He's Not Crazy, I Think Fred Phelps Is Gay Leonard Pitts Jr. won the Pulitzer Prize for commentary in 2004. He is the author of Becoming Dad: Black Men and the Journey to Fatherhood. His column runs every Monday and Friday in the Miami Herald.
Allow me to share with you an epiphany. I think Fred Phelps is gay.
Not that I'd have any way to know for sure, and not that there's
anything wrong with that. But it seems obvious to me that Freddie has
spent a little time up on Brokeback Mountain, if you catch my drift. I'm thinking he's secretly into show tunes, interior decorating and man-sized love.
Granted, that's not the first thing that comes to mind when you talk
about the Fredster, who is defined by an apparently pathological hatred
of all things homosexual. Perhaps you remember how his followers
desecrated the funeral of Matthew Shepard, the gay college student who
was beaten and left to die on a prairie fence in Wyoming eight years
ago. They showed up at the funeral bearing signs that said, ``God Hates
Fags.''
Now Phelps has updated his act. His ''thinking,'' if you want to use
that word, is that the casualties of the Iraq war are divine
retribution for this country's tolerance of homosexuality. So, he says,
thank God for the IED's, improvised explosive devices, that have sent
so many American soldiers home in dead and broken pieces.
DANCING ON GRAVES
Phelps' followers -- he pastors a church in Topeka, Kan., where most
of the congregants are members of his family -- have been showing up at
military funerals to express this view. Picture it: As your son,
sister, wife, brother is being consigned to the soil, these idiots pop
up with signs, loudly celebrating his or her death.
[...]
WE ARE WHAT WE HATE
Hear me out. How often have we seen public moralists railing against
that which they themselves secretly indulge in? Think Jimmy Swaggart
with his prostitute. Think Dr. Laura's pose in the nude. And for
goodness' sake, how many times have we seen homosexuality condemned by
those who turned out to be closeted themselves? There was Pat Robertson
biographer-turned-gay activist Mel Stewart, Spokane Mayor James West
who spent his days opposing gay rights and his nights in gay chat
rooms, and Gary Cooper and Michael Bussee, who founded a group that
purported to cure people of homosexuality, but gave it up when they
fell in love with each other.
Consider all that, and then consider the sick ferocity of Phelps' attack:
God hates ``fags.''
Gays are vomit-eating dogs.
Gays are ``worthy of death.''
Can you say ''self hatred,'' boys and girls? Come on, isn't it
obvious? The poor fellow is gayer than a Bette Midler AIDS benefit. In
San Francisco.
He needs not our condemnation but our understanding. Maybe someday
he'll find the strength to stop living this lie. He might just go on to
be the greatest gay rights activist this country has ever known. Maybe
then, in the arms of the right man, he'll stop hurting.
Kind of chokes me up to think about it.
The Reverend Phelps has issues. He needs to find someone to “experiment” with and thereby confront his inner pervert
What are the odds in this universe that a two person genes could
combine and become a unique individual. You are so lucky to be alive! An even higher improbability is that matter could combine, form into a
sentient creature , and have that creature grow up to be the good Rev.
Phelps.
How could you waste your one in a billion chance of
life and intelligence on voluntarily being Rev. Phelps? It makes me
think that God must be like W.C. Fields.