Fred Phelps, 1929-2014

Or this:
“Following the news that Phelps was near death, Lucien Greaves, the leader of the New York-based Satanic Temple, promised to hold a “pink mass” over Phelps’ graves and turn him posthumously gay.”

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Just gave me the bestest idea for his funeral. Bring on the gays, the gay lovers, and have the biggest, gayest, flash mob ever.

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♫♪ Ding Dong! The dick is dead. Which old dick? The christian dick! Ding Dong! The bigot dick is dead. ♫♪

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I try not to take joy in any person’s death, no matter how heinous the person. But I will say that I’m definitely not sad to see him go.

Also, I love The Onion’s take on this:

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This ^^^

And this ^^^

Much of the left and none of the right cared at all when they were protesting at Matthew Shepherd’s funeral, it was only the fact that did protest funerals after Afghanistan/Iraq started that the media even cared.

I hate the argument that all people who hate gay people must be gay as well. Straight people can be assholes too you know…

I’m not disagreeing with you, necessarily, but the world was a far different place in 1998 (when they picketed Matthew Shepard’s funeral) than it was in 2005 (when they picketed Carrie French’s funeral). I think the growth of the internet played a HUGE part in bringing attention to these assholes into the mainstream.

We’re not talking about a garden variety asshole. We’re talking about someone who devoted his entire adult life to a single issue. He spent more time thinking about anal sex than most gay men do, and devoted incalculable effort to regulating, controlling, and trying to prevent it.

If that fabulous shoe fits…

I don’t think that’s necessarily true. I remember those clowns showing up on the news from time to time even before Matthew Shepherd’s funeral, but as @WearySky notes the media landscape was much different back then. Fox News Channel and MSNBC didn’t even exist until 1996 and weren’t available nationwide until years after that, and social media was still in its embryonic stage back in the 90s.

The WBC also spent years refining their media-baiting tactics, which seem tailored specifically to feed the outrage-hungry 24-hour news cycle format that networks now demand. Every time reporters get tired of covering them they just up the ante, thus the protests at the soldiers’ funerals.

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Diesel Sweeties

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really! that’s interesting. i hope someone writes a tell-all at some point. the internal politics of the WBC must be a treasure trove.

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What if I just send a nice letter?

“I didn’t attend the funeral, but I sent a nice letter saying I approved of it.” – Mark Twain
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The Mash, as usual, nails it: http://www.thedailymash.co.uk/news/celebrity/vague-feeling-of-emptiness-over-death-of-utter-lunatic-2014032184886

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