Fred Phelps

• The Supreme Court ruled 8-1 that Fred Phelps and his band of anti-gay bigots have the right to protest military funerals.
• Apparently Newt Gingrich won't be announcing the formation of a presidential exploratory committee.
• On a related note, Bryan Fischer says he won't be supporting Gingrich if he does run because "it is imperative that the next standard bearer of the conservative movement be a man who has demonstrated a lifelong commitment to family values in deed as well as in words, a man who does not just talk the talk but has walked the walk."
• Ken Hutcherson says President Obama's DOMA decision is "delusional."
• Finally, Pat Robertson tells Newsmax that God is not going to "turn this world lose to the crazies" but He may destroy it with a meteor.  So that is reassuring.

Wiley Drake has become notorious in recent years for praying for the death of President Obama, hundreds of members of Congress, and pretty much everyone who doesn't share his radical agenda ... and now he is turning his imprecatory prayers against Fred Phelps and his Westboro Baptist Church because they are, get this, "an embarrassment to Bible believing Pro-Life and Pro-Family Christians":

Christians from Around the World to Discuss Imprecatory Prayer for Westboro Baptist and Pastor Fred Phelps

Pastor Wiley Drake will host an open discussion with members of the body of Christ, from around the world, as to what to do about people he sees as an embarrassment to Bible believing Pro-Life and Pro-Family Christians, especially for those who are proud to be called Baptist.

Pastor Drake states, "We will have an OPEN prayer meeting/discussion to allow everyone to share their ideas and prayers."

If you are interested in listening to Drake’s discussion on how best to pray for the death of Phelps and his Westboro flock, you can call in tomorrow at noon Eastern time. 

I searched around in the newspaper archives for articles from Christine O'Donnell's days with Concerned Women for America and her time as Savior's Alliance for Lifting the Truth and found some rather interesting quotes and articles that are worth sharing.

Like this article praising Sen. Jesse Helms for opposing funding for HIV victims: 

AIDS BILL PASSES IN SENATE; SEN. JESSE HELMS' VIOLENT OPPOSITION MADE MEDIA WAVES, BUT DIDN'T SWAY THE 97-3 VOTE.

28 July 1995
Charlotte Observer

Sen. Jesse Helms, R-N.C., lost his battle Thursday to stop a special funding program for AIDS sufferers, but won an opportunity to publicize his views to a nationwide television audience during a two-day debate.

Over Helms' objections, the Senate voted, 97-3, to pass the Ryan White Care Act, which funnels money to states to help AIDS and HIV-positive victims who can't get help elsewhere ... Helms lost overwhelmingly because senators were disgusted by his remarks implying that AIDS sufferers didn't deserve federal help

...

Concerned Women for America, a 600,000-member Christian group, praised Helms.

Federal money from the Ryan White Act has in the past gone to teach teenagers to use condoms to engage in homosexual behavior that includes anal sex, said Concerned Women spokeswoman Christine O'Donnell.

Or this article attacking Coors Brewing Company for offering benefits to same-sex couples:

At Coors, a Brewing Dilemma Over Gay Rights

16 September 1995
The Washington Post

The Coors Brewing Co. is run by a family that has helped fund a conservative backlash against gay rights, but has become one of the first companies in the country to extend health benefits to the partners of its homosexual employees.

As a consequence, the corporation, whose annual beverage sales total $1.6 billion, finds itself boycotted both by gay and lesbian activists and by anti-gay Christian fundamentalists.

...

Fred Phelps Sr., minister of Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka, Kan., announced a boycott of Coors and began organizing a picketing and lobbying campaign. In an interview, Phelps said his church has only 150 members, but has 10 fax machines he uses to publicize the boycott. One fax that he said was sent to churches throughout the country said, "The Coors family of hypocrites claim to fear God, but sponsor filthy fags!"

Christine O'Donnell, press secretary of the 600,000-member Concerned Women of America, said her conservative group also opposes the new Coors policy. "We think that it legitimizes the homosexual lifestyle," she said.

Or this one in which O'Donnell longs for the days when Lenny and Squiggy didn't sleep with Laverne and Shirley: 

AMERICA'S SEXUAL RIGHT TURN
INSIGHT
2 June 1997

"In general, my generation is confused," says Christine O'Donnell, 27, head of the Saviors Alliance for Lifting the Truth, a Christian youth group that advocates sexual abstinence. "We're craving more conservative values, more boundaries." O'Donnell lectures at high schools about abstinence and says there always is a sigh of relief when teens hear that it's okay to wait. "A lot of these kids have never had anyone tell them no, and they want that," she explains.

Despite O'Donnell's modest success - she has been featured on MTV and will fence comedian Al Franken on an upcoming episode of Politically Incorrect - her mission, she says, is a struggle against the still-dominant liberal culture. "People are always talking about how bad the seventies were, but things in the popular culture have gotten much worse even since then. I grew up watching Laverne and Shirley, and Lenny and Squiggy never slept over. Now with shows like Friends or Married i With Children, sex is everywhere. I mean, can you imagine the minds that were raised on those shows?"

