Towleroad Guide to the Tube: #109
Most Hated Family in America Edition
A documentary on the Fred Phelps clan, The Most Hated Family in America, aired over the weekend on the BBC. To supplement it, on Friday the BBC published an interview with journalist Louis Theroux, who tried to get to the bottom of it all:
"What we're trying to do in the documentary is look at an activity that is so antisocial, so strange, so futile and at its worst, so cruel, and we're saying 'Why? Why do that?', especially when you seem to be, for the most part, kind and sensitive people. We're exploring what is cruelty, trying to explain how something that really does very often just amount to cruelty could be perpetuated and passed down in a family. Why would nice people do such horrible things?"
Parts 1-4:
Parts 5-7 after the jump...
The Most Hated Family in America [bbc]
Westboro Baptists Continue To Rock The House [queerty]
Video: 'The Sur-Real World' [good as you]
Posted Apr. 2,2007 at 3:46 PM EST by Andy Towle in Fred Phelps, Gay Slurs, News, Religion, Shirley Phelps-Roper, Towleroad Guide to the Tube | Permalink
There's a dark secret fueling this kind of intense hatred. This goes way beyond hetero disgust for homosexuality. This kind of crusade is an attempt to cover or forgive one's own personal sin and self hatred.
I'd bet money that Grandpa Phelps has been to bed with one or more of the Phelps family females.
Yeah, if you convince your family that fags are more disgusting than your own dirty little family secret, everyone can just go on ignoring it.
Posted by: mark m | Apr 2, 2007 10:06:48 PM
I feel sorry for the that young woman. She doesnt speak with the same vitrol and hatred that Shirley has although I still realize their message is the same. It seems like she has been instilled with the idea that no one can love or accept her outside of her church so it is hopeless to try.
Posted by: Toto | Apr 2, 2007 10:57:38 PM
I live about 15 minutes away from the Phelps compound. I hate to say it, but most Topekans have become completely apathetic to the Phelps' signs. We just treat them as ugly scenery and go about our days.
Posted by: Jordan | Apr 3, 2007 12:11:06 AM
Even the WBC members themselves don't seem to care about the signs all that much either. It's just a bunch of props to them. Their entire approach has become mechanical.
Posted by: anon | Apr 3, 2007 12:24:31 AM
Mark M...I agree with you that watching this documentary leaves you with the impression that there is some serious incest and possibly pedophilia going on in the Phelps KKKlan. I with the Department of Children and Family Services would investigate them for putting the children in danger by trotting them out to street corners to hold inflammatory signs. At the least, they might save one of the children from being hit with an object (or a bullet). At most, they might uncover sexual abuse of the children. Anyone know the phone number for the Department of Children and Family Services in Topeka?
Posted by: peterparker | Apr 3, 2007 12:47:50 AM
Peter, I wish it wasn't the case, but the Phelps are untouchable. Religious freedom and all that. I doubt there's any pedophilia going on. But, clearly, what they're engaging in is child abuse. Sadly, it's legal child abuse.
Posted by: Jordan | Apr 3, 2007 1:24:23 AM
So, where are the people calling them "crackers?" How about "white trash"? Not even throwing a jab at Kansas? If they were black...oh, no.
Posted by: FanGirlHater | Apr 3, 2007 2:15:56 AM
This is quite an astonishing article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_Phelps
It's particularly rich that right-wingers think Phelps is funded by NAMBLA, and wait 'til you read about Al Gore!
Posted by: anon | Apr 3, 2007 3:29:13 AM
lovely pictures on the site!!!
hehehehe lol!!
Posted by: littlemoney | Apr 3, 2007 5:07:21 AM
Jordan, thanks for commenting. The whole time I was watching the video I thought how gay students and residents live with them.
They are the most hateful family in America. Absolutely repulsive in every way. The lowest of the low.
Posted by: Jack! | Apr 3, 2007 5:53:46 AM
AMERICA!!!!! lol
Posted by: Ryan | Apr 3, 2007 9:00:17 AM
Fangirlhater...
Ok I'll take a stab at it. These people should know better than to hate on other minorities. After all, the fanatic lunatic fringe religious cult community in this country is always discriminated against....
Oh wait, freedom of religion... they aren't discriminated against after all...
Ok, let's try this.... People from Kansas should know better! They endured centuries of oppression at that hands of....
Oh wait, that doesn't work either.
