The ClayTaurus
Senior Member
- Sep 19, 2005
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OCA said:Senile cult leader? Have you met the man personally? I mean comparing him to Jim Jones or David Koresh is a little farfetched, don't ya think?
I said that I believe that homosexuality is an abominal sin in the eyes of God, one that without repenting from will surely land you a seat next to red horned fellow. If his group saying God hates queers gets people to open their eyes and pay attention, negatively or positively, to the biggest social crisis of our time, that being the homosexual indoctrination of our society at all levels, then so be it. Hey if I had been asked I would've told him to stay the fuck away from the military funerals but I wasn't, whatta ya gonna do?
Let me ask you this since you profess to be a Christian and follower of the bible, do you think Matt Shepherd is burning in hell right now?
Senile cult leader sounds about right... as well as a couple other adjectives. Have you actually looked into who this guy is, exactly?Arrival in Topeka
About a year after Fred Jr.'s birth, the family moved to Topeka, Kansas, where Fred Sr. had been invited by Pastor Leaford Cavin to be his co-pastor at Eastside Baptist Church, a traditional conservative Baptist congregation with none of the views or practices that would later characterize Phelps. The Phelps family arrived on May 17, 1954, the same day that the United States Supreme Court handed down its decision on Brown v. Board of Education. Fred Sr. would later claim that he took this as a sign from God that he should become a lawyer. [21]
Fred's position at Eastside was shortlived; as some congregants would recall years later, he was a "reverend from Hell." Almost immediately his sermons exhibited the hate-filled spirit which would later characterize his ministry. For example, as a means of encouraging the wives and children to "submit to the father's authority in the home," Phelps began encouraging his congregants to beat them if necessary; he was once forced to bail one of his parishioners out of jail after counseling the man to punch his wife in the face until she became "subjugated." Parishioners of Eastside recall one of Phelps' sermons in particular (which ironically references his high-school boxing talent):
A good left hook makes for a right fine wife. Brethren, they can lock us up, but we'll still do what the Bible tells us to do. Either our wives are going to obey, or we're going to beat them! [22]
The congregants, when asked by the Topeka Capital-Journal in interviews years later, recalled an incident one Sunday morning when Phelps' infant son, Mark, began to squirm during a sermon; Phelps responded by repeatedly punching the baby in the face. Afterwards, several men of the congregation confronted Phelps about the attack. [23]
Phelps' dismissal from the church came when a female congregant admitted that she had committed adultery. The next Sunday, Phelps' sermon revolved around the woman, repeatedly referring to her as a whore and encouraging the congregation to draw up an official "form" declaring her to be damned to Hell and excommunicated from the church (a tactic he would later adopt frequently). Instead, the congregants voted to kick Phelps out of the church.
Today, Phelps maintains that he left willingly because Cavin was not staunch enough of a Baptist. However, at least one Eastside congregant remembers it differently:
Theological differences? Brother Cavin was a very staunch Baptist. I don't know if there ever was a man more strict than Leaford Cavin. Really, it was the anger in Fred, not doctrine, that caused him to act the way he did. [24]
Several congregants chose to stand by Phelps and left Eastside with him. However, following an incident in which a stoned and drunken Phelps shotgunned to death a German Shepherd in front of a six-year-old because the dog had defecated on his lawn, the majority of Phelps' initial supporters left and returned to Eastside. Those who remained with Phelps included George Stutzman, the Davis family and the Hockenbarger family, the patriarch of which, Charles William (called Bill by fellow congregants), was a member of the Christian Identity sect of the Ku Klux Klan and a long-time friend of Phelps; these would become the founding members of Westboro Baptist Church in 1955.
Alleged abuse and abusiveness
Phelps graduated from Washburn University in 1962, attending classes while maintaining his pastoral duties at Westboro.
