Phelps Family Spreading Hate

The Phelps / Roper family was in New York to spread hate.  Among other places in The Big Apple, they protested outside Walter Cronkite’s funeral yesterday. They even had a fancy sign made up that said “Cronkite in Hell.”  Just like the Republican Party platform of exclusion and intolerance the Phelps-Ropers, founding family behind the Westboro Baptist Church, are against abortion, gays, they are white supremacists and they spread the word of a vengeful God.

In today’s op-ed piece titled, “Family of Hate,” John Avlon writes:

“The youngest daughter there, 16-year old Grace-Elizabeth, sports a navy blue “Priests Rape Boys” T-shirt and shuffled around on an Israeli flag. Despite that, she seems uncomfortable while her mother screams beside her. I ask Grace if she wanted to be there. “Oh yes, this is fun,” she gushes. “It’s the best thing we could be doing with our time.”

I asked her sister Megan—who just graduated from Washburn University this spring—what she thought of President Obama. Her eyes lit up. “Oh, he’s the Antichrist,” she says.

I ask for a little more explanation. “Well, he’s against Christ,” she says. Then mom swoops in, talking Deuteronomy and Paul’s second letter to the Thessalonians before veering inevitably to abortion. “Reproductive freedom is a fluffy term for killing babies,” Shirley says. “Obama would support the murder of his grandchildren.”

Speaking of grandchildren, Megan and Grace are the grandkids of Fred Phelps—a Kansas attorney who started their church. They spoke of him prideful tones as a pioneering civil-rights lawyer who just happened to spawn a family of lawyers who are now dedicated to trying to deny civil rights to gays and lesbians. Apparently, a family that hates together stays together. When you’re brought up to hate the world and the world hates you back, it’s a self-reinforcing circuit that only the family can understand.”

How many self-professed Republicans see their party platform in the hate spread by the Phelps family?  The Phelps family protests embody almost everything loathsome about the modern Republican Party.  Is this another area today’s Republicans easily ignore?

fnord