r/AskReddit • u/DrCompenomics • 13h ago

Who’s the best real-life example of “you either die a hero, or live long enough to see yourself become the villain,” and what happened?

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u/Pheehelm 12h ago edited 12h ago

Fred Phelps of the Westboro Baptist Church spent much of the 60s and 70s as a prominent civil rights lawyer.

A previous time I commented this a dozen or so people thought they were going to be the first person to reply Jim Jones was also a civil rights activist.

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u/suburban_ennui75 12h ago

Yeah, this story always amazes me. Like, what happened bro?

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u/Cent1234 9h ago edited 5h ago

"Progressive in terms of black civil rights" doesn't necessarily translate into "progressive in terms of gay rights." Or any other element of the broad umbrella of 'progressivism.' And vice versa, for that matter.

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u/Th3B4dSpoon 5h ago

Funnily enough, I remember learning he actually became gay friendly very late in his life when his memory was starting to fail him. Reportedly he was kind and cheerful to the gay rights protestors outside the Westboro compound at that point.

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u/Wilgrove 4h ago

Huh, that's kinda weird. It always seems like people tend to become more aggressive and hostile as dementia progresses. Yet with Fred Phelps, the opposite happened.

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u/Ibroketheinterweb 4h ago

When you spend your life being that hateful the only way you can go with dementia is up it seems.

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u/NonsensicalAesthetic 3h ago

Donald J. Trump has entered the chat

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u/No_Problem6432 46m ago edited 36m ago

I wish i was as simple minded as you to be able to just label him as 'hateful' and never think about it again. God, I would love to be so simple and naive. What you call 'hateful', he calls generations of practicing his religion. Do you not feel silly using such infant language to try and explain another human being? What the hell is wrong with you? Do you think a person can ultimately be defined with one simple word? This is the problem with you people who claim to preach for accepting of all, but the moment you are put in his shoes and have your life experiences and the make up of what makes you, well, YOU, challenged, you are VERY quick to turn around a dehumanize another living creature who is just the make up of his COMPLEX upbringing just like yourself.

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u/Yuskia 40m ago

4 numbers after name, look inside, hidden comment history. Spouting inflammatory bullshit.

Yup, its a bot/agitator.

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u/No_Problem6432 38m ago

Right above your post:

"YOU, you are VERY quick to turn around a dehumanize another living creature who is just the make up of his COMPLEX upbringing just like yourself." Way to prove my point.

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u/Yuskia 35m ago

You put all those words up, but i ain't reading all that :)

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u/Ibroketheinterweb 43m ago

Were you born yesterday? "Hate" is literally part of Westboro's main catchphrase.

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u/No_Problem6432 39m ago

No, I was not born yesterday. What you don't understand is what YOU call hate, they call love. Until you do realize thats how they justify their 'hate', by not wanting you to go to their hell or whatever, you will actually have finally learned how to think of people you disagree with: still human.

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u/GrimDallows 3h ago

Not necesarily. I am not a doctor, but the way I have seen cognitive decline is not exactly like that.

A family member used to work with old people, and she used to say people turn more selfish. Not -evil- kind of selfish; just more defensive of their things and fearful of matters of health.

It is something like, cognitive decline is more like a devolution, it makes you more like a kid. Some people who were very nasty in life become very tame because they can't recall most of their social grudges. Others turn into spoiled kids: they lack patience, have a shorter attention span, become more focused and prioritizing on stuff that keeps them entertained.

I have seen multiple different cases and each one is very complex. A case I remember, the person got nastier because he couldn't process most modern stuff/TV shows on TV other than some movies old he liked, but would become completely tame when listening to music; -any- form of music, as long as it was an instrument that he liked, because he did not care about not understanding the words the singing guy was saying.

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u/hamster-on-popsicle 2h ago

That's very interesting, I honestly understand the last guy, too much cut, they barely present the characters now and most movie are too damn dark.

Even with dementia my grandma stayed as nice as she always was, I don't know what it said about her life.

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u/BLT_Trade_r 3h ago

People can be complex like that. Another scenario is just that he was a lying, manipulative lawyer who chased whatever fame he could, and no one actually knows if he has any convictions. When the civil rights fame dried up, he flipped over to religion. Maybe he just always needed to be in the spotlight no matter what. Then, in old age, he just didn't care anymore.

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u/Cautious_Clothes_285 1h ago

Those are the stories that are more common, yeah.

