Topeka doesn’t usually have much to shout about.
It’s got Washburn University, a highly regarded public institution; it’s got at least one big car dealership, Laird Noller Ford; and it’s got the best country western radio station in our region — KTPK, Country Legends 106.9, which you can pick up here in Kansas City under certain atmospheric conditions.
But this is a time of celebration in Topeka: The scourge of Topeka, the Rev. Fred Phelps Sr., died Wednesday.
And Topekans didn’t waste any time demonstrating how happy they were that the town’s personal demon was gone for good.
Fred Phelps Sr.
Here’s how Dugan Arnett and Donald Bradley, Kansas City Star reporters, described the reaction to Phelps’ death in Topeka, home of Phelps’ infamous Westboro Baptist Church, (which really was not Baptist but unaffiliated).
“The Topeka neighborhood occupied by the church was a scene of jubilation Thursday afternoon, complete with honking horns and smiling faces. Neighbors said the procession began shortly after the family announced Fred Phelps’ death.
“Some people weren’t satisfied with just driving by Westboro Baptist and tooting a horn. Some got out of their cars and posed for pictures with a streaming sign in a church window about whoremongers and sodomites going to hell.
“People happily milled about the street. Perfect strangers shook hands. A Topeka woman handed out buttons that said, simply “FRED” with a diagonal red line through the name.”
Indeed, Phelps came to stand (to his pleasure, I’m sure) for such perverted hatred of gays that he and his followers would picket the funerals of American soldiers killed in action — the rationale being that their deaths were God’s way of punishing the United State for increasing acceptance of gay rights.
The first time I read about an instance like that it took me a while to comprehend the reasoning, it was so upside down. But, then, there’s a lot of upside down thinking — and some of it even more dangerous than the Fred Phelps brand…Think Timothy McVeigh, Terry Nichols and Oklahoma City, for example, or Nidal Malik Hasan, the former U.S. Army psychiatrist who fatally shot 13 people and injured more than 30 others in the Fort Hood mass shooting on Nov. 5, 2009.
But for the way he consistently and continuously agitated, irritated and angered, Fred Phelps earned a legitimate shot at Public Enemy No. 1, certainly in our region and maybe even nationwide.
**
Another interesting thing in the Kansas City Star article was what Megan Phelps-Roper had to say about Grandpa Fred.
“I’m so sorry for the harm he caused. That we all caused. (Megan left the church a year ago.) But he could be so kind and wonderful. I wish you all could have seen that, too.”
“So kind and wonderful….”
You know, even the turd who raped and killed 10-year-old Hailey Owens in Springfield, Missouri, last month was probably “kind and wonderful” to somebody at some point. But a moment of kindness here and there doesn’t define a person, and it doesn’t define a guy like Fred Phelps, who, at some point, made a conscious decision to elevate his profile by dedicating himself to outrageous and despicable activities.
It was pretty clear that thirst for fame — not any principle — motivated him.
Los Angles time reporter Steve Chawkins said this about Phelps in an obituary posted on Thursday.
“Fred Phelps, a publicity-hungry Kansas pastor who picketed hundreds of military funerals because he believed America was too sympathetic to gays, died early Thursday in Topeka, Kan. He was 84…With his small Topeka congregation, Phelps also demonstrated at funerals and memorials for Frank Sinatra, Michael Jackson, former Mormon leader Gordon B. Hinckley and heavy metal singer Ronnie James Dio — any observance, regardless of any connection to gay issues, where cameras might be rolling.”
Also, it is noteworthy that Phelps ran for Kansas governor, U.S. Senate and Topeka mayor. Just about everyone who runs for public office has thoughts of notoriety or even grandeur: “I should be elected because I’ve got something unique to offer.”
In saying that, I’m not criticizing people who run for office, because a lot of candidates do have something to offer, and many end up making laudable, lasting contributions to their towns, cities, counties, states or nations.
But in the end, it was ego alone that drove Fred Phelps to pervert himself and his followers.
It was a sorry saga, for sure. But today is a day to celebrate — not a life but a death.
Fred is dead. Party on, Topeka!
JimmyCsays: At the juncture of journalism and daily life in KC 
Finally, a column. But break out the hooters? Isn’t that a marvelously heterosexual thing to do for the death of someone who allegedly was opposed to the homosexual agenda?
Personally, i always thought he was an agent provocateur for them. He was a Democrat and while an attorney fought extensively for civil rights. He was also extremely bright. How could he not know that what he was doing was backfiring and taking legitimate Christian concerns down the drain with him?
In reality, Fred Phelps was the best thing that ever happened to homosexual advocacy. Thanks to him, the bigoted cartoonist at the Wichita Eagle could draw a cartoon equating every Christian pastor who so much as raised the issue of homosexuality with Fred’s bunch and yet no where was there a real church to be found that embraced his loony agenda.
Fred was a walking talking straw man for every religious bogot in the country. They could talk about him and in the same breath draw in every person of faith they disagreed with lest cognitive dissonance overtake their meager logical mutations.
RIP Fred, thanks to your hitting room temperature the Christian community is a healthier place today and the bigots of the world will have to find another straw man to rationalize their hate-mongering.
A small part of me regrets the celebration of anyone’s passing, but I certainly understand this case. Is this the be ginning of the end for the Westboro Baptist Church? Or will we just see some new presence come forward with their own brand of insanity?
Phelps had been protesting funerals of gays for years and no one cared, until he started protests at soldier’s funerals. Then it was, OMG, he can’t do that! Sorry, he had a constitutional right to protest even if it was a vile and offensive one. Always found it hypocriticial to claim it was okay to limit one’s right to protest but not to limit one’s right to own a gun. Those are the times we live in.
I’m not going to pretend that I’m not glad to see him go. He was a terrible person who made spreading hate his life’s work. I care deeply about marriage equality and related issues, and I am proud to support and lend a hand in this fight, on behalf of my gay friends and neighbors and for the benefit of everyone.
But I don’t think the death of Fred Phelps changes anything. His “church” is still there, still churning out hate and intolerance, still protesting at funerals and public events and natural disasters, and still enjoying tax-exempt status. (And last I heard, one of their higher-ups was still head of HR at a big company here in KC, where I imagine he treats any gay folks unlucky enough to work beside or underneath him with respect … yeah, sure.) And if news reports from the Phelps clan can be believed, Fred was supposedly kicked out of his own church last summer. Maybe, maybe not. But the Westboro Baptist Church is still around, and there’s no reason to believe that they won’t be engaged in “business as usual” in the future. Eventually, sure, they’ll disappear—it’s not like they’re attracting new members, and they can’t live forever. But that hasn’t happened yet, and it won’t happen just because this old bastard finally died.
I think that without the “Hater in Chief,” Westboro will die out. You’ve got to really be driven and spurred on to carry on like they did with him at the wheel. Very few people are as bad as loathsome as he was…
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Thanks very much, Lose 20; I’m glad you stumbled upon JimmyCsays!