I'm running out of options. Since you brought it up, any help would be appreciated. :)
Posted by: mark m | Apr 3, 2007 10:27:56 AM
I also live in Kansas and agree with the comments here, but why stop at believing "Gramps" has slept with more than one woman in the Phelps family, how about men. I think he protest too much maybe. If you hate certain parts of yourself so much, they are bound to manifest somewhere. This has always been my opinion of the hateful old Ba----rd. I made a promise to myself many years ago that when he draws his last breath I will be there to picket. That is if the family even tells the rest of the world that he has died.
Posted by: Travis | Apr 3, 2007 10:43:51 AM
While these anthropological documentaries can be fascinating, this one repeats the same intellectual mistake of many like it: believing that psychopathic behaviour is invariably manifested only by people odd and extreme in every aspect of their lives.
________________________________________
I think that Theroux does exactly the opposite; he demonstrates how apparently rational people with otherwise 'normal' suburban lives are capable of extreme behaviour ranging from the very weird to the downright dangerous, even in the most ordinary setting. This is the rationale behind all of his work.
Adopting a friendly, intimate, softly-softly approach, Theroux gets his subjects to reveal more about themselves than they intend and the result is often more effective and disturbing than the traditional documentary.
I think to characterise the Phelps's behaviour as psychopathic is to fall into the trap you warn against (if I understand you correctly Leland(?)); namely, to pathologise deeply anti-social behaviour as symptomatic of grotesque monsters and demons who lurk at the edges; aberrations who are odd and extreme in all aspects - i.e. the "isolated incidents" of news items rather than the stuff of socially endemic religious-based intolerance.
I agree with Mark M that Fred Phelps has a nasty little secret and that he himself however, may well be a psychopath....
Posted by: atheist | Apr 3, 2007 10:47:10 AM
Here is a VERY important FACT that I want everyone here to keep in mind. The members of this scumbag clan has been selling their message of hate against gays AND PICKETING FUNERALS for over TWENTY YEARS. I remember when they started picketing the funerals of people who died of AIDS in the late eighties. HARDLY ONE WORD of protest came out of the mainstream press for almost TWENTY YEARS until 2003 when they started protesting at SOLDIERS' funerals. NOT ONE PIP out of Hannity, NOT ONE PIP out of O'Reilly, NOT ONE PIP, out of ANY of the reporters who are NOW so outraged UNTIL they started picketing the funerals of NON-GAYS.
One other VERY important fact to point out. The VAST MAJORITY of people who are confronting them are angry ONLY because they are disrespecting soldiers and disrespecting America and the flag. They either have no opinion on the hateful anti-gay message or AGREE with it. They just don't want innocent straight people becoming collateral damage in the RIGHTEOUS war on fags. Some of the people stated EXACTLY that when they confronted the Phelps.
I am actually MUCH MORE offended by the way America has responded to the Phelps than I am with the Phelps themselves.
Other anti-gay groups have actually PUBLICLY declared that the Phelps family is in fact a pro-gay group, paid by gay rights groups to "make gays look like victims and to make anti-gay religious groups look hateful and outrageous". These are the same disgusting kinds of people who claim that the holocaust was a Jewish/Gay conspiracy to garner sympathy and favor for Jewish people and gays.
That may sound over-the-top crazy to some people but such a marriage of anti-gay religion and anti-gay holocaust revisionism was just in the news recently:
http://www.towleroad.com/2007/03/antigay_pastor_.html
This is part of a pattern of taking a situation where gay people (or other oppressed minorities) were victimized and turning it around and presenting a revised history where gays were actually the villains and straights/Christians/other minorities were THEIR victims.
Sadly, in America today, it’s still considered perfectly acceptable to ignore hate and violence directed at gays, no matter how outrageously it is expressed and it is perfectly acceptable to demonize gays and incite violence against them, JUST as long as no INNOCENT straight people are hurt, insulted or inconvenienced in any way, in the process.
Frankly I think the Phelps clan is the most effective gay rights promoting organization in America today. It’s just sad that so many of the people who disagree with their using soldiers’ funerals to advertise their hate would probably join them if they limited their attacks and insults to gays and didn’t attack America and the flag. It’s not the message that most people object to, it’s the Phelps’ delivery style they have a problem with
If this war ends tomorrow and there are no more soldiers’ funerals to picket, and the Phelps go back to picketing the funerals of AIDS victims, you won’t hear another word about them from the mainstream press, or from the people who yelled at them on the street or from the “Patriot Patrol” motorcycle clubs that follow them around to drown them out.
It will be APATHY as usual on the American homophobia home front. In my opinion, THAT is where the problem is and THAT is where the danger lies.
Posted by: Zeke | Apr 3, 2007 11:13:09 AM
I couldn’t help but notice the interesting juxtaposition of the Phelps clan picture against the 1988 young Republicans’ picture directly below it: The hate is the same, the message is the same, hell, even the signs are practically the same.
