Hate-Spewing Pastor Fred Phelps Sr. Dies at 84

Fred Phelps Dead

By Kevin Moloney/Getty Images.

There is a core political lesson at the heart of Wicked, the wildly successful Broadway show by Stephen Schwartz. The message is simple, if depressing: nothing rallies people on one side of an issue like a vile, frightening enemy who represents the other side.

Fred Phelps, the energetic leader of the Westboro Baptist Church, was that foe for LGBT people. For decades he and his hate-spewing family made a cottage industry out of protesting at funerals for victims of gay bullying, and more famously for protesting at funerals of members of the armed forces, because he claimed the United States was being punished for its tolerance of gay people. The group’s rainbow-colored “God Hates Fags” signs became iconic for their simplicity and crudeness. The behavior was despicable, but it was canny. If a school or community group attempted to kick Westboro protestors off their grounds, the “church” could then use the organization’s own free-speech policies against them—and potentially earn some cash off the scuffle. In 2011, Phelps and his group won a Supreme Court case against the father of a fallen Marine over the right to protest on a public sidewalk. (Last year the Westboro squad was slapped down by a federal judge in a different lawsuit over their funeral protests.)

But as horrifying and distressing as his actions were—especially for the families of the fallen soldiers and other young people who had to witness the protests—Phelps was never a real threat to LGBT progress or the gay way of life. If it hadn’t been for the mainstream media giving him and his family members a mouthpiece now and again, most of us probably wouldn’t have heard of him. (Even the Ku Klux Klan protested against the Westboro Baptist Church.)

I’ve never been sure that Fred Phelps even believed that God, actually “hates fags.” I think we’ll never know whether this pastime was simply that—a way to make money off appearances and get attention. But if he did believe that, and he was trying to harm the LGBT community, well, he probably should have gone to see Wicked.

He never would, of course, unless it was to stage a protest. Because that show’s songs like “Popular” and “Defying Gravity” were exactly the kind of anthems that help convince young gay people across the country into believing that it is okay to be different.

But while pop culture was helping those kids feel accepted and normal, Fred Phelps, with his raving lunacy and ugly, backward, frightening rhetoric, was making the foes of anti-LGBT equality look . . . well, insane, ugly, backward, and frightening. He was the best mascot for prejudice that gay-rights proponents could have ever hoped for, his hate shining a vivid spotlight on the simplicity, reason, and joy of tolerance.

And thankfully, that will be his legacy.