I almost spewed my coffee this morning… and it wasn’t from laughing.
A small, rabid (as in drooling and insane), group of creeps has decided to protest the life of Mister Rogers. The Westboro Baptist Church of Topeka, Kansas, led by the spitting image of Lucifer himself, Fred Phelps, will protest Rogers’ supposed promotion of homosexuality by picketing WQED, the University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Child Development, Pittsburgh Theological Seminary and Sixth Presbyterian Church – places graced by the presence or support of Fred Rogers.
This group professes to believe not only that gays are the root of all evil, but that our lack of condemnation of them is the reason behind September 11, the Columbia crash and the nightclub fire in Rhode Island.
Shirley Phelps-Roper, the attorney for the Westboro Baptist Church, explained that Rogers, as a Presbyterian minister with a television program, had a responsibility to comment on the issue. By not doing so, she explained that he was helping to perpetuate homosexuality, which the group says falls into the category of “whoremongery and adultery, which will damn the soul forever in hell.” She added that the support some Americans have given to homosexuals has been the reason behind horrible tragedies including the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, the crash of the NASA shuttle Colombia, and the nightclub fire in Rhode Island.
“You don’t get to pretend to decide what form God takes,” Phelps-Roper said. “He’s the God who could have stopped the shuttle crash, the nightclub fire, but instead he sent those things. This country has forgotten God and effectively flipped him off, and Fred Rogers is in part responsible.”
When I went looking to see if this was real, I found the hateful URL that is associated with them. It’s so bad, I thought it must be a really lame version of the Landover Baptist parody site. It’s not.
I’m not going to publish that link. Just look it up in Google, and don’t click on it. They don’t deserve the traffic. Go to the Anti-Defamation League’s site, if you must see more. (Also, there’s a Westboro Baptist Church in Ottawa, Canada. It’s not them. And make sure you check out the information on Mister Rogers at Snopes, before you send me any “Mister Rogers was a military sharpshooter with tattoos under his sweater” e-mails, too.)
Tony Norman had an excellent editorial in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette as to how Mister Rogers would have reacted.
I had never heard of the Westboro Baptist Church before today, and I debated whether or not to bring them even the shred of meager publicity that a mention here would give them. However, it is my belief that evil hides its ugly face in shadows. The light of scrutiny, reason and truth will make it (eventually) go away. Damn, I hope so, in this case.
[ Thanks, Ren, for winding me up this morning. Geez. 😉 ]
Yep, Phelps is a fucking nutjob and a half. The fact that he sees Mr. Rogers and thinks “Blasphemer! Sinner! Promoter of homosexuality! I must alert the press!” just makes me shake my head and laugh — he needs to be committed for psychiatric evaluation.
Yes, he’s real, and a candidate for the most hateful man on earth. It’s so frightening what he stands for. Sadly, I don’t think he’s going away anytime soon, because reason doesn’t exist in his universe.
Is it wrong of me to miss the media blackout I had over the weekend? Coming back to all of the news is just depressing. Sigh. What a bunch of idiots.
I don’t get mad easily, and usually when I do it’s mostly faked . . . but some people just …grrrrrr!
When I visited Solonor Green is People today, I almost had the same reaction he did when I read this
they are so going to hell for dissing Mr Rogers!!!
Dude, people have way too much time on thier hands.
i know it isnt funny, but all i could do was laugh.
so let me get this right….
God is killing everyday average Joes ( the nightclub), some of the smartest people around ( the shuttle crew)and more average and/slightly above average Joes (WTC,Pentagon etc…) because I, and Mister Rogers, and others, tolerate gay people?
Baaahahaha. What a moron. Yes I understand what the Bible says about homosexuality…but…uhm, how OLD is the bible? Times have changed!
AND…if God is going to persecute me for being a nice person and for not giving a shit who someone falls in love with, then so be it.
Man people are so stupid…
ok..tolerate wasnt the word I meant…at least I didnt mean it how it sounded!!
I understood what you meant. Homophobe. (I’m kidding! Ow! Quit hitting me!!)
LOL!
I am good at putting my feet in my mouth!
Fred’s been doing this for years. My personal favorite was his picketing of Mathew Shepherd’s funeral. There is a site called Addicted to Hate http://blank.org/addict/ that apparently gives details of Fred behind the scenes. Truly freaky stuff, but worth the read.
Fred Phelps, at it again. Good God. I remember when they came by Des Moines for a few days. They stood out on the steps of the Capitol building and did their gay-bashing…
The saddest part is that he’d trained his little granddaughter (4, 5, 6 years old?) to tell people that gays were going to hell.
This seems just to be too much of a publicity stunt. How else could you get such great press but by picking on a recently-deceased, well-loved children’s hero? Please.
He does have a habit, I hear, of causing a big uproar and then not showing up.
We here at Christian Records, Inc, found out about this Mr. Rogers “stuff”. Turns out he put out some records that had demonic messages recorded backwards. Here, give it a listen
when played backward…
“You are going the wrong way, you’re playing
this record backwards, oh, and I almost forgot,
Satan moves in our bodies, 6-6-6”
See, it was there all along!
OK, inside joke.
You forgot the part about the baked bean supper at the Grange hall… 🙂
Pewly’s Backward Masking and Tractor Repair
gads, this makes my head hurt. feh.
What would Lady Elaine have said? She’d have kicked this Phelps guys ass! 🙂
(chuckling at that imagery)
Interesting that he keeps his yap shut about it until Mr. Rogers is no longer around to tell him what a colossal freaking nutjob he is (and no doubt it would have been in the nicest way possible, too). What a miserable, cowardly excuse for a human being this guy is. I don’t know what God he worships, but I doubt He’s particularly anxious to claim Phelps!
That’s Fred for you. He protests against those who can’t… He’s old though, and will die someday.
If there is a god, he will be punished.
Solonor, this very same church came here to Hawai’i last month and spent 2 weeks touring the island, protesting the state’s policy of permitting same-sex marriages. They did so by picking various intersections across the island of O’ahu and holding a group rally, bringing traffic to a screaming halt. Imagine it: a 50×30 mile chunk of rock with one highway dividing the island down the center and another one ringing it. That’s it for getting from one end to the other. And it just so happens that I live right on the one ringing the island. Right about 25 feet from where this group decided that the public beach next to my house would be an ideal spot for a rally. I don’t know if you’ve been to Hawai’i, but we have some very large local boys here, and one thing they hate more than non-locals is getting stuck in traffic unnecessarily. It only took four of these walking semi-truck sized men to approach the group and explain that they were going to be meeting their Creator for “fuddah discussion of da mattah” if they didn’t clear their rally out immediately. I have never in my life seen middle-aged people move so fast!
Christianity is supposed to be about loving God, and loving your neighbor as yourself. Mr. Rogers was better at both than most anyone.
I am once again stunned at how egregiously some have twisted the Christian message.
Goodness mercy that is pathetic. I’m completely and utterly astounded at what passes for a “cause” nowadays. Aren’t there better things to do with your time?
I wonder if they get a group discount through their crack dealer. I mean, you figure… as much as they must be using… they really should.
*giggles* You REALLY wanna get wound up? Look up Perilous Times and Tammie Ritchie on Google.