Subscribe to Breaking NewsDavis: What’s Good about the Phelps Family
I am such a fan of Vermont lately.
As you know, gay marriage became legal in Vermont on September 1, and the Phelps Phamily, always classy to a fault, decided to show up and scream about how bad it is to have gay thoughts even though I have never in my life met someone who seems to spend as much time thinking about the mechanics of gay sex as much as the Phelps clan.
Chi Chi La Rue hasn’t thought about sex that much over an entire career.
And, yes, the Phelps clan protests are bad and stupid and wrong and, God, aren’t you kind of bored with this sentence already?
Fred Phelps and the Westboro Baptist Church have done it: They’ve screamed so long that they’ve just become tiresome.
Tiresome and irrelevant. And that’s what’s good.
I read today’s Vermont papers to see how the locals reacted to the Phelpses in Montpelier, and it was like a mastodon had wandered into the neighborhood.
They were puzzled, and didn’t want to get too close.
They couldn’t quite believe such a thing still existed, and while they didn’t necessarily feel a need to kill it, they did seem to think it might be better contained in a zoo or a lab somewhere.
Another good thing about the Phelps family is that they are shrill and horrible enough that they are among the few who still really illustrate the hate that lies so quietly under the anti-LGBT movement. Even the goobers at NOM know not to put it right out there.
But not the Phelpses. They’re bigoted, loud, and proud. Which means we can take the kids to look at them in the zoo and explain how dangerous they are when they’re allowed to breed unchecked in the wild.
Speaking of kids, yes, we do have to feel sad that the Westboro Baptist Church is screwing up their own kids by teaching them that religion is about casting that first stone hard enough that the pain in your shoulder keeps you from noticing your own sins.
But what they’ve managed to show me about how terrific and accepting the next generation can be is something wonderful.
In addition to the hilarious raw numbers – five members from Westboro Baptist met by more than a hundred counterprotesters – there is the heartwarming story of the students at Montpelier High.
The Burlington Free Press reported that the students considered attacking the Phelps clan with Super Soakers, but in the end decided that it wasn’t quite right to shoot the mastodon.
But they also didn’t want it to step on anything with its big, clumsy feet.
So the students, led by senior Joe Carlomagno, instead organized a fundraising campaign and asked people to donate for every minute that the protestors stayed. They ended up raising more than $5,000 for GLAD.
Carlomagno’s comment to the Free Press was, “They’re here to provoke our anger and our reaction. I’m glad we showed some finesse.” That is one self-possessed 17-year-old.
So thank you, Phelps clan, for being loud and stupid and rude and for having no social sense whatsoever. Because you remind everyone that other, slicker groups are just mastodons in sheep’s clothing, and that all the carefully crafted “I love them, I just don’t agree with their lifestyle” rhetoric is being trumpeted past some big, old-fashioned tusks.
And thank you for being awful enough to inspire those high school students to be better people than you are, and to be innovative while doing it. That lesson will serve them well for the rest of their lives.
But mostly, thank you for being very nearly extinct.
But my right wing arch-Catholic friend, who used to say that “there is no excuse for that type of behavior” in reference to Phelps, now says:
“The gays are funding Phelps, because it
creates sympathy for them”
This is an example of this extreme catholic and other extremist viewpoints. They blame the gays for Phelps. Just the old “blame the victim trick”
Guess what about this guy – he had pschiatric problems as a younger man, and ended up with a shrink who told him that he was a “suppressed homosexual” And he “lived that lifestyle for 10 or more years, until “coming out of it”.
Well the real story is the church has found their super example – not re money, but someone who hates himself, thanks to the church for driving guilt re what he did.
And they point to him as an example of a cure, though he was never really gay.
And they manage to eliminate the embarrassment re what he did, and replace it with anxiety that they bury in his mind. So he doesn’t say anything against them,and doesn’t dare admit to himself how they have brainwashed his mind.
Brainwashing – which is their greatest capability when they divert from the mission that is supposed to be that of the church. In order to rally what is nothing but hatred against the current target – gay people who want to be treated equally in our society.
\
For they have always needed someone to hate to sell their message, be it the Muslims (think Crusades and how they poisoned Muslim society), along with their earlier hatred of Jews.
Every good Catholic should realize what has happened – especially under Benedict. And they should do the one thing that will change the church back to it’s true mission – close their pocketbooks.