We've got family going through it and the doctor explained it more that they self-censor less. This doesn't always mean bad things come out. Sometimes people don't express their true selves in negative ways, like a dad not telling his son "i love you" because he thinks that's gay shit or whatever. Some people put on a front to be macho, or seem strong or independent or whatever, and when that front starts to drop the unfiltered version shines through.

On the other hand, sometimes people are fucking dickheads and self-censor because they know their real thoughts, feelings, and opinions are not socially acceptable, and they're the ones who become real assholes as dementia worsens.

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u/No-Examination4896 1h ago

Depends a lot on the type of dementia. Im a med student and the way my neurology attending explained it was that in general youll have lots of cute old happy Alzheimers guys, but people with vascular dementia tend to be aggresive and violent

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u/084045056048048 4h ago

Yep, and I think he was exommunicated for it. Then his health worsened even more and died shortly after.

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u/SanctimoniousSally 3h ago

Yep. They talk a bit about it in the Louis Theroux doc he did a while back (part dos). No one from the church would talk about it because it's a bad look but they had family members who had left corroborate.

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u/Th3B4dSpoon 1h ago

Oh yeah! I forgot the excommunication until you mentioned it, but I had heard of it before. The whole story is wild.

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u/reality72 4h ago

Dementia is wild. It can turn the kindest people into the meanest, and sometimes it does the complete opposite and turns hateful assholes into kind friendly people.

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u/hamster-on-popsicle 2h ago

He must have forgotten his prejudices

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u/surveillance-hippo 3h ago

my grandmother forgot she didn't like spicy foods when the dementia hit, same thing I guess?

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u/Uppndwn 3h ago

Rarely even equates to progress.

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u/Zanos 4h ago

Kind of the opposite, actually. Minority communities in America trend towards homophobia in greater numbers, not fewer.

"Oppressed" is not a single interest group and never was.

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u/Adamas_Moustache86 2h ago

I've also heard the minority communities are generally more racist than non-minority communities. I have nothing to back that up, but I don't exactly doubt it.

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u/AgentCirceLuna 5h ago

Something the progressives really need to learn to get rid of its classism issue.

When you’re rooting for people who don’t have a voice but the main speakers for those groups are often middle-class journalists, lawyers, or politicians… you’re gonna get a class problem.

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u/alexjaness 3h ago

It's kind funny (in an awful kind of way) but the republican party would easily get black and Latino voters if they weren't so vehemently and visibly racist.

a very large number of black and Latinos are super keen on Jesus and very conservative, but the fact that the republican party openly hates them keeps them from voting for them.

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u/Lolaindisguise 5h ago

This is so sad. I was horrified as an adult to find black/latino people who are racist. Because it doesn’t make sense, if you don’t like being marginalized, why would you do it to someone else

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u/Cent1234 5h ago

Why would you be 'horrified' to find out that Black and Latino people are human beings, warts and all?

if you don’t like being marginalized, why would you do it to someone else

Nobody likes being marginalized, but people do things they don't like experiencing all the time.

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u/1ExiledCat1 4h ago

Yep. I always found that kind of view in western progressives very racist in an ironic way. These people infantilize minorities and the oppressed in a way that they forget they are actualy humans, with all kinds of shitty human traits existing within those groups as well.

It feels like they expect those oppresed groups to be ever grateful to their benevolent straight white saviours for giving them equal rights and be a good little boy by adopting all their morals. Like no my guy, they are as smart, able, good/evil and cunning as much as you are, don't expect them to embrace all your views, you are not their leaders, just equals.

This directly leads to two main problems. The first of those is that these people are only celebrated when their actions are completely in line with white western progressive middle class morals and the second problem is when these "progressives" are unable to objectively evaluate the problems stemming from the culture of these peoples.

Western progressives really need to critically look at how they view other cultures. While they may think they are above those pesky racists and conservatives, the orientalist still resides inside their subconscious, leading to them seeing the sauvage noble in every minority and oppressed.

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u/psychophant_ 4h ago

“Wait a minute. You’re telling me white people aren’t the only ones that are shitty!?”

— “non-racist” OP

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u/alanwakeisahack 4h ago

You just assumed only white people are racists? What makes white people extra bad that you’d think they’re the only racists?

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u/Seamore_J_Turtle 4h ago

People like to feel superior to others. A lot of folks have the "I may be marginalized but at least I'm not ____" attitude. It's why people of color can be prejudiced against other cultural groups, it's why some gay men are the most misogynistic men you'll encounter, and why basically every group hates on fat people, especially formerly fat people. Because as long as there's someone lower on the totem pole, at least you don't have it the worst.

