Head Strong: Free (and hateful) speech vs. the right to gather | Philadelphia Inquirer | 03/14/2010
Fred Phelps, founder and pastor of the Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka, Kan., claims to be a man of God. But when I interviewed him days after he initiated a vulgar protest at a dead Marine's funeral, he reminded me more of Lucifer.
America, he insisted, had "gone the way of the Brokeback Mountain," before adding: "God's wrath is upon this nation. And he's pouring out that wrath by killing these soldiers and maiming these soldiers in Iraq and sending them back in body bags. And it's only going to get worse." Though we "met" by way of a cable television connection, I remember how disturbed his fiery eyes left me.