What awesome news about younger Americans! Absolutely brilliant
Thank you Ali Davis for an excellent, if somewhat humorous article on the soon-to-be extinct species of dinorsaur known as the Fred Phelp’s Westboro Bigot Clan. Let’s hope that in 10,000 years from now when someone actually comes across their bones in a archaeological dig, that they don’t try and clone them from any DNA samples that may have survived!
Just to let people know, there were only 100 counter-protesters because Vermont Freedom to Marry, the City of Montpelier, the newspapers and others, begged us all to ignore the Phelps hate crew. So we did.
There would have been thousands of us there Tuesday morning, but we trust the judgment of those who have brought us (and the country) this far so fast.
It has been wonderful this week to see and hear the reactions of those who have worked so hard for this – some of them started working toward gay marriage 15 years ago, had to settle for civil unions after a vicious fight from anti-gay groups, and now they’ve won for all of us what they set out after.
What a revolution! Civil unions were supposed to wreck America 10 years ago, and now even Gov. Huntsman of Utah argues for gay civil unions. Next up – DOMA!
I LOVE the Phelps clan – they do more to help gay and lesbian causes than any other group out there. Every time they show up, we make a ton of money and gain a ton of allies.
If they didn’t exist, we’d have to invent them….
It was also nice to see they couldn’t get visas to visit the UK to protest. Good on Great Britain!
I remain convinced that the “respectable” Reich (sic) wing kristianists like multi-millionaire Pat Robertson, Focus on the Family, American Family Association, etc., and The Nine Families (read Larry Kramer’s Cooper Union speech about them at:)
http://tinyurl.com/kcdqv
… ALL bankroll Phelps’ vile tribe of religious and social barbarians. How ELSE could they afford all those airline tickets, hotel rooms, meals, and van rentals?
If only the other hate-filled groups like the Conservatives and their ilk showed their true colors as much as the Phelps clan. Perhaps then the rest of the world who happen to be very humane will laugh at them as much as the LGBT and other minority communites do.
May Goddess Bless Those Who Learn and Grow!
Blessed Be,
Rev. Draigh Lunara
So great!
I hate the Phelps clan.
Who want to bet they’ll be there in D.C. in October???
I think we should plan something. Should we surround them and host a massive make-out session?? Kiss for as long as they stand there? A spin on the Mormon kiss-in?
I really hope they’re there…they’re 5-20 person clan will NOT stand-up in front of 20,000+ Gays for long…
10/11/09 – D.C. – GO!
Oh, amen. Good on you, Ali.
I have not laughed at a blog or opinion piece or even article in so long, I almost forgot it was possible. This is really quite comedic. And positive! I love that! It is often very difficult to laugh in the face of adversity, to NOT become overwhelmed with other people’s hatred, to see the light at the end of the tunnel or behind the black clouds. You’ve managed to showcase that light, Ms. Davis, and without truly putting anyone else down. Additionally, I think that you highlighted the EXACT notion that will ultimately bring equality to the fore: “And thank you for being awful enough to inspire those high school students to be better people than you are…” YES! This is it! One of my favorite lines comes from a Smiths song (I Know It’s Over): “It’s so easy to laugh/it’s so easy to hate/it takes strength to be gentle and kind.” Virtue is a hard path to travel, even for the purest of hearts, but that difficulty should never be enough to stop us from being virtuous.
Part of having equality means behaving as equals, which means taking the bad with the good. When women fought for emancipation, they weren’t just fighting for the right to go to a job outside their homes or for equal pay; they were also fighting for the duty to take out the garbage, to pay the bills, to do the dirty work. With rights come duties and these students in VT really proved that. Instead of “shooting the mastodon,” these kids in essence corralled it. Rarely does one ever prove one’s point through hypocrisy, rarely does fire ever work against fire; water tends to work pretty good for that.
For the first time all week, I feel strangely optimistic. Thank you, Ms. Davis. Cheers!
I’m beginning to think Sally Kern is a member of the Phelps clan.
Not too long ago the Phelps clan protested a funeral/school of some cheerleaders that died in a car wreck on their way home from practice (being driven by a parent).
Somehow this crash was God’s punishment for the moral decline of society (noteably led of course by the ever growing acceptance of LGBT people).
Along with what you said Ali, as horrible as this is, what’s good about it is that reaasonable people get a chance to see what the real agenda of these radicals really is. They come to understand that even they themselves will eventually be the focus of attack of these loons. Something many people have never had to contemplate before.
better kid than I,I woulda brought a wheel barrow full of stones and invited everyone to throw them at the phelps with me.
a good ole fashion stoning, just like in the bible.
Thank you for sharing the news of something positive happening in regards to an appearance by these dinosaurs.