Fred Phelps is in a hospice and close to death [UPDATE: he has now died], having also been excommunicated from his own church, with the believing family not allowed contact with him. If you don’t know who about Phelps, he is the founder of the God Hates Fags church espousing some of the most virulent homophobia among US churches (which is saying a lot). They are famous for picketing the funerals, and celebrating the death of anyone who is gay or a US soldier – since the US is satanic due to being too “gay friendly”. Unlike most similar churches whose schtick is to preach to LGBT people to try “save” them from hell, his church instead revels in their belief they they will be going to hell. Oh, and you might not know that Phelps was also a civil rights lawyer , that he built his family church on a foundation of physical and psychological abuse and that his pickets may be a money making strategy since they bait local authorities into violating his First Amendment rights.
In other words, a real standup guy.
And respectability politics is the idea that minorities need to be respectable in order to convince the middle-class majority that they also deserve rights. To speak in a calm, civil manner, wear nice clothes and always stay within the bounds of law and [middle-class majority] propriety. To not spit on the sidewalk, and if that evokes civil rights imagery it’s meant to. As Ta-Nehisi Coates put it, “[t]he way to defeat them [is] not to attack them at their root, but to be better, to be twice as good”.
Putting the two together has created a mini discussion on how we should react to Phelps’ condition. There have been statements of compassion for the man who got eaten by the hate machine that he created. Discussion of the tragedy that his death still will be. Someone suggested picketing but with anti-hate messages. Rebecca Watson distilled it in a tweet:
Fred Phelps is dying. I know this because I’ve seen 10,000 atheists bragging about how they’re not going to picket his funeral. [Source]
Here’s the thing. If you want to show compassion in this case, you’re very welcome. You don’t have to picket his funeral. You can make public statements about how it’s a tragedy and a waste of human potential. You can picket the funeral with signs like “I don’t hate you”. But you should recognise that your ability to be “civil” is likely to have much to do with your standing in society. As a wise woman once said: “One’s openness to engagement with hostile and/or contentious individuals is not necessarily a sign of superior strength, intellect, moral fortitude, or anything at all like that. It’s generally a function of many, many other mitigating factors.”
I wouldn’t want to picket his funeral and I find Phelps pretty silly. But how much homophobic abuse have I experienced? How many times have I feared for my life because of people saying the same words as the Phelps family put on their placards? Zilch. So I’d be very hesitant to police the way that others with more at stake choose to express themselves over deaths like this.
The only ethical issue with picketing Fred’s funeral that I can think of is the trauma the young Phelps children are likely to experience on seeing the protest. As long as that’s avoided (and it will be if anyone has a press conference, party, external protest or blog post celebrating his death), all bets are off.
A lot of the pushback that people give in cases like this is pretty weak anyway. I’ve seen the idea that we should be better than Phelps, as if picketing the funeral of someone who had an awful effect on the world makes us “like” someone who pickets the funeral of a hate crime victim. You can see how ridiculous this is with this wonderful clip of Hitchens celebrating the death of Jerry Falwell, someone who may have done more harm than a hundred Fred Phelpses.
Hitchens may have been an asshole but here he was on the money. Don’t be like that host. People have endured major trauma, they should get a pass for reactions you might consider “petty”. This has been a public service announcement.
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