[eseer erre]

Interestingly enough, this guy has quite a history.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_Phelps

Friends and enemies alike recall the young Fred Phelps as a bright, quiet young man; those asked seem to unanimously agree that he was fairly well liked in high school, despite not being very sociable (something to which Phelps himself admits)... By Phelps's own admission, he never dated, and had no interest in members of the opposite sex.

In the spring or summer of 1946, Phelps and Capron attended a revival at East End Methodist Church in Meridian. According to friends of Phelps and Capron, the two boys took more interest in the sermon than anyone else in attendance; Joe Clay Hamilton, a high school classmate of Fred's, would recall years later: "The two of them got religion. Both Phelps and Capron became very excited about religion. They couldn't distinguish reality from idealism."

The sermon which Phelps credits with "awakening" him to his current theology is one which is considered to be relatively tame and devoid of any overt aggression: Christ inviting all men to come into God's service, likening the afterlife and God to a rich man who has made a great banquet and invites many to come dine with him. After the sermon, Phelps, according to Rev. B.H. McAllister, the Baptist minister who would eventually ordain him, became a religious zealot, full of rage and fiery hatred, and developed eccentric tendencies. McAllister recalled in an interview with the Topeka Capital-Journal in 1993 that there was some difficulty in ordaining Phelps:

Phelps considered the local church to be more than a place of fellowship--for him, membership in the local congregation directly corresponded to membership in the Body of Christ. Phelps may have conceded the point to be ordained, but, for forty years, his family and church members in Topeka have been controlled by his threat that, if they depart his congregation, they must carry a letter of permission from him. In addition, they must join a congregation that he approves. Otherwise...the pastor Phelps draws up the dreaded missive ordering the straying sheep to be "delivered to Satan for the destruction of the flesh."

Fred's sister recalled her brother's sudden change as being quite grim: "Fred, bless his heart, just went overboard. If you didn't accept it, he was going to cram it down your throat."

The same year, Fred Wade Phelps remarried, this time to a thirty-nine-year-old divorcee named Olive Briggs (Fred Wade was fifty-seven at the time). Phelps stopped speaking to his father, citing Biblical restrictions on marrying divorcees. He also broke off contact with his sister, who supported their father's decision to marry Briggs. Olive's sister recalled to the Topeka Capital-Journal in 1994: "Olive would say he grieved over that every day of his life. That he never would have parted ways. It was his son who parted ways."
Phelps' sister recalls, "Dad never really got over it." She also remembers Fred Wade Phelps telling her that every year, Phelps returned Christmas cards unopened; one year, Fred Wade sent photos of himself and Olive to Fred's children, only to have the photos returned cut into pieces.

Olive died in 1985, which Fred Phelps says overjoyed him...

About a year after Fred Jr.'s birth, the family moved to Topeka, Kansas, where Fred Sr. had been invited by Pastor Leaford Cavin to be his co-pastor at Eastside Baptist Church, a traditional conservative Baptist congregation with none of the views or practices that would later characterize Phelps. The Phelps family arrived on May 17, 1954, the same day that the United States Supreme Court handed down its decision on Brown v. Board of Education. Fred Sr. would later claim that he took this as a sign from God that he should become a lawyer.

Fred's position at Eastside was shortlived; as some congregants would recall years later, he was a "reverend from Hell." Almost immediately his sermons exhibited the hate-filled spirit which would later characterize his ministry. For example, as a means of encouraging the wives and children to "submit to the father's authority in the home," Phelps began encouraging his congregants to beat them if necessary; he was once forced to bail one of his parishioners out of jail after counseling the man to punch his wife in the face until she became "subjugated." Parishioners of Eastside recall one of Phelps' sermons in particular (which ironically references his high-school boxing talent):

A good left hook makes for a right fine wife. Brethren, they can lock us up, but we'll still do what the Bible tells us to do. Either our wives are going to obey, or we're going to beat them!

