Westboro Baptist Church founder Fred Phelps dies

Fred Phelps, the virulently anti-gay preacher who drew wide, scornful attention for staging demonstrations at military funerals as a way to proclaim his belief that God was punishing America for its tolerance of homosexuality, died has died. He was 84.

His daughter Margie Phelps confirmed the death, The Associated Press reported, not giving a cause but saying he had recently been put into hospice care.

Phelps, who founded and led the small nondenominational Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka, was a much-loathed figure at the fringe of the US religious scene, denounced across the theological and political spectrum for his beliefs, his language and his tactics.

His congregation, which claims to have staged tens of thousands of demonstrations, is made up almost entirely of his family members, many of whom lived together in a small Topeka compound, although in recent years some of his children and grandchildren had broken with the group.

A disbarred civil rights lawyer who had once been honored by the NAACP and who ran for office repeatedly, and unsuccessfully, as a Democrat, Phelps seemed to accept the criticism if not relish it.

He believed that the United States was beyond saving, and he devoted his life to traveling with a small band of protesters to highlight what he saw as America's sinfulness and damnation.

His church’s website maintains a running tally of “people whom God has cast into hell since you loaded this page.”

New York Times