They're all media shills who carry the message the media wants. And they are never, ever put under a microscope for their funding, their views or their actions.
From the group's Wikipedia entry: In the case of the Westboro Baptist Church, the group came into the national spotlight in 1998, when it was featured on CNN for picketing the funeral of Matthew Shepard. The Phelps family been employed every since to publicize media hatred of the other side, namely Conservatives, and to slander religion.
The "church" is not affiliated with the Baptists. It consists almost exclusively of Phelps and his family. He was a "brilliant civil rights attorney" in the 1960s. CNN once described the group as "America's most hated family" which was the name of a BBC documentary on the group.
Most of the members of Phelps' Westboro Baptist Church are members of his large family. Phelps has 13 children; 11 are attorneys.Phelps was disbarred in 1979 by the Kansas Supreme Court after he became the subject of a complaint of badgering a witness in a case against him. He continued to practice law in the federal courts until 1989 when nine Federal judges filed a disciplinary complaint against Phelps and five of his children. In the settlement, Phelps agreed to stop practicing law in Federal court permanently, and two of his children were suspended for periods of six months and one year. (Wikipedia entry)
Phelps is a Democrat who has five times been a candidate for political office in Kansas Democratic Party primaries.
The pitiful size of his homemade (literally) church, his disbarment or his Democrat party roots are rarely discussed in the media.
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