The congregants, when asked by the Topeka Capital-Journal in interviews years later, recalled an incident one Sunday morning when Phelps' infant son, Mark, began to squirm during a sermon; Phelps responded by repeatedly punching the baby in the face. Afterwards, several men of the congregation confronted Phelps about the attack.

Phelps' dismissal from the church came when a female congregant admitted that she had committed adultery. The next Sunday, Phelps' sermon revolved around the woman, repeatedly referring to her as a whore and encouraging the congregation to draw up an official "form" declaring her to be damned to Hell and excommunicated from the church (a tactic he would later adopt frequently). Instead, the congregants voted to kick Phelps out of the church...
Several congregants chose to stand by Phelps and left Eastside with him. However, following an incident in which a stoned and drunken Phelps shotgunned to death a German Shepherd in front of a six-year-old because the dog had defecated on his lawn, the majority of Phelps' initial supporters left and returned to Eastside. Those who remained with Phelps included George Stutzman, the Davis family and the Hockenbarger family, the patriarch of which, Charles William (called Bill by fellow congregants), was a member of the Christian Identity sect of the Ku Klux Klan and a long-time friend of Phelps; these would become the founding members of Westboro Baptist Church in 1955.

Sometime following his graduation from Washburn, Phelps became addicted to amphetamines and barbiturates, which he often combined with large quantities of alcohol. One of his sons claims that his first memory in life was that of the drunk, stoned Phelps shooting a dog for defecating on the lawn ..., the incident which led to the majority of Phelps' supporters leaving him and returning to Eastside. The owner sued Phelps, but Phelps defended himself in court and won. In the middle of the night, for the next several weeks, his ex-congregants sneaked into the front yard of Westboro and placed signs reading: Anyone who'd stoop to killing a dog someday will mistake a child for a dog.

Phelps continued to take drugs, consume alcohol, and binge eat for six years, and would often go for days or weeks without leaving his bedroom. When Phelps did leave his room, it was to throw temper tantrums, during which he would throw food, break plates, and scream at his children for not eating. When Phelps was then too exhausted to continue his fit, he would take his wife back to their room for sex while the children cleaned up after him. Son Mark recalls:

It established a life habit for me. Even today, the moment I get home, I'm thinking 'Is Daddy mad?' Our walls were stained with food. And my mom used to cry because she couldn't keep good dishes. My father would also bust holes in the walls and doors. If they were on the outside, he'd fix them quickly. On the inside, he'd leave them unrepaired for months.

Because of his habits, Phelps stopped earning money for the family, and because he refused to allow his wife to get a job, the family's financial resources quickly dried up. Phelps's binge eating pushed his weight to nearly 300 pounds.

During this time the family's only income came from what Phelps called "The Children's Crusade," a money-making scheme disguised as evangelical witnessing and a church fundraiser, which consisted of the Phelps children going door-to-door selling candy. Phelps assigned the children quotas, and those who didn't meet the quotas were beaten with a mattock handle, a farming tool possessing twice the density of a baseball bat. The sales often found the children in dangerous areas of town, including the "bad part of Kansas City," where a teenage Jon Phelps and eight-year-old Rebecca Phelps were assaulted by a transgender woman after Jon Phelps "held forth with the latest 'fag' joke making the rounds at his junior high." The transgender woman pulled a switchblade and chased the children; they ran into an alley, were trapped, and, as sister Margie recalls, "Jonathon Phelps got 'bitch-slapped' by a guy in a dress to teach him a lesson."

The youngest child Tim "Timmy" Phelps consistently sold the most candy, "by being cute," his sister Margie recalls. He would stand around town and act out a routine in which he took on the persona of a carnival barker. He was once seen by a talent scout, who put Timmy into a commercial for Payless Shoes. Timmy also earned by going to a restaurant whose owner felt sorry for what Phelps was forcing the boy to do; the owner never failed to buy every candy bar that Timmy had on him, and to give the boy free food and drinks.

Do his followers know this? Do they know that the man that they support is rascist? Sexist? Do they realise that he made life Hell for his children? Do they realize that this man beat his children? Do they realise that he encouraged others to do so? That he kidnapped his own son at gunpoint?