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u/684beach 5h ago

Why wouldn’t they be racist lol? They aren’t marginalized in their own countries, and oppress others

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u/Old-Radio-7236 4h ago

Racism has nothing to do with being marginalized or whatever, it's a very common human trait.

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u/Bureaucratic_Dick 32m ago

Though funnily enough, one of Phelp’s biggest civil rights fights pertained to a local American Legion that was predominantly African-American, defending them against abuses committed by the police.

WBC would famously go on to picket funerals of service members, including the 2006 funeral of Marine LCpl. Matthew Snyder, and be involved in the Supreme Court case Snyder v Phelps, in which the American Legion supported the Snyder family financially through the fight against Phelps.

So Phelps had at one point supported the American Legion when it pertained to civil rights, and then fought against them at the highest court.

Personally, I think Phelps just liked being the guy who was being persecuted for his opinion (in his minds eye). A pre-internet professional troll, if you will.

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u/thaddeusd 11h ago edited 5h ago

So much of the counter culture of the 60s and 70s was a search for truth, and that included religious and psudeo-religious fevor. For every functional commune developed you got two to three cults popping up espousing every extremist and/or evangelical view under the sun.

Now put greed, frustration, and impatience into the equation.

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u/DirtyScrubs 6h ago

Yeah whats wild to me is the people of the free love movement became horrible boomers who only care about themselves. Its a generalization I know but I bet most of their younger selves would hate who they became.

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u/CompEng_101 6h ago

The free love movement, anti-war movement, and hippies in general got a lot of press, but they were a minority during the 60s and 70s. People under 30 were generally _more_ supportive of the War in Vietnam than the general population.

https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2006/02/21/youth-and-war/

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u/VT_Squire 4h ago

This just in: Most people are morons. This story and more at 11.

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u/kogasfurryjorts 4h ago

Idk man, every former free love hippy I've ever met has been radically progressive even to this day.

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u/CA2Kiwi 4h ago

Yep, my Mom was a hippie & artist back then, and remains determinedly liberal today. My Dad was a closeted conservative/racist/misogynist/homophobe (I’m from Northern California, so his actual views would not have flown as a public school teacher. If he slipped it was “a joke.”) He has very much been emboldened by retirement and current government to out himself as repellent. Luckily they divorced decades ago, so I don’t have to talk to the guy, and Mom found herself a lovely old hippie dude, who also remains determinedly progressive.

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u/OliviaEntropy 3h ago

It varies, I’ve been to burner events (like Burning Man but not, same people) and met a lot of old hippies and most of them are the same values but in a modern context, very progressive on current civil rights issues and politics and whatnot. Though there are a significant amount of the crunchy people who became anti-vax and are all about the MAHA stuff with RFK jr, anti-GMO to a fault, stuff like that. A lot of right wing cults prey on these people and a not insignificant amount of them have eaten it up.

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u/AgentCirceLuna 5h ago

For the love of fuck, the counterculture was a COUNTERculture. Am I just gonna assume you were a goth or scene because you’re millennial? Why did you stop dyeing your hair dark colours and sell off your leather trench coats, you conformists? Where are your pet crows?

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u/RalfStein7 1h ago

Good point

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u/badmanveach 5h ago

*impatience

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u/donitdotis 4h ago

So much of the counter culture of the 60s and 70s was a search for truth

it still is.

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u/PRB74TX 2h ago

And lead.

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u/HalfSoul30 11h ago

Leaded gasoline, apparently

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u/CompEng_101 6h ago

Was he drinking it directly?

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u/lowtoiletsitter 5h ago

I've only smelled unleaded...I can't imagine what the good stuff did

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u/Whiteboy_In_Motion 2h ago

No need, just talk to literally any boomer who lived in a city during that time. The lead shows up in their words, or violent/overbearing personalities. 

 The reason crime went up is because lead in your brain tends to amplify the following traits

 Less Conscientious, leads to problems organizing, reduced ability to take responsibility, poor self control.

 Less Agreeable, displaying reduced empathy, compassion, or problems with cooperation.

 Higher levels or Neuroticism, leads to emotional instability, more anxiety, higher likelihood of depression or hostility.

 Higher Aggression and Conduct issues, increasing anti-social or aggressive behavior.

The real joyous thing to realize, is that even though many of the boomers during this time committed crimes, most of them... didn't, or just just didn't get caught.

This means, that even though crime went up and has since fallen, a not small, and certainly represented, portion of the population are basically mostly mentally damaged from lead.