Sometime following his graduation from Washburn, Phelps became addicted to amphetamines and barbiturates, which he often combined with large quantities of alcohol. [25] One of his sons claims that his first memory in life was that of the drunk, stoned Phelps shooting a dog for defecating on the lawn (see above) [26][27], the incident which led to the majority of Phelps' supporters leaving him and returning to Eastside. The owner sued Phelps, but Phelps defended himself in court and won. In the middle of the night, for the next several weeks, his ex-congregants sneaked into the front yard of Westboro and placed signs reading: Anyone who'd stoop to killing a dog someday will mistake a child for a dog. [28]
Phelps continued to take drugs, consume alcohol, and binge eat for six years, and would often go for days or weeks without leaving his bedroom. When Phelps did leave his room, it was to throw temper tantrums, during which he would throw food, break plates, and scream at his children for not eating. When Phelps was then too exhausted to continue his fit, he would take his wife back to their room for sex while the children cleaned up after him. Son Mark recalls:
It established a life habit for me. Even today, the moment I get home, I'm thinking 'Is Daddy mad?' Our walls were stained with food. And my mom used to cry because she couldn't keep good dishes. My father would also bust holes in the walls and doors. If they were on the outside, he'd fix them quickly. On the inside, he'd leave them unrepaired for months. [29]
Because of his habits, Phelps stopped earning money for the family, and because he refused to allow his wife to get a job, the family's financial resources quickly dried up. Phelps's binge eating pushed his weight to nearly 300 pounds.
During this time the family's only income came from what Phelps called "The Children's Crusade," a money-making scheme disguised as evangelical witnessing and a church fundraiser, which consisted of the Phelps children going door-to-door selling candy. Phelps assigned the children quotas, and those who didn't meet the quotas were beaten with a mattock handle, a farming tool possessing twice the density of a baseball bat. [30] The sales often found the children in dangerous areas of town, including the "bad part of Kansas City," where a teenage Jon Phelps and eight-year-old Rebecca Phelps were assaulted by a transgender woman after Jon Phelps "held forth with the latest 'fag' joke making the rounds at his junior high." The transgender woman pulled a switchblade and chased the children; they ran into an alley, were trapped, and, as sister Margie recalls, "Jonathon Phelps got 'bitch-slapped' by a guy in a dress to teach him a lesson." [31]
The youngest child Tim "Timmy" Phelps consistently sold the most candy, "by being cute," his sister Margie recalls. [32] He would stand around town and act out a routine in which he took on the persona of a carnival barker. He was once seen by a talent scout, who put Timmy into a commercial for Payless Shoes. Timmy also earned by going to a restaurant whose owner felt sorry for what Phelps was forcing the boy to do; the owner never failed to buy every candy bar that Timmy had on him, and to give the boy free food and drinks.[33]
In 1993, during research that the Topeka Capital-Journal was conducting for a story on Phelps, they discovered that Phelps had obtained the candy by defrauding the manufacturer.[34] As of 1994, Phelps had lost two lawsuits to the manufacturer and was ordered to pay them an amount in excess of $125,000 USD. A representative of the manufacturer told the Topeka Capital Journal in 1994 that they were attempting to find Phelps' bank account to place a lien against it, but had been unsuccessful.[35] It is unknown whether or not Phelps has ever paid the manufacturer.
Eventually, candy sales dried up, but Phelps was insistent that money keep coming in from them. In order to avoid beatings, the children began stealing from businesses around town and acting as purse-snatchers. [36] The children were often caught, with eyewitnesses filing affidavits, but the district attorney refused to prosecute even one case for fear of violent retribution from Phelps. [37] Eventually, the theft became so prominent and so severe that the Topeka Police Department began a special investigation into Phelps under the belief that he was running a "Fagin operation." [38]
In the mid-1960s Marge Phelps loaded her ten children into the family car and attempted to flee from Fred, but found that none of her relatives or friends had the resources to accommodate eleven extra people. The family was forced to return to Fred, who promptly brutalized his wife. [39]
In 1968, Phelps tried to commit suicide while high on methamphetamines, attempting to shoot himself in the head with a shotgun; he was so inebriated, however, that he ended up missing his head completely and striking a roll of insulation. [40] Shortly thereafter, Phelps overdosed on a cocktail of alcohol and amphetamines. [41] He slipped into a coma and was rushed to the hospital, where he remained comatose for a week. Upon his return home he put himself on a detoxification diet, drinking only water and eating no solid food for several weeks. [42] There is no evidence that Phelps has since relapsed.
