Dateline: 07/07/00

The Right To Be Heard

I've been a Christian so long --almost 22 years now -- that I barely remember how I felt when people tried to witness to me. If memory serves, I was approached by only one or two people anyway, and these were people who had taken the time to befriend me and invest themselves in my life before they tried preaching at me -- which means they didn't need to club me over the head with the gospel. All they had to do was put a name tag on it for me; I'd already seen it in action.

Anyway, I'm guessing that for the average Joe, it can be pretty annoying, depending on the circumstances, to have someone presume upon a relationship that doesn't exist in an attempt to cram God's love down your throat, making no attempt to earn the right to be heard in the first place.

I'm guessing again that one of the few things that would be worse would be for someone to do pretty much the same thing, except instead of annoying you with talk about God's love, they want to tell you how much God hates you.

There seems to be no shortage of people willing to do just that -- but one is enough. And the prime example, as I'm sure you already know, is one Rev. Fred Phelps, pastor of Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka, Kan. Besides his picketing "ministry," which includes unwelcome appearances at funerals to tell families that their gay loved ones are now roasting in hell, Phelps is probably most famous for his Web site, godhatesfags.com.

I grew up in Topeka, and I've actually had some contact with Phelps and his klan -- I mean, clan:

When I was a chaplain at Topeka Rescue Mission, my boss said in a public prayer ceremony, which Phelps was picketing, that God loves the sinner even while He hates the sin. The next morning, I took a phone call at the mission. It was someone from Phelps' church, and he granted me the dubious honor of notifying me that we were now on Phelps' list via an endless stream of invective and cursing worthy of a Quentin Tarantino movie.

Needless to say, like many Christians, especially Christians in or from Topeka, I am often embarrassed and enraged by Phelps and his actions.

History Lesson

Phelps first started his anti-gay picketing in front of Topeka's Gage Park. There had been a big stink in city politics over homosexual activity in the park, which was known locally as "Gay Park," thanks to its notoriety as a pickup spot and hangout for gay prostitutes and drug addicts.

The reputation was well-deserved. Parents wouldn't let their kids go to the park after dark, then they wouldn't let them go alone at all, and finally most families started avoiding the park altogether. The public bathrooms, even at the municipal swimming pool in the park, were full of graphic homosexual graffiti and used syringes and condoms -- not to mention sexual activity. I was accosted there myself at least a half-dozen times, even though I was only 16 at the time and looked much younger.

When Phelps first started picketing, this state of affairs had been going on for years. He originally trumpeted what everyone knew but no one else would talk about: That the park had been taken over by gay prostitutes, drug dealers and users, and the city was ignoring it.

Like many Topekans, I didn't know who Phelps was, even though he'd already been disbarred in both state and federal court for his behavior. I was just glad to see someone speaking up -- Gage Park was the only large park in town and I was tired of seeing it overrun by crime; the fact that a large percentage of the crime was committed by gay men didn't matter to me.

After several months of the city ignoring both Phelps and others who were protesting about the park, a local TV station borrowed a night-vision video camera from the police and did an exposé: They cruised through the park on a single evening at random, and in less than three hours they caught something like two dozen instances of drug sales, gay sexual activity in the bushes, prostitutes climbing into and out of cars, and so on -- all after the park was closed and in a small city of less than 130,000 people.

The city remained silent about the problems at Gage Park, but after the news show aired the police quietly started enforcing the park's curfew and arresting dealers and prostitutes. Within a few months, they had taken their business elsewhere, and everyone heaved a sigh of relief.

Except for Fred Phelps. For some reason I've never understood, he did not stop picketing after Gage Park was cleaned up; he picketed even more. And the signs changed: Over a period of a year or so, I passed the park every day on my way to work and grew increasingly uncomfortable, then outraged, at the signs.

At first they said "Clean up Gage Park," "Gays go home" and the like. Then they suddenly said "God Hates Gays" -- then in quick succession, "God Hates Queers," "God Hates Homos" and finally the infamous "God Hates Fags." Phelps' signs also started featuring graphic depictions of homsexual activity worse than anything that had ever appeared in the park's bathrooms, plus attacks against anyone who got in Phelps' way. The signs condemned city officials to hell or branded them "bull dyke," "butt buddy," "fag lover" and worse. Then came the notorious fax-bombing (we got them at the mission and some of us were frequent, if unwilling, stars of Phelps' newsletters) the Web site, the picketing at funerals and gay pride parades and all the rest.

A Host Of Imitators

I've given up wondering what motivates people like Phelps. The bottom line for me is this: No matter what any given Christian thinks of homosexual activity, the fact is that Jesus never treated sinners -- not even the hypocritical Pharisees who incurred so much of His wrath -- in such a degrading, foul, obscene manner.

Phelps' Web sit has spawned a host of imitators, hangers-on, parodies and anti-Phelps sites, but in my humble opinion they're all eating Fred's dust when it comes to sheer vitriol, abusive language and blatant hatred. Like many others who have ended up my page of "Unfriendly Fire" links, Phelps devotes a large chunk of his site to an apologetic for Christian hatred -- but he doesn't stop there. He goes so far as to devote a whole page to Matthew Shepherd, for instance, complaining that "every pervert in America" used his murder for political gain -- but then adding, to the same page, a sound file imitating Shepherd screaming "Listen to Rev. Phelps!" from the depths of hell.

God takes no pleasure in the death of the wicked, much less the death of a confused kid who was unlucky enough to meet two violent criminals in a bar. What makes Phelps think he can?

As a frontline observer and occasional unwilling participant as this drama unfolded in Topeka, I'll state for the record that Phelps is almost entirely responsible for most of the rhetoric you hear when anything having to do with homosexuality is debated. He has spewed enough high-volume invective to polarize any discussion beyond usefulness. Opponents on both sides have largely quit listening to each other and instead react emotionally: Gays are all ACT-UP members and/or pedophiles. Anyone worried about civil rights in some of the recent court clashes is pandering to the "gay agenda."

On the other side of the coin, anyone with the slightest reservations about homosexuality is "homophobic"; anything less than an unqualified endorsement of homosexuality is "hate speech."

Gay-friendly or sensationalistic media outlets zoom in on people like Phelps, then tar everyone else with the same brush; conservative media outlets search the fringes of gay pride parades for the occasional public display of sadomasochism and make it look as if that sort of behavior typified everyone there. Thanks to Phelps' scorched-earth tactics, almost no middle ground -- no room for ministry, bridge-building or anything resembling reasonable discourse -- is left anymore.

I said in a feature a while back that it's really sad when people know you by what you're against, not what you stand for. I still think that. Despite Phelps' misuse of the concept, you really can build a solid apologetic for God's hatred of certain things, such as murderous idolatry, lying and dissension, hypocritical worship and divorce. But let me share a startling fact with you to wind this up:

To put together the page of links about hate sites, I did a Web search for the term "God hates" in several prominent search engines. Here's what I found: Hundreds of Web sites that imitate, emulate or lampoon Fred Phelps showed up under "God hates fags" or "God hates (gays, Esau, abortion, Catholics, etc.).

Guess how many sites I found that mentioned God's hate in some other area? Exactly one hit showed up under "God hates divorce" -- and it was a Muslim site!

Why is it that Christians -- the ones responsible for demonstrating God's love -- are producing all the sites about God's hate, whereas Muslims -- you know, the terrorists who hate eveeryone -- are the only ones willing to hold up a mirror to themselves? After all, it's a lot easier to talk about God hating something someone else does rather than something Christians do just as much as the rest of the world.

Food for thought.

© 2000 Greg Hartman. Reprinted here with the author's permission.