Fred Phelps
American pastor and activist (1929-2014) · United States · On the map · Lawyers · Died at 84
He picketed the funerals of soldiers and AIDS victims with signs reading "God Hates Fags," turning grief into spectacle and free speech into a legal weapon that reached the Supreme Court. The attention came from his willingness to go where even other fundamentalists refused.
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Fred Waldron Phelps Sr. was born November 13, 1929, and founded the Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka, Kansas in 1955. He worked as a civil rights attorney before being disbarred, and ran for statewide office in Kansas. By the 1990s he had turned the church - composed mostly of his own family - into a roving protest operation, picketing gay pride events, university ceremonies, performances of The Laramie Project, and funerals of those he claimed God had killed to punish America for tolerating homosexuality. The church's slogan, "God Hates Fags," became the name of its principal website. Phelps argued his pickets were a sacred duty to warn of God's anger, and he prevailed in multiple legal challenges on First Amendment grounds, including cases that reached the U.S. Supreme Court. Even fundamentalist Christians distanced themselves from him. He died March 19, 2014, but Westboro Baptist Church continues its demonstrations and remains classified as a hate group.
