Founder of Westboro Baptist Church, Rev. Fred Phelps Sr. Dies

[Swede Atlanta]

110. As a gay man I should delight in his passing but I don't......

As a Christian as well I am taught to turn the other cheek regardless of how my neighbor has harmed me. The Phelps of his later years was a hateful, bigoted, pitiful man who was enraged at the world. His hatred was targeted at homosexuals and abortion. My experience is when someone is so narrowly focused on issues is he had some "personal" concerns with these two issues whether he was a closeted homosexual, had been involved in the termination of a pregnancy at some point in his life, I don't know.

I was attending a same gender legal issues seminar in Atlanta today. One of the speakers asked if anyone in the audience was familiar with Mr. Phelps. There was some general grunting and chortle around the room until the speaker announced he had died. Then the speaker passed on some information of which I was previously unaware.

Mr. Phelps' professional career started in the mid 1960s as an attorney. He was involved in several civil rights cases and supported black liberation. He sued Reagan for having appointed an ambassador to the Vatican because that act constituted an endorsement of religion. Only in 1979 was he finally disbarred after having an altercation with a court reporter.

His hatred to gays appears to have started, according to his family, when his 5 year old grandson was allegedly lured by a male homosexual in a park near the Phelps home.

A life that started with what might be seen as promise as a civil rights attorney and someone very concerned about the 1st Amendment to have deteriorated into a hate-filled descent into what must have been personal despair is tragic, regardless of how you look at it.