Fred Phelps is near death

[Playful Pony]

Huh.... Oh well. I'm not even going to pretend to care about this particular loss of life, although I won't do anything tasteless such as celebrate or picket his funeral. Who truly knows what drove the man into becoming what he became, but evil is still evil i suppose.

 

[Eliam_Dar]

I believe that the best thing anyone can do is to ignore this person's death. If you do a protest in his funeral, you are lowering yourselves to the WBC level, and, ignoring them will hurt them much more.

 

[Evil Smurf]

I don't celebrate the loss of life, I'm not an arsehole. I'm not judging you if you do though, he is the head of a hate group the KKK think are extreme!

 

[Hazy992]

I'm not going to celebrate this man's death but I sure as hell won't mourn. He's a vile, hateful man who only knows how to cause pain and misery.

I know people are hoping his funeral gets picketed as some kind of poetic justice, but I really hope it doesn't. People should not stoop to his level, we're better than that.

 

[TheMadDoctorsCat]

I find it hard to wish pain and / or suffering on anybody, even mass murderers. If "justice" means inflicting suffering on anybody, even those who've caused suffering themselves, then all I can say is that I don't believe in it.

Having said that... when this guy dies, I will be quietly relieved.

Fred Phelps' son is an atheist and a personal hero of mine. He's talked at length about his family and about the relationship he used to have with his father before he was "cast out". Not in a hateful way, but rather in a more regretful tone.

I'm the only non-Christian in a family of Christians myself. I think the level of "faith" differs from person to person in our family, and we're all very tolerant of each others' views. I say this because they, and many other moderate Christians, were as unhappy with Phelps as his many, many victims were. Phelps is the reason that many people who share my views "look down" upon many people who share those of my more religious family members.

I don't have faith in Faith. I don't think there is any virtue in blindly accepting a point of view just because "everyone else thinks it's right". (Everyone else thought the world was flat at one point, too.) I also think it's far too easily manipulated by people who have an agenda. Go to war? God wants us to! I don't hate gays, God does! Etc.

However, if there HAS to be faith in the world, I'd much rather it be in the hands of the present progressive Pope than the last one, and I'm really really happy that there's one less person using Christianity as a reason to preach messages of hate and division, when to so many less vocal people out there it means the exact opposite of that.

 

[Idsertian]

Can't say many people will miss him to be honest. There'll be that lot that nobody likes, of course, but for anybody sane and reasonable this isn't horrible news.

Epic response, sir. Allow me to augment it:

Spoiler

OT: Point 1: One less idiotic homophobe in the world! Yay!
Point 2: This will have very little effect on the group as a whole, really. Boo!

An idea doesn't die simply because the leader of the group championing it dies, sadly. If anything, this might make them even crazier, if that's possible. But, in the interests of being a sarky git, allow me to use this clip in the way it wasn't intended:

Spoiler

 

[CelestDaer]

No one knows why he was excommunicated... well, outside of the WBC, and, I'm fairly sure his death won't matter to them nearly as much as we're hoping, since most of the group's activities are coordinated by Shirley Phelps, especially since Fred Sr.'s death...

 

[Muspelheim]

There will be someone else on that throne. It seems they've already wheeled him out, and I doubt very much will change. While being tossed aside as rubbish by your own when your days are numbered isn't something I would wish on anyone, I can't say it's terribly unfair to such a man. Even if the experience is far too late to do him any good.

Perhaps we ought to erect a monument? Perhaps next those Sheppard monuments of theirs, if anything ever came of that.

 

[TakerFoxx]

You, with all these people talking protesting his funeral and paying back what he and his ilk did, I personally think it would be better if no one protested his funeral. If no one showed up, no one desecrated his grave, no one said anything, no one cared. Let them see just how little he really meant.

 

[Artina89]

I can't really say that I feel anything about his passing or hearing he is near death. By the sounds of it he has been excommunicated from the church so it looks like he has a very lonely end coming to him, and I wouldn't picket his funeral, the worst thing you can do to a group like Westboro baptist church is to completely ignore them and regard them as inconsequential in my view.

