No one’s going to protest against this guy’s death.
Westboro Baptist Church founder Fred Phelps Sr. has been admitted to a hospice facility and is “on the edge of death,” his estranged son revealed.
The 84-year-old preacher established the small Kansas church in 1955 and made it a household name by picketing funerals, public events and businesses with hateful signs attacking gay people, Jews and others.
“I’ve learned that my father, Fred Phelps Sr., pastor of the ‘God Hates F–s’ Westboro Baptist Church … is now on the edge of death at Midland Hospice in Topeka, Kansas,” son Nathan Phelps wrote on Facebook.
Steve Drain, a Westboro spokesman, confirmed Sunday that Phelps is in ill health.
“I can tell you that Fred Phelps is having some health problems,” Drain said. “He’s an old man and old people get health problems.”
In his Facebook post, Nathan Phelps, who left the church 37 years ago, said Westboro excommunicated his father in August.
Drain declined to comment on whether Phelps has been voted out of the church he established.
“I’m not sure how I feel about this. Terribly ironic that his devotion to god ends this way. Destroyed by the monster he made,” Nathan Phelps wrote in the post, which had been shared more than 1,000 times as of Sunday night.
“I feel sad for all the hurt he’s caused so many. I feel sad for those who will lose the grandfather and father they loved.”
Westboro members frequently protest at the funerals of American soldiers with signs bearing messages like “Thank God for dead soldiers” and “Thank God for 9/11,” claiming the deaths are divine punishment for the country’s tolerance of homosexuality.
They first attracted widespread attention by picketing the 1998 funeral of Matthew Shepard, a Wyoming college student tortured and killed in an anti-gay attack.
The Southern Poverty Law Center, a civil rights nonprofit organization, has described Westboro as a hate group, and some people reacted to Nathan Phelps’ Facebook post with glee.
“Thank God he is almost dead!!! Party time!” user Victor Purchase wrote below the post.
Others preached goodwill.
“I may not have supported his lifestyle. In fact, I stand for everything his church is against. But that doesn’t give me the right to be happy about someone dying,” wrote Corey Bartley.
The church’s sick activities inspired a federal law limiting protests at funerals for soldiers along with numerous state restrictions on picketing at funeral sites.
Just Wednesday, a federal judge upheld a Missouri law requiring protestors to stay at least 300 feet away from funeral sites.
But Westboro won a First Amendment victory in 2011 when the U.S. Supreme Court said church members couldn’t be sued for money damages for inflicting pain on grieving families.
With News Wire Services
