Responses to the Rev. Fred Phelps and the hate and anger that he and his family spew forth can take several forms.
You can throw the same kind of fury back at them and try to inflict as much pain on them as they dump onto the world.
You can ignore them.
You can pray for them.
I wish I could say that I was strong enough to pray for them. I just can’t bring myself to do that, at least not right now. However, I do want to argue for another response, and that is to counter their invocation of hatred with an invocation of love.
If my sin is homosexuality, then all I can say is that I am so proud that I have the courage to sin in such a way. Loving is a hard thing to do. It involves taking the risk to open your heart to another person. It involves leaving yourself vulnerable to someone else. To truly love means that you can’t hide behind a wall of anger or judgment.
I have been blessed in my life to have deeply loved two women and been loved in return. One died of breast cancer, and the other is still very much alive and in my life. How wonderful it has been to have known them.
I cannot see that even one instant of our lives has harmed anyone else. All I know is that they have given me strength and courage to help others and brought joy into my life.
I doubt very much if God has been offended or wronged by the fact that we have found each other and loved fiercely. I attend church every Sunday. The God I have found in my church doesn’t hate any single soul, let alone people who have the courage to live authentic lives and to love each other.
I do want to comment on one of Isaiah Phelps-Roper’s points. He attacked my support of laws limiting protests at funerals. Such a law would effect the demonstrations the Phelps family have been mounting at the funerals of soldiers killed in Iraq.
Phelps-Roper wrote:
What you mean to say is that you want to stop our funeral protests because you disagree with our beliefs. That's in violation of the First Amendment. That is really what it all boils down to.Obviously, I do disagree with the Phelps’ beliefs, but that’s not why I’m arguing to limit picketing at funerals. I believe that no one should be allowed to picket anyone’s funeral, whether that is the funeral of gays, soldiers or even someday, the funeral of Fred Phelps. Does not basic human decency require that we set aside certain times when such speech is simply not appropriate?
I doubt if there is any legal support for my stand. However, any morality based on love and compassion would have to declare that there are times when we should all be quiet and leave people alone to grieve in peace.
The other way to deal with the Phelps clan, of course, is to appreciate the sweet irony they bring to any situation. Their web site is doing a great job of driving people to my blog. Many thanks!
1 comment:
to the Phelps family, would you like some grapes with your wine.You talk about all the evil in the world, well why fuel the fire. If people decide not to listin to our father then them infact can pay the price. But to go on and say people are all "fag embrassers" or whatever, while you fuel this fire of hate witch is infact just another evil thing in this world. Our Father has made his plan and does not hate, but loves all things he has created. theres reason's why people do and act the way they do but why bother to wine and complain about all the evil in the world, this evil feeds on people like you and your family look the massicure that just happened people like that only want to be reconized, why bother giving this evil more glory , we all should look at good in life and charish all things our father has givin to us not fuel the evil in the world because that is what he wants all things evil are all things evil, all things good are all things good ether way theres always two sides to every story negative and positive they feed off eachother. Theres no way to fix the evil that sourounds all of us, because the wheels are already in motion god is good and our father stands for everthing that is right not the greed and corrupt, for they will not charish anything but material things on this earth, all things are evil are blind to the true purpose of all that is good and to comeout and say gay people are wrong and all that nonsense,well why fuel the fire when this evil will not change be true yourselves, we are all born in sin witch inturn makes all of us sinners, repent and rejoice for the time is now to change our ways and look to all the good in life and remeber those who moved on to this holy place and not give credit to the evil in the world for there is soo much more evil then just murders and gays evil is everywhere be true to your own harts and be true to our father for this is what he wants , is for his childern to and rejoice not wine and complain and feed that raging fire of hate and evil for even those pretend to be good are sometimes evil themselves just look at all the priests who choose to do evil to children, but yet they live the "good" life so what is good these days? the rich get richer the poor get poorer. we are all children of god,and he rather us do good not just wine and complain about the bad or evil for this is what evil looks for and that is to be noticed. Our father will make life right and cast out the evil back to the fire where it belongs but you and your family are wrong, you can say you read the bible, but have you looked between the lines for that is where the wisdom is. Our Father has no need to laugh and hate all he has is love and has had his plan and seen what needs to be done, even our good is bad in these last days, if you wanna call them that, the lord does not kill for spit ether all these things you have sed did not come from our father but came from that witch is evil.
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