Fred Phelps of Westboro Baptist has died

Is it ever ethical to celebrate someone's death?   I didn't feel like celebrating when they killed Osama bin Laden, as merciless and destructive as he had been.   I just don't ever really feel good about someone's death.

The last time I had to face this was when my long-time foe in psychoanalytic circles died.  Psychoanalyst Charles Socarides held tightly to his view that homosexual men are seriously disturbed individuals but can be cured;  he later got into anti-gay advocacy, even opposing the decriminalization of sodomy and claiming that the "homosexual agenda" would destroy America."   It was a relief when he was gone, but actually his effectiveness in organizations that mattered to me had long since evaporated.  Time and enlightenment had passed him by.

Fred Phelps occupied a place that was a bit different.   He's the one who created a cult -- which masquerades as a church but turns out to be mostly made up of his own brain-washed extended family members -- that proclaimed to be Christian, but seemed to have only one message:   "God hates fags."

For years this little band was an obnoxious nuisance in downtown Topeka, Kansas, where they maintained a noisy protesting presence -- shouting loudly at passersby about the evils of homosexuality and God's hatred of all of America because of it.   The city even tried to shut them down through a noise ordinance, but several of the Phelps kids became lawyers and are reportedly very smart.   Margie Phelps argued one case all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, and won her case based on the right to free speech.

It went beyond being a nuisance and became an outrage when they figured out they got the best publicity for spewing their hate when they picketed national figures' funerals.   This started when they showed up at Matthew Sheppard's funeral with their vicious signs, proclaiming "Matthew is burning in hell" because of his homosexuality.

But then they branched out beyond gay people and picketed funerals that might attract media coverage -- including, most reprehensively, soldiers killed in Iraq and Afghanistan.   The signs there would read "Thank God for dead soldiers," the idea being that God was punishing America for its tolerance of homosexuality.

In recent years, their effect has been neutralized by local supportive crowds forming human chains to block the view of mourners from their demonstrations.     As a result, they often just get back in their cars and leave.   The counter-protests went beyond gay activists.  The extremity and insanity of the Phelps' antics brought out supportive straight people as well.   And a federal and 40 state laws were passed to limit demonstrations at funerals.    Some gay activists even began to say that Phelps actually helped their cause in the end.

Daughter Margie told the AP that her father has died in a hospice at the age of 84.   His illness and death are shrouded in mystery, although it is known that he was moved to a hospice for his final days.   Not all family members have stayed in the cult, and some have leaked out information that Fred himself had been excommunicated from his own church but provided no details.

So -- I guess my feeling is that it hardly matters to me that Fred Phelps is dead.   His time had long passed, and the forces of compassion and progress had already left him in the dust bin of history.   

In the long and broader view of a movement's history, one can even see him as a tool of eventual progress in gay rights.   The blatant cruelty of his message and his tactics brought a lot of people to realize how toxic hatred is -- and they began to fight back against the hatred and the cruelty on behalf of the victims.

It really illustrates the opposite of the parable about no one standing up against intolerance, as each group is exorcised -- until there's no one to stand up for you.

Ralph