Ot this one that O'Donnell wrote about handing out S.A.L.T literature at the annual HFStival in Washington, DC in which she warned at Satanism had become the religion of choice for her generation:

Opposite Attraction; Pitching Abstinence to the Young and the Restless at the HFStival
By Christine O'Donnell

15 June 1997
The Washington Post

Walking through the crowd I also noticed more pentagrams than crosses around the teenage necks. "Satanism is the religion of the '90s," I was told. "It means I worship nature," responded one girl when I asked her what the pentagram meant to her. I explained that the pentagram is to Satan what the cross is to Christ. She didn't want to believe it.

Others knew exactly what it meant.

"I'd rather go to hell and do what I want than go to heaven and do what others say," said a pale boy wearing smeared red and black eyeliner who had deep scars along the insides of both arms.

This boy mirrored "The Satanic Bible's" basic philosophy, "Do what thou wilt." Satanism has re-emerged among Generation X with an arrogance that mocks its members as it blatantly destroys them. Was this boy so consumed with his right to worship Satan that he couldn't see Satan's true purpose, which is to devour and destroy his worshipers? Past generations have broadened the boundaries so much that this generation must go to great extremes to rebel.

The generation of young people that questioned the establishment in the '60s is now middle-aged, and has become the establishment itself. Moral absolutes have been eliminated, "feel-good" religions created, and free sex legitimized, paving the way for disposable marriages. The results of these tailor-made values are new strains of sexually transmitted diseases, more potent drugs, more broken families and out-of-wedlock pregnancy rates and worrisome suicide rates. It's time for this generation of young people to question the new establishment.

Matt Barber's latest column is quite a work of art. 

Still upset about the fact that the Southern Poverty Law Center has labeled his good friend Peter Labarbera's Americans for Truth a hate site, Barber begins by attacking "progressives" for their use of ad hominem attacks ... by likening them to pig farmers: 

“Progressives” are like pig farmers. In an effort to bury opposing viewpoints they sling pejorative slop, labeling as “bigot,” “hater,” “wingnut” or “racist” those with whom they disagree. It’s the height of intellectual sloth.

The ad hominem approach – chief among logical fallacies – undergirds an effort to both marginalize conservative viewpoints and avoid arguing on the merits the controversies of the day. For liberals, to set sail in fair debate is to navigate treacherous waters.

Apparently unaware of the irony of decrying ad hominem attacks by launching ad hominem attacks, Barber then moves on to making a point that is actually semi-reasonable, at least by his standards, in which he agrees with the SPLC's designation of Fred Phelps and his Westboro Baptist Church as a hate group:

Cult leader Fred Phelps and his Westboro brood of “God hates F-gs” fame are infused to the marrow with pure, unadulterated hate.

Phelps hates homosexuals. He hates the military. He hates America. He apparently hates everyone. But he also hurts people. Intentionally, I believe.

The point Barber is trying to make is that it is people like Phelps who are the "real haters" and it is unfair to lump people like LaBarbera or Barber in with these sorts of bigots ... and then Barber proceed to proclaim that it is really "leftists" who are the Phelps-like bigots: 

So, Fred Phelps aside, every time you hear some lefty like Anderson Cooper or Keith Olbermann despicably refer to Bible-believing Christians as “homophobes,” or who call grandma a “teabagger” (slang for a vile homosexual act), consider who the real haters are.

Whenever Mark Potok, Rachel Maddow or some liberal politico in Congress attempts to equate conservative Joe to a “right wing extremists” or a “domestic terrorist,” contemplate who the true bigots are.

The palpable irony is that leftists – with their slanderous name-calling, harsh judgments and ad hominem attacks – are, in truth, more like Phelps than those they falsely accuse.

So, to recap:  Liberals engage in ad hominem attacks when they equate anti-gay activists like LaBarbera or Barber to bigots like Fred Phelps, and that is unfair ... because it is liberals who are bigots just like Fred Phelps.

What happens when a local gay organization in Florida can't get any of the people working to pass the anti-gay marriage amendment to come and debate them? Well, if you are the Stonewall Legal Alliance at FIU College of Law, you go out and find some other anti-gay activists who will - in this case, members of the Westboro Baptist Church:

A church known for spewing anti-gay rhetoric and picketing military funerals is slated to debate a state marriage amendment at a forum next week at Florida International University.

The Topeka, Kan.-based Westboro Baptist Church accepted an invitation from the Stonewall Legal Alliance, a gay group at the FIU College of Law. The debate will focus on Amendment 2, the initiative on the Nov. 4 ballot that would add Florida's existing ban on same-sex marriage to the state constitution.

...

Jose Gabilondo, an associate law professor at FIU, plans to argue against the amendment, while two daughters of Westboro Pastor Fred Phelps will speak for it.

Westboro has gained national notoriety by picketing at gay pride events as well as funerals of soldiers killed in Iraq; it equates modern America with Sodom and Gomorrah.

Westboro members agreed to pay their own expenses to Florida.

"The message of Westboro is the message of Amendment 2," Gabilondo said.

Debate organizers said they invited members of a state coalition supporting the amendment, as well as several other groups, but they declined.

"That's the most heinous thing I've ever heard. They go to the most radical group," said Janet Folger, an Amendment 2 supporter who heads a more mainstream Fort Lauderdale-based group called Faith2Action. "It's a deliberate attempt to make the pro-marriage people appear to be something they're not."

Of course, if Folger is so concerned that her movement is being represented by a bunch of vicious bigots, perhaps she should attend the debate herself and explain exactly how her belief that gay marriage = end times actually differs from those espoused by the Phelps clan.