Phelps then decided that his children should be as fanatical about dieting as he was, and began to deny them food and force them to run ten miles a day; the marathons included all of his children, the youngest of whom were six and eight. If anyone beat Phelps in the race, they were beaten. [43]
At the same time, even though he had gone back to being an attorney, Phelps continued to force the children to sell candy. They would do this from 4:00 p.m. until they had either met their quotas or until it was too late to sell, return home, and then run their ten miles; upon returning home, they were then allowed to do their homework and, if Phelps allowed, eat. They usually went to bed at 1:00 a.m.; Phelps would then awaken them at 5:00 a.m. for a run before school. Phelps' fanatical dedication to running earned him articles in Runner's World magazine, in the November, 1970 issue and again in November, 1988. [44]
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Personal beliefs
During 199394 interviews with the Topeka Capital-Journal, four of Phelps' children asserted that their father's religious beliefs were either nonexistent to begin with or have dwindled down to nearly nothing since his conversion to the Baptists; they claim that Westboro serves to enable a paraphilia of Phelps, wherein he is literally addicted to hatred (this statement would serve as the inspiration for the title of the book about Phelps' life). Two of his sons, Mark and Nate, claim that the church is actually a carefully planned cult that allows Phelps to see himself as a demigod, wielding absolute control over the lives of his family and congregants, essentially turning them into slaves that he can use for the sole purpose of gratifying his every whim and acting as the structure for his delusion that he is the only righteous man on Earth. [62] In 1995, Mark Phelps wrote a letter to the people of Topeka to this effect; it was run in the Topeka Capital-Journal. [63] The children's claim is partially backed up by B.H. McAllister, the Baptist minister who ordained Phelps. McAllister said in a 1993 interview that Phelps developed a delusion wherein he was one of the only people on Earth worthy of God's grace and that everyone else in the world was going to Hell, and that salvation or damnation could be directly obtained by either aligning with or opposing Phelps. Phelps maintains this belief to this day. [64]
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Spousal and child abuse
Though the children who remain loyal to him claim that they were only spanked as children, there is an abundance of evidence to support the claims of two of his daughters and two of his sons that Phelps was physically abusive to his children and wife.
Phelps' sons Nate and Mark, who claim that they were among the most abused, each suffer from permanent debilitating injuries consistent with their accounts of Phelps beating them with a mattock handle. According to the boys, he woke them one Christmas Eve in the 1970s while under the influence, bent them over a bathtub, and struck them nearly 300 times with the mattock handle. [73]
In 1972 Nate and Jon (whom today Topeka residents consider to be his father's most ardent and vulgar supporter) showed up to school covered in welts, bruises, and bleeding wounds; the school nurse determined that Nate exhibited signs of shock. Social services then investigated the family, but Nate claims that their father threatened them with death if they spoke about their beatings. Phelps likewise issued threats against individual police officers and school staff, and filed a lawsuit against the school claiming they beat his children; the charges against Phelps, and Phelps' lawsuit, were dropped, but the affidavit that the school principal issued to social services remained on file as concrete evidence to support the stories of child abuse. [74] Even Phelps' loyal daughter, Margie, who now acts as his personal attorney, admits the incident occurred. [75]
In the early 1990s Nate Phelps was diagnosed as suffering from post traumatic stress syndrome. [76] He and his brother Mark have each been diagnosed as having suffered damage to the muscle tissue and tendons in their buttocks and legs, and both have scarring on their backsides, which they claim is the result of Phelps beating them with a custom-made, four-inch-wide strop. Around 1994 Nate was diagnosed as suffering from bone chips and severe damage to the muscle tissue in his knees. [77]
Marge Phelps, the boys' mother, suffers from bone chips and severe cartilage damage in her right shoulder, consistent with a story three of the Phelps children tell about Fred throwing her down a flight of stairs. [78]
Many of the Phelps children who remain at Westboro openly admit to using physical violence against their children; Phelps' son Jonathan boasted to the Topeka Capital-Journal in 1994 that he regularly beat his wife, Betty, and his children:
Jonathon Phelps, who admits he beats his wife and four children, for emphasis reads from Proverbs, 13:24: "He that spareth his rod, hateth his son. But he that loveth him, chasteneth him betimes."
...Betty Phelps, wife of Fred, Jr., glowers... Anytime you spank a child, you're going to cause bruising, she explains. And sneers: "I'll bet your parents put a pillow in your pants." Jonathon, staring straight ahead and not looking at the reporter, states in a barely controlled voice of malevolent threat that, should the reporter tell it differently than just heard, said scribbler is evil and going to hell. Assuming there'll be space, the doomed dromedary of capital muckraking must tell it differently [lie]. [79]
On occasion members of the church have dared police and government officials to attempt legal action against them.
In spite of the evidence, Phelps' loyal children, especially Margie, Fred Jr., Rachel, and Rebecca, all deny that there was ever any physical or sexual abuse in the home, to them, their siblings, or their mother. [80]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_Phelps
As for Matthew Shephard, no one will ever know if he repented for the sins of his life before he died, but even if you assume that he didn't, revelling in the fact that he's now in hell seems rather...unChristian...no?
