Families with stars

In the Winter of 1994 I rode a train from Missouri to Oregon, stopping along the way to visit friends and relatives without any schedule or structure, without a plan really. One of the stops I made was in Kansas City, where a friend had recently connected with a woman called Annie, who had become somewhat obsessed with the Phelps family, which presided over the Westboro Baptist Church not far across the state line in Topeka, Kansas. One day while my friend was at work, Annie and I took a drive out there to go to a protest against the family that brought us the slogans “God Hates Fags” and “GAY = Got AIDS Yet?” The family was appearing in court for some reason – most of the family members are lawyers, so there’s nothing too noteworthy about them going to court. Still, it was exciting: There were bullhorns and posters and tee shirts and lots of angry, loud homosexuals. At one point I looked directly into Fred Phelps’ face.


If Fred Phelps isn’t evil, a word I hesitate to use, he is certainly in the neighborhood. It wasn’t their signs that bothered me – I think God Hates Fags is actually kind of funny. What’s really gross is the fact that they took their signs and their loud mouths across the country and around the world to memorial services held for men and women (though mostly men) who had died of AIDS. Behavior like that is hideous, but what was really uncomfortable for me about the Phelps family is what a weird space I had to go into mentally to really think about them. My problem is that it’s hard for me to decide which is worse: tormenting people after a loved one dies, or legally prohibiting groups and individuals from doing so. I’m old enough and twisted enough to realize that if there’s enough money and power in the equation, freedom of speech and freedom of assembly rarely go beyond the realm of conceptual, but at the same time I do think they’re beautiful notions, ones worth fighting for.

So I was surprised yesterday morning when one of the local conservative talkies in Portland started in on the Phelps family, ranting for a good 10 minutes about how sick and demented they are. Why? Well, because the Phelps family – in what I think is a truly brilliant PR move – has updated its tactics. There aren’t that many fag funerals anymore for a couple of reasons. First, most of the fags who had AIDS in the 1980s and early 1990s are now dead, the funerals so long over that the print on the programs has faded like grandma in the Alzheimer’s commercial. Second, most of the fags infected with HIV are taking drugs that hold the disease at bay. So the Phelps have moved on and now protest at funerals for people who have died while serving in the military. The death of the young servicemen and women, according to the Phelps, is yet more evidence of God’s wrath toward the U.S. for being a country that has failed to eradicate all fags.

And the Phelps, of course, are in the spotlight like never before. So in the spotlight, in fact, that funds are being raised to take them to the supreme court because, as a guest on the radio said yesterday, nobody should have to listen to the venom spewed forth by the Phelps at what should be a somber, dignified occasion. But what about the fag families? I wondered bitterly. Didn’t the parents and brothers and sisters and maybe even the boyfriends of dead fags deserve some peace and quiet? As a fag, it’s just kind of normal to be insulted by your country, but even I was a bit alarmed at how strongly I reacted to the radio guest explaining the urgency of this issue. “These are gold-star and blue-star families,” he said.