When the Munchkins rejoiced over the passing of the Wicked Witch in the land of Oz, audiences watching the classic Metro-Goldwyn Mayer film, “The Wizard of Oz,” understood the joy that comes with the death of an oppressor. So what of the death of Fred Phelps, founder of the Westboro Baptist Church and proclaimed hater of homosexuals?
On the Westboro Baptist Church site, www.godhatesfags.com, the church brags about its daily exploits in the form of “peaceful” sidewalk demonstrations, during which they carry signs with phrases like, “AIDs CURES FAGS,” “THANK GOD FOR AIDS” and “THANK GOD FOR DEAD TROOPS,” to name a few.
The Westboro Baptist Church is also known for its tendency to picket military funerals for the sole reason that there are gay soldiers. The church preached hatred against the gay community, and any individual or institution that accepted homosexuality. In other words, the church professed a deep hatred for the entire U.S., and claimed to have the full support of God behind this hatred.
How can any tolerant and accepting individual in the U.S. not crack a small smile at the notion of sending a troop of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer (LGBTQ) supporters to picket Phelps’s funeral? It might sound morally justified to celebrate the death of a man who hated so many, but we have come to the conclusion that to do so would only promote the same kind of negativity, intolerance and hatred that Phelps held so dear.
Rather than celebrate his death, we choose to take comfort in our hope that the deplorable messages propagated by Phelps could simply die right along with him. A funeral is no place for political harassment, despite the more than 2,000 Facebook likes for the Protest Fred Phelps’s Funeral page.
We would like to see a new wave of tolerance and acceptance, perhaps in the form of a new faithful following, rise up in the wake of Phelps’s death. The Westboro Baptist Church’s membership is somewhere far south of 100 people, and is primarily composed of Phelps’s family members, according to a statement made by the church in an interview with a reporter from a small newspaper in Northwestern Illinois in 2011.
Without its dynamic leader, we feel that the small church will lose steam and eventually fade out altogether.
Since Phelps’s passing on March 19, the media has dedicated a great deal of energy to rehashing all of the hateful things Phelps did and said throughout his lifetime.
Headlines in news media and opinion sections since Phelp’s death include: The Guardian’s, “Pastor Fred Phelps: ‘An angry, bigoted man who thrived on conflict,’” Huffington Post’s blog “Why I Don’t Grieve For Fred Phelps,” and the Baltimore Sun’s “The wasted life of Fred Phelps.”
We feel that this is negative attention that does not serve to put his hatred and intolerance to rest along with his body.
High-profile news media headlines kept the message simple, such as Chicago Tribune’s “Death of Fred Phelps” and New York Times’ “Fred Phelps, Anti-Gay Preacher Who Targeted Military Funerals, Dies at 84.” This is how the headlines should be running, but the opinion and blog headlines from news media have taken over the news section, which may lead readers to believe that news publications stand by rejoicing Phelps’s death.
So no, we will not be singing praises of joy over Phelps’s grave, though perhaps there are munchkins somewhere over the rainbow singing “Ding-dong, Phelps is dead!” and carrying gay pride banners down the yellow brick road.