentary, Phelps declares that America is doomed. His son Timothy tells us his family’s goal is to “put the cup of God’s fury to the lips of this nation and make them drink.” The pickets signs are the writing on the wall. Their messages include “Fags are worthy of death,” and “USA=Fag Nation.” In case you fail to make the connection, others are clearer, such as “Thank God for 9/11.” He has stoked his rage, building a firestorm of hate toward his own country.

What we learn from Jones’ documentary is that Phelps’ rage runs deep. Two of his 13 children are interviewed by phone for the film, and recount vicious beatings from their father. Yet only four of his 13 children left the family and their church, a testimony to the power of his personality. There have been other “religious” men with similar holds on their families and followers, like Jim Jones, for example. It’s called a cult.

“Fall from Grace” is an important film. It should be required viewing for the Christian right. They should have to face what their hate helped create. It should be required viewing for the LGBT community. We should understand the danger that faces us, lest we choose to donate a dollar at Pride or join HRC and assume the fight for acceptance and inclusion is handled. It should be required viewing for any American who has fallen for the social conservative agenda.

I’ll close this post after one more dip in the quotationspage.com well. The Reverend Ralph W. Sockman said, “The test of courage comes when we are in the minority. The test of tolerance comes when we are in the majority.”