Recently a federal appeals court in San Fransisco has ruled that a school may ban students from wearing certain t-shirts. This case stemmed from an incident where some students were kicked out of school for wearing t-shirts that say “www.godhatesfags.com” of course my first instinct was to get to that site and see what might be interesting or inflammatory enough to get students to wear not just an offensive slogan but actually do some advertising for an anti-gay website.
I was truly surprised by what awaited me and honestly I found it pretty entertaining. Www.godhatesfags.com is the website for the Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka, Kansas. The church was established in 1955 by the, in-my-opinion, bat-shit crazy Pastor Fred Phelps. The thing about his anti-gay philosophy is how completely obsessive he is about it. It’s apparently the only sin that he really cares about and he associates every other sin with it.
He seems to believe that not only should every “fag” be killed but that everybody in America should be killed because they are not actively killing the “fags”. His anti-homosexuality stance is so pervasive that it has become an anti-America stance. He goes as far as thanking god for soldiers dieing in Iraq because the army is infested with sodomites (news to me, but that might not be a bad recruiting message to try to boost enrollment–I’d consider signing up for sure, I’ve always found sodomites to be really entertaining to hang about with).
I want to be clear that I could not disagree with a person to a greater degree than I do with Pastor Phelps and the following quotes are in no way the opinion of myself or any member of 8&5. I’m putting them here because… well… in a way their pretty funny.
Some of my favorite quotes from www.godhatesfags.com:
“God loves everyone, the greatest lie ever told”
“Conversations on a daily basis ought to include conversations about Sodom!”
“You have got to tell your children all there is about Sodom” (same link as above)
“Going after anal-copulating fags” (also same link)
“Take a good look, America. Here are your typical fag-ass American soldiers”
“Thank God for three more dead troops.”
And my favorite headline “Scarborough Country = Brokeback Mountain“. Now I’ve seen Brokeback Mountain and when I want to hear some lies I watch Scarborough Country and although I do think Joe Scarborough could be a closeted homosexual I am sure he’s not a cowboy. I do, however, relish in the idea of him being attacked by what can only be called an extreme conservative.
Some people may find what I’ve posted here offensive, and I think they should. But we (everybody on earth) need to be aware of what a crazy guy who claims to be preaching the word of God is capable of. The beauty of Pastor Phelps is that even if you truly believe homosexuality is a sin you have to disagree with the rest of the crap he says. Thus it allows people who consider themselves fundamentalists to take an assessment of their beliefs and realize that where they thought was a solid line between right and wrong is actually just something some dude made up and perhaps they need to put some thought into why they believe what they believe.
P. S. The way Pastor Phelps seems to be limited to preaching about homosexuality and nothing else leads me suspect that he’s actually gay.
Oh. My. God. Awesome post. I’ve never heard of this asshat, but Justin says he’s been around for a while. And actually inspiring a following. Food for thought.
Yeah, he has been around for awhile. I blogged about him on my personal blog but refused to name his organization or link it because I didn’t want to lend merit or searh engine rankings to his idiotic viewpoints on his website.