There's a reason the economy and nation as a whole is rotten right now, boomers. Not only did they spend whole ass generations of being in charge and ruining quite literally every single thing that was good for Americans, but they're still doing it today.

We're keeping old lead-brained boomers in charge when they all lack basic human empathy and compassion.

I'm nit saying they're all bad people, or that any of then really are, we don't know if it's them or the lead.

Only a damned fool would put compassion for someone's situation above the fact that they are just straight up awful for it. These people should never have stayed in charge for as long as they have, we need healthy leaders, mentally and physically

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u/Rasp_Lime_Lipbalm 12h ago

He realized he was gay and hated himself so much he formed an antigay church and dragged his whole family into it.

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u/willclerkforfood 10h ago

Tale as old as time…

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u/No1_Knows_Its_Me 6h ago

Gay as it can be…

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u/Rage_PagesArtist 6h ago

TUNE AS OOOLLLD AS SONG !

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u/bobs_monkey 4h ago

I actually know his kids and ex wife, their stories are pretty insane and it's amazing they escaped all that

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u/Kratzschutz 3h ago

Was he really gay?

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u/oliversurpless 6h ago

And à la Mildred Montag in Fahrenheit 451, he took a lot of barbiturates during the same time.

Guy even laments occasionally how different of a person his wife once was…

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u/true_gunman 2h ago

Man, I hate when I do that.

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u/SunshineTradingPost 28m ago

Why can’t men simply oppose homosexuality, something that The Bible says very clearly,
without being accused of bing a closeted homosexual?

So bizarre….

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u/AbramsTankVeteran29 7h ago

Are there any antigay people who aren't gay themselves? I don't believe so.

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u/Fine_Explorer_9418 6h ago

This is a dangerous line of thinking that absolves straight people of homophobia

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u/Rasp_Lime_Lipbalm 6h ago edited 5h ago

Straight guy here. I'm very comfortable in my sexuality, and I don't think about gay people at all. Homophobes have an obsession with gay people. That hatred is more than likely a self-loathing, and I'd say almost all homophobes are at some level worried that they are a one time cock in the mouth away from tasting the full rainbow. Absolutely all of them? Probably not, but I bet it's around 90% of them.

Specifically in the case of Fred Phelps - Dude, when someone makes their whole personality about hating gay people, and forms a church about it, they're really wishing they could go ride a dick train at the Pink Pony Club.

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u/Orc_tids 7h ago

I always worry that people are gonna take that sort of phenomenon as "homophobia is gay peoples' own fault" as if straight people cant be homophobic

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u/Marinemanatee 3h ago

Funny how the same people don't assume every misogynistic man is secretly a trans woman in denial. Yeah, it does happen on occasion, but we all understand that the very vast majority actually are the men they say they are.

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u/AbramsTankVeteran29 6h ago

Straight people can be homophobic, I just don't know of any cases.

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u/warm_kitchenette 6h ago

I grew up in a homophobic part of the country. Numerically, it’s just not possible for them all to be secretly gay. I was mildly homophobic myself until I moved a larger city and met people who wanted to kill gays, as well as tons of gays. Easiest side pick ever. 

I do suspect it of anyone who makes it a big part of their life. They don’t even have to be fully gay. I imagine anyone with those beliefs will greatly struggle with same-sex attraction. 

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u/Rasp_Lime_Lipbalm 6h ago

I was mildly homophobic myself

Does this mean you thought about gay people a lot?

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u/warm_kitchenette 4h ago

No, it meant that I was mildly uncomfortable when I saw two men kissing. I was actually a new atheist when I saw that happen for the first time, but I did have a strong Christian background.

But at the time, I didn't do anything about it, or talk about it with anyone because I just didn't care that much. It was only when I met people who went out deliberately to beat up gays at meetup points that I started to actually think about the morality being displayed. I consciously chose a side.

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u/PsychoNerd92 5h ago

Isn't that sort of a "self fulfilling prophecy" kinda thing? Of course you're never going to find examples of straight homophobes if you assume every homophobe is secretly gay.

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u/GracelessOne 12h ago

Some people just love being controversial, doesn't matter for good or bad. Kanye West got famous for standing up to George Bush, now he's a Nazi.

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u/Wolf_Mans_Got_Nards 11h ago edited 11h ago

This is what always irks me about the whole Johnny Rotten/Jimmy Saville thing. Rotten wasn't "exposing" anything. He was a professional contrarian, he just repeated a bunch of contentious runours, and got lucky that the Saville one was true.