So what’s the difference?
The Phelps are less politically savvy and therefore they don’t sugar coat or dilute their hate for public display whereas these anti-gay, young Republicans/Christians etc, just like some anti-gay Republicans today, are ALL about political savvy and sugar coating. Because of this the Phelps clan is terribly offensive but not really all that effective in selling their hate and not so much of a real danger to gay people whereas many anti-gay young Republicans/Christians etc, are less offensive but MUCH more effective against and a danger to the gay community.
Posted by: Zeke | Apr 3, 2007 11:39:47 AM
Anybody notice that Shirley was wearing a Nike t-shirt? Nike is one of the biggest pro-gay and pro-equality corporations in the United States.
Posted by: Becky Groves | Apr 3, 2007 1:42:41 PM
Zeke, you really need to read the wiki articles. WBC has been criticized and talked about for years. This is only their latest and largest clash with mainstream America. I'm not sure why you singled out Fox News, as there are plenty of other news organizations that might have covered WBC in more details over the years.
WBC members, if sincere (and we can bet they are), are self-deluded and follow the five points of TULIP in Calvinism, which is uncompromising. Notice that they admitted in the piece that should a member die in some off-hand way, which they would attribute to God, then they would rejoice in the death of their own. This indicates that gays are a small part of their viewpoint, even if the entire focus of their rhetoric. If one had to boil down their philosophy to some quick points they would be: you only have an emotional connection to God and his works, not other humans (this shines through with Phelps himself) and the modern world is regressing into neo-pagan idolatry. Both of these are classically Calvinist ("primitive" as they say). To Calvinists the world is simply and utterly corrupted by sin and one must cut oneself off from it emotionally as God metes out punishment of the wicked. The second point is largely true, if needlessly emphatic. We are coming out of the Christian age and nothing has really replaced it, leaving a sort of souless void in Western world, at least in the public sphere if not the private one. This may not be a bad thing overall, but only time will tell. Now, Calvinism is not catching on and doesn't attract too many converts, so Phelps is in a losing battle. I doubt his church will survive long after his passing.
Meanwhile, the vast majority of famous evangelical Baptists are clearly insincere. (There is a statement by ex-WBC members that Phelps himself has lost his faith, but who knows--I doubt the rest of the clan keeps going on on fumes alone.) Their main goal seems to be cashing in on fame and power, acting like large corporations that dole out platitudes, and their churches are growing, both here in the US and abroad. If anything, Phelps makes them look good, not bad, but if the members of WBC are self-deluded then Southern Baptist leaders are deluding and deceiving others without any delusions of their own.
Finally, exactly which mainline religions in the US or abroad are pro-gay? Reformed Judaism? The National Church of Sweden? Unitarians? Not exactly a vast army of allies.
Posted by: anon | Apr 4, 2007 12:53:15 AM
Zeke is exactly right. My boyfriend & I have been equally disgusted by the new coverage of Phelps in the news that tends to elide the bit about his motivation being all about homophobia. We've heard many reports about protests at soldiers' funerals with people appalled at that idea, with no mention of the god-hates-fags ideology that is at its root.
ANON: trying to explain away Phelps's clear fixation on gay people as doctrinally based won't fly. ALL of his posters are about fags. It's not part of a general doctrine at all. I remember seeing them in the early 90s at the Washington and New York marches, and of course they came to Vermont for the marriage debates.
Of course the real truth is different. Phelps and his ilk have been misled by a minor textological error, just one vowel: see http://www.godhatesfigs.com/index2.html
Posted by: KevinVT | Apr 4, 2007 10:41:26 AM
Kevin: cute, but do you really think they would be satisfied if all gays in the US were eliminated? I'm sure they would move on to something else to complain about.
Posted by: anon | Apr 4, 2007 6:39:01 PM
My god Anon, is there no anti-gay person that you WON'T defend?
You may get all of your information through Wiki. I lived through the early days of the AIDS epidemic and I know how little attention these people got when they picketed at the funerals of AIDS victims and gays. They got VERY little mainstream media attention until they started picketing soldiers funerals. THAT, whether you like it or not, and regardless of what Wiki might say, is a FACT.
I didn't single out Fox. I named Hannity and O'Reilly because they are the ones who go apeshit over their picketing at soldier's funerals but show little or no problem with their greater message.
Posted by: Zeke | Apr 5, 2007 12:23:07 AM
I wasn't defending anyone. I was trying to be realistic.
Posted by: Anon | Apr 5, 2007 2:01:33 AM