 

[Ieyke]

Who is this guy and why do I care?

He is the head of some of the most infuriating people on the planet.
He goes straight to the deepest pits of his own special hell.

If I somehow acquired Doctor Doom's power, he'd be part of my list of targets to eliminate on Day 1, to easily make the world a better place.

 

[Agayek]

I cannot express how few fucks I have to give about this matter. Phelps is/was a dick, but sparing him any more attention and effort than that statement requires does him far more of a service than he deserves. He's simply not worth the effort.

 

[Owen Robertson]

I thought "Thank God."

Then I laughed at that thought.

 

[jurnag12]

When the old man croaks, I'm going to pour myself a celebratory drink, and enjoy it immensely.

And then I will never think of Fred Phelps again, for that is his most fitting legacy. To be a testament to inane hatred that will be utterly forgotten in the relentless tide of human progress.

 

[Storm Dragon]

NOOOOO! No, I say! He cannot die yet! I had a plan, goddammit! I was going to wait until the bastards planned to picket near my area, then I was going to go to my friendly neighborhood sex shop and order a glorious, custom-made, neon-colored, glittering, floppy, baseball-bat-sized, anatomically-correct horse dildo, and then I was going to go to their protest, and then, Equus the Just raised to the sky, I would charge their picket line, bowl over the brainwashed children forward guard, run right up to that smug old fuck, and slap him right in the face with a neon horse cock argh why God why are you so cruel.

Ahem.

Yeah, he's a bad person. Can't say I'm happy over the death of another human being, but fucked if I'm going to be torn up either.

I think you may have played just a little too much Saint's Row.

 

[Dire Trout]

Fine by me. Here's hoping someone can arrange for a gay pride parade to circle the block during the funeral.

 

[Th37thTrump3t]

Losing the head is likely enough to kill this snake (fingers crossed!).

I wouldn't compare this to chopping the head off of a snake, but more like chopping the head off a cockroach. It will carry on for a while and then eventually die, only for two more to take its place.

Groups like this will always exist in our society as long as we continue to recognize their existence. These people feed off of the attention we give them, both negative and positive. The most insulting and painful thing you could do to them is to deny them the attention they crave.

 

[Th37thTrump3t]

snip

I think you may have played just a little too much Saint's Row.

One does not simply play a little too much Saint's Row.

 

[TheYellowCellPhone]

It's not going to change much of the WBC. His children, if I remember, are some of the church's most devoted members, and they're never going to hand the torch over to anyone who broke away from whatever that church supported. Again, going on old and probably distorted second hand facts here, but I thought the guy's wife had already been taking over for the WBC for the last few years.

 

[Raggedstar]

The plot thickens... [http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/03/17/fred-phelps-excommunicated-wbc_n_4981300.html?utm_hp_ref=religion]

The article in that link says that he was excommunicated for wanting a "kinder approach to family", namely Shirley Phelps-Roper who was involved in a power struggle within the church. What that means can be anyone's guess, but it's strange to consider he was cast out for (what sounds like) not being a dick. Considering Freddy-boy and his family have disowned children over them being decent people, it seems like everything is finally coming full circle (at least for him). Read in another article that apparently afterwards he took it extremely hard and most likely have contributed to his overall health condition.

Strange, I actually feel a slight pity for a man that promoted a life of hate from pickets to the brainwashing and abuse of his own children.

And for those planning to picket the funeral of Fred Phelps, they won't be having one because they don't "worship the dead" (I'm not going to bother to pick apart what sounds weird about a religion that claims to not worship dead people).

EDIT: Forgot to mention, but I agree with those who think the church won't change. Shirley is the queen bee and the most vocal member (she usually goes on the news networks). I don't know if this will ever change anything, but one could hope. It may be mostly the direct family in the church, but these Phelps members have "litters", with some being mothers to over 10. Wow.