Westboro Baptist Church (WBC)

I am sometimes behind in my news... this is one of them!
This still does not excuse what they are doing to Heath Ledger! Heath's family needs to Sue the Shit out of the WBC for what they are also doing to him.

I hope this so-called 'Church' and their website goes DOWN!

Article from:
http://www.adl.org/special_reports/wbc/default.asp


On October 31, 2007, a federal jury in Baltimore, Maryland, found the Topeka, Kansas-based Westboro Baptist Church (WBC) guilty of violating a right to privacy and inflicting intentional emotional distress against the family of Matthew Snyder, a Marine who was killed in Iraq in 2006. Since the summer of 2005, WBC, led by Fred Phelps, has been picketing funerals of soldiers killed in Iraq and Afghanistan, with placards reading "Thank God for Dead Soldiers" and "Thank God for IEDs [improvised explosive devices]," while shouting epithets at grieving parents. Phelps believes that the soldiers represent a nation tolerant of homosexuality, and their deaths are God's direct punishment for their sins.

The jury ordered WBC to pay nearly $11 million in damages, a sum members claim is many times more than the WBC’s net assets. Fred Phelps promised to appeal the verdict. This is the first time the church has been held liable for their military funeral protests; the father of Matthew Snyder was the first individual to attempt such a lawsuit against the group.

To date, the WBC’s protests have taken place in at least 22 states, attracting a great deal of publicity and inspiring a wave of grassroots anger. As a result, 38 states have introduced bills to limit protests near funerals, and at least 29 of those states have passed such measures. The constitutionality of these laws has been challenged in four states with mixed results. In addition, President Bush signed the “Respect for America’s Fallen Heroes Act” on May 29, 2006, which limits protests near certain military cemeteries. Phelps has vowed to challenge the legislation, alleging that these new restrictions unconstitutionally restrict freedom of speech.

Before gaining notoriety and provoking public anger for disrespecting slain soldiers and their families, the group was known for picketing the funerals of gay people or those they perceived to be gay. In 1998, WBC congregants set off an angry reaction when they showed up at the funeral of gay murder victim Matthew Shepard, and held up signs reading "No Fags in Heaven" and "God Hates Fags." According to the WBC Web site, they have staged "over 22,000" protests across the nation and around the world since 1991.

Incorporated in 1967 as a not-for-profit organization, the Westboro Baptist Church considers itself an "Old School (or, Primitive)" Baptist Church. The Church is led by the septuagenarian Reverend Fred Waldron Phelps Sr., and many WBC congregants are related to Phelps by blood. His wife, several of his children and dozens of his grandchildren frequent the church.

While WBC has picketed the gay community at hundreds of events nationwide, most of the individuals protested by the Church are not homosexual. In fact, WBC most often targets people it mistakenly claims are gay or those it believes to be encouraging homosexuality. Many WBC fliers emphasize the race or religion of these individuals, suggesting that the Church's hate spreads beyond its abhorrence of homosexuality. WBC congregants believe that "God's hatred is one of His holy attributes." What appears to be anti-gay rhetoric is often a vehicle for WBC's anti-Semitism, hatred of other Christians, and even racism, though in the 1980s Fred Phelps received awards from the Greater Kansas City Chapter of Blacks in Government and the Bonner Springs branch of the NAACP for his work on behalf of Black clients.

Trained as a lawyer, Fred Phelps was disbarred in 1979 by the Kansas Supreme Court, which asserted that he had "little regard for the ethics of his profession." The formal complaint against Phelps charged that he misrepresented the truth in a motion for a new trial in a case he had brought, and that he held the defendant in the case up to "unnecessary public ridicule for which there is no basis in fact." Following his disbarment from Kansas State courts, Phelps continued to practice law in Federal courts. In 1985, nine Federal court judges filed a disciplinary complaint charging him and six of his family members, all attorneys, with making false accusations against them. The Phelpses fought the complaint but lost. In 1989, Fred Phelps agreed to surrender his license to practice law in Federal court in exchange for the Federal judges allowing the other members of his family to continue practicing in Federal court.

In 1991, WBC staged its first public demonstration, targeting a park in Topeka allegedly frequented by gays. Thousands of protests have followed, and WBC shows no sign of slowing down. In addition to speeches on the picket lines, the Church spreads its hateful message via faxed fliers and "News Releases." These faxed documents also appear at WBC's notorious Web site, Godhatesfags.com, along with photos of Church pickets and a schedule of upcoming demonstrations. A second WBC Web site, Godhatesamerica.com, contends that the United States is "doomed" because it supports gays. According to Fred Phelps, "God invented the Internet for us to preach on."

The following quotations from WBC materials and other sources expose the Church's views on Jews, gays, Blacks, Christians and the United States. WBC's own words best demonstrate the wide range and disturbing nature of its hatred.

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