As an Agnostic Theist, I believe that every deity, religion, church, and congregation deserves some amount of benefit of the doubt. Such a view leads me to have a certain amount of respect for all religions. I am willing to Listen to one of my friends read to me parts of the Bible, another tell me about Wicca and what it entails, and listen to yet another friend talk about how awesome Satan is. Yes indeed, I have a very diverse group of friends, and I try to be as respectful as I can to them and their views. But there is one group, one group in particular, that deserves no respect. And that group is the Westboro Baptist Church. I'm sorry, but they are just the stupidest, most amoral group in America. I mean, maybe the neo-nazis are comparable, but then again, Westboro has them beat because not only do they hate Jews, but they protest at funerals, are completely homophobic, and now they are even protesting at Comic-Con. That's right – Comic-Con. This is why even other Baptist Churches won't accept them. They Give Christians, especially Baptists, Americans, the human race, and even molecules a bad name.
I'll start from a beginning: Fred Phelps was born in 1929. While at college, he frequently preached on campus, his speeches against "sins" committed on campus, some of which were legitimately bad, even if not all of them were, were written about in time magazine. He got a law degree in 1962, and used to be a civil rights activist, fighting for the rights of blacks. He then sued a court clerk and badgering her on the stand. He declared the innocent girl a "hostile witness" and cross-examined her for three weeks, during which time he called her a slut and asked irrelevant questions about former boyfriends. He told the appeals judges that he had eight witnesses that weren't allowed to testify who could prove his case, but each of them said he had never contacted them and they had nothing to testify against the girl with. He was disbarred for perjury.
Since he was only disbarred from practicing law in Kansas, he then began to practice law on the federal level. Several judges raised complaints about him and five of his children falsely accusing them of making false allegations against said judges. They settled, he agreed to stop practicing federal law and two of his children were suspended.
Phelps founded the Westboro Baptist Church (WBC) in 1955. The church describes itself as a Primitive Baptist. Mainstream Primitive Baptists denounce Westboro. The church also follows Calvinist principles, meaning that only a certain pre-chosen people are meant to go to Heaven, Jesus only died for these people, and that repentance is limited. With narrow minds they compare Catholic priests to vampires who suck the semen from children, clearly refusing to acknowledge that not all, and for that matter not even very many, Catholic priests are actually pedophiles. They also insist that Protestants, most notably Methodists, Presbyterians, Lutherans, Episcopalians and even other Baptists are liars who shrink the duties of priests and speak lies about what God expects of us.
Religions that aren't Christian do not seem to escape. WBC claims that Mohammad was a demon possessed pedophile. He said that the Quran is nothing but a work of Satanic fiction and claims the same for the book of Mormon. While one could say that someone claiming to hear voices of god, but doesn't actually hear voices from God is possessed, the pedophile remark clearly has no standing. Raping, abusing, and molesting are three serious offences, and those who do so are lower than the level of rodents. Those who falsely accuse a person of raping, or of molesting, or convincing a child to accuse the wrong person, are rats who deserve to be slowly eaten alive by giant cat monsters with venom flowing from their flaming, razor-sharp teeth, but I digress.
As for Hinduism, WBC has a website dedicated to how God "hates" India, claiming that "A country full of idolatry inevitably results in a nation full of f**s and f**-enablers," and tells them to stop "whoring after" other gods. The context of these phrases implies that they think Hindus this would solve Hindu's problems, and it is not clear that Westboro even know what they're talking about.
And on the subject of Jews, WBC insists that the only true Jews believe in Jesus, which for the most part, makes them not Jewish, because Judaism is a system of beliefs based on the old testament, not on the new one. They blame the Jews for killing Christ, despite the facts that Jesus was sent here to die, and thus whoever killed him was supposed to do so, and that the Romans were the ones who crucified him, not the Jews. They insist that if you don't believe in Jesus, you are only falsely claiming to be Jews, thus deciding what other people believe, just like the typical, narrow-minded, judgmental dumb asses who make the other members of even their own faith look bad.
BUT WAIT! THERE'S MORE!! KEEP READING NOW AND YOU CAN FIND OUT WHAT FRED PHELPS' OWN SONS THINK OF HIM AND HIS HYPPOCRITICAL CHURCH!!!
Fred Phelps has thirteen children. Two of them, accuse their father of beating them with a leather strap and with a mattock handle. Mark Phelps said that his Fred's abuse of his family was due to addictions of amphetamines and barbiturates. The two boys claimed that the Westboro Baptist Church is a well-organized cult developed to feed their father's delusion that he is the only sinless man on earth. The Baptist Minister who ordained Phelps backed the statement involving his delusions, stating in a 1993 interview that Phelps developed a delusion where he was one of the few people on earth worthy of God's grace and that everyone else is going to hell. Of Phelps' thirteen children, four of them are estranged.
Phelps's eldest daughter, Shirley Phelps-Roper has eleven children. The first of which was born out of wedlock. That must have been scandalous. She and her father are both banned from entering the United Kingdom. She was arrested in 2007 for "contributing to the delinquency of a minor" the police said that she allowed her son to trample an American flag, which is illegal in Nebraska at a protest of a soldier's funeral.