You Thought Your Commenters Were Nuts? November 9, 2008
Posted by bensix in Uncategorized.trackback
This is extraordinary.
A Canadian Campus Magazine, the Ubyssey, has posted an interview with the son of Westboro Baptist Church’s nutbag-in-chief Fred Phelps. The son, Nathan, now an atheist, fled the family in 1980, and claims that Phelps used to beat his wife and children and force them to run “five to ten miles around the high school track every night“.
Always “angry“, Phelps’s use of amphetamines and barbiturates caused him to grow increasingly unstable – alienating most of the members of his church and battering the rest with “fire and brimstone” rants. Nathan comments that before he left there was “a siege mentality developing: us against the world“.
Really, the guy sounds like the most sickening bully – one that enjoys wielding power over the emotions of others.
What’s really interesting about the piece, though, is the appearance of Nathan’s sister, Shirley Phelps-Roper, in the comments. Shirley – a woman so deranged that she almost made Jeremy Kyle look sympathetic – is the Church’s PR specialist, and she has an obvious talent for trolling…
“Amazing stuff. At the end of the day, rebel Nate who is a man of the flesh according to the Bible, cannot get it into his head the the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. The child crying over a fear of hell is exactly what is intended by the plain language of the scriptures. You can love that and live that and own that and be one with that, as they say, or you can foolishly fight against that. WHO thinks they can beat God? YIKES!
…
This is the generation that is about to see the rise of Antichrist, THAT WICKED, also called The Beast. He will pursuant to the promises of God arise from the sea of humanity and he has some work to do, and then, he will be destroyed with the brighteness of the coming of the Lord. YAY!”
Presumably bewildered as to what would constitute a suitable reply – it would have been funny to have just posted “sources, please” – another commenter starts by saying that “Shirley, I hardly think you’re the one to be taking the moral high ground…”
Still, cults and collectivised religious groups come in all shapes, sizes and ideologies. While some might not be as outwardly offensive as the Westboro Wonders, they can be rather more dangerous…
…Jeez, that was a terrible way of trailing tomorrow’s post. I should just shut up, tip my hat to The Freethinker and click publish…
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