HATING FRED
The Reverend Fred Phelps first gained national attention more than a decade ago when he was the subject of ABC's 20/20, in a segment aptly dubbed, "A Gospel of Hate." Phelps is a Primitive Baptist minister and disbarred attorney who has made it his spiritual mission and full-time job to eradicate homosexuality from the planet. He started in his hometown--and mine at the time--Topeka Kansas.
Every day, Fred and his followers, including children and grandchildren, display huge picket signs reading "God Hates Gays" Death to Gays, and Gays=Aids. Often there is a jovial mood as the group makes up songs, like the one sung to the tune of "Jingle Bells" called "I hate fags, I hate fags." He pickets parades, performance halls, parks, universities, and funerals if he suspects an AIDS-related death. He has sent thousands of vulgar and libelous faxes to lawyers, city officials and legislators attacking homosexuals and anyone who opposes him.
Fred has near-zero support for his particular brand of homophobia. He hates "fags" and "fag-lovers" and Kansans hate Fred. The citizens of Topeka organize counterdemonstrations, and offer support to the victims of Fred's harassment. They meet with attorneys, they help pass ordinances restricting his picket at funerals and private homes. No one asks why we hate Fred. It's obvious.
But I've always felt uneasy with the simplicity of our hatred. In a society that considers heterosexual relationships the only form of living and loving that can be celebrated, validated, legally protected or even mentioned, why does everyone hate Fred?
A young woman in my doctor's waiting room told me how much she despised Fred. Her daughter had danced with a local ballet company and Fred, and his followers had picketed their performance.
"I could hardly keep from swerving my car into the whole group of them," the young mother told me. "Why should my daughter have to know about those people?"
Those people. I thought at first she was talking about Fred and his relatives, but it turned out she meant gays. Her daughter had seen Fred's signs and asked a lot of questions about "sodomites and fags."
"My daughter is only nine," said the irate mother. "She shouldn't be exposed to homosexuality and things like that."
Is this why some Topekans hate Fred? Long before he hit the streets and fax machines, homophobia was deeply entrenched in Kansas as it is almost everywhere. There wasn't much talk about hating homosexuals then, because no one acknowledged their existence, except in tasteless jokes.
Gays and lesbians didn't feel free to come of hiding in Topeka and they still don't, but that's not Fred's doing. "We're not just asked to keep a secret," a gay friend told me. "We're asked to be a secret."
I found myself thinking about my being Jewish. What would be the lesser of two evils, I wondered, enforced invisibility or being hated outright? Outright hate frightens me. I'd sleep less well if Fred's signs said, "God Hates Jews" and "Death to Jews." But even that would acknowledge that we Jews do, indeed, exist.
What about enforced invisibility-a life in the closet? At first, it seems like the better choice. But I know how deeply, over time, it would erode my dignity and self-regard.
I imagined myself living in a community preaching "tolerance"-but not visibility and celebration-of my Jewishness. ("It's unfortunate, but after all she was born that way."). I imagined the young mother in the waiting room, angry that her daughter was forced to know about "my kind." I pictured my neighbors reacting to my sons' Bar Mitzvah ("Well, I think it's fine that the Lerners are Jewish, but must they flaunt it.") I imagined having to lie, to conceal, to pretend each day to be what I am not.
To be erased by the dominant culture is a terrible thing. Once, flying home to Kansas from the west coast, I spotted a famous runner on the plane and asked him for an autograph for my younger son. He wrote, "To Ben, Run for Jesus." I was stunned by his assumptions-and equally stunned that I didn't gather the courage to tell him we were Jewish and to ask him for a different autograph.
It's this assumption-that all the world is like us--that may be the seeding ground from which more virulent and elaborate forms of bigotry grow.
A lesbian friend of mine reminds me that she feels erased almost daily from the categories of humans and women. She tells me she attended a program on "Mothers and Daughters" and a panel called "Adjusting to Mastectomy." The programs didn't include lesbians and the experts talked as if homosexuals didn't exist.
"Heterosexuals," are like the runner on the airplane" she tells me. "They assume everyone is just like them, or should be."
Bigotry has many faces. Fred may be dangerous, but he represents only one danger. It is also dangerous to pretend that the Freds of the world are the containers of all prejudice while the rest of us are on the side of virtue.
Hating Fred may allow us to evade our civic responsibility to change the entrenched homophobia in our own community. But if Fred's presence inspires us to examine our own silence and speak out on behalf of the dignity and rights of gays and lesbians--he may be performing a valuable public service.
