(no subject)

[slammerkinbabe]

Fred Phelps, founder of the Westboro Baptist Church, is dying. Please please please don't picket his funeral.

Let's remember why all the funeral pickets were awful: because they made the funerals hell for those who were grieving. Picketing a funeral does nothing to the dead. But the people who grieve for Phelps are not all terrible. Many of his children have left the church,* but that doesn't mean that in some complicated way they may not still love their father, and whether they do or not, they deserve closure. A funeral can provide that. But not if it takes place with hatred being shouted in the background.

And above all: Phelps's protests were based in hate. LGBTQ activism is based in love, not hate.

Please don't picket Phelps's funeral.

_______________________

*Incidentally, VERY weird detail in that article: Phelps himself was excommunicated from the church in the middle of last year. No one outside the WBC knows the reason. Some are theorizing he had a change of heart, but that seems improbable to me, after a lifetime of fiercely determined hatred. Very interesting though.

Comments

[nelc.livejournal.com]

I've been told that the Westboro-ites believe that anybody who dies before the Apocalypse is condemned by God to Hell. Since Phelps was dying and the world (apparently) isn't due to end before he dies, that means he's lost favour with God, and therefore had to be deposed as head of the church and excommunicated. Because the WBC is just assholes all the way down.

[slammerkinbabe.livejournal.com]

Wait, seriously? They excommunicate all dying members? That's insane. Then again, they're insane.

[nelc.livejournal.com]

I don't know enough about them, but it's possible that as the founder, Phelps is the oldest member, or at least, the first to suffer a drawn-out fatal illness. Others may have died more suddenly.