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u/Oilswell 7h ago

And now he’s gone right wing because that’s the opinion that makes him an outsider in the circles he’s in. He doesn’t believe anything.

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u/oh_what_a_surprise 8h ago

I mean, there's an argument that professional contrarians are and always have been an important part of society. The tenth man and all that.

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u/Unleashtheducks 6h ago

There is a difference between presenting a coherent argument exposing the flaws in what everyone takes for granted and just trying to be as big of an asshole as possible for attention.

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u/unassumingdink 7h ago

When you legitimately oppose something that 90% of the people support (Afghanistan War in 2001 America, for instance), a contrarian feels like a breath of fresh air.

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u/wex52 11h ago

A radical in search of a cause.

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u/GracelessOne 10h ago

Sincere radicals rarely flip sides. I think this is more like being an adrenaline junkie, only instead of getting their fix skydiving, they get it through everybody being mad at them.

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u/pyr666 9h ago

kanye west has some sort of mental illness. maybe bipolar? I'm not sure, but I see a lot in him that I recognize from when I volunteered with the homeless.

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u/Paratwa 5h ago

Kanye didn’t get famous for that and everyone at the time thought he was a giant idiot for that.

Maybe infamous.

He was famous well before that, thus him being on that Katrina show to begin with.

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u/SewerRanger 9h ago

Kanye West is an unmedicated bipolar patient. I think he's more tragic than "hero becoming a villain".

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u/GracelessOne 8h ago

I mean, I get you and I mostly agree, but I don't think bipolar disorder makes you more likely to become a Nazi. That's just Kanye.

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u/SewerRanger 4h ago

While unmedicated in a manic state, you can do all kinds of crazy things. My grandmother called child services on her own son. She would buy entire racks of clothing. She would curse and cuss us all out for being demons. I can see someone who already has some self loathing along with a brain injury (which can further incite wildly inappropriate behavior), who is looking for attention, doing something that gives them negative attention and not realizing/caring that what they're doing is batshit insane. I'm not saying it's an excuse or a pass to do that, but I find it sad more than damning.

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u/AHailofDrams 12h ago

Traumatic brain injury

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u/mmmmm_pancakes 11h ago

This would be a good story but I can’t find a source backing you up.

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u/AHailofDrams 10h ago

I'm not saying it like it's fact, it's just what I suspect the reason to be

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u/Helpful_Advance624 8h ago

I think as a lawyer, he was doing it for the money. He studied Law while his wife and children worked as minors and was tremendously abusive to them during this period of his life.

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u/-3udaimonia- 6h ago

This is the correct answer.

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u/kittymoo67 8h ago

you can be ok with ethnic minorities and hate gay people, look at how many bigoted minorities there are

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u/-3udaimonia- 6h ago

You can, but he wasn't. Fred Phelps hated both ethnic minorities and gay people.

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u/Leather-Run-6533 8h ago

The story I heard is he realised that a consequence of one of the anti-SLAPP amendments he helped pass is that you could make a lot of money out of having people try to limit your speech and once he realised that he decided to try and speak as offensively as possible to get a payday out of people trying to stop him using the laws he set up.

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u/daninlionzden 9h ago

Religion

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u/eyepocalypse 46m ago

I’ve listened to a few very interesting podcasts about him. My takeaway is that some of his family who he hated were staunch bigots so he picked the opposing viewpoint to be more right than them. He also had a huge persecution complex so he tied his own feelings about rejection and unfair treatment onto systemic racism. More than anything he wanted to be worshipped and adored and never abandoned. He got early feedback that those were the right words to say to get people to listen to him and view him as a wise man.

He was also a liar who sidelined black people in his church and kicked them out if they called him on it. Wealthy white people who joined got preferential treatment. I don’t think he had a real belief system apart from his own wants and a selfish unending hunger to fill them.

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u/redditor0431 42m ago

I know he's probably just a homophobe, but my head canon is that he was pulling an undercover operation to expand civil rights by pushing the limits on free speech.  I know this is bullshit, it's just what I wish it had been.

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u/SYLOH 7h ago

Pure conspiracy theory here.
But I would like to don my tin foil hat and say he was a false flag.
The Westboro Baptist Church is so comically distasteful he might have started it to permanently associate their ideology with despicable behavior.
Members of the church finally figuring it out might have been what ultimately led to his expulsion and excommunication from the church he founded.
Both sides would remain silent after, Fred because going public would ruin his effect, and the church because they were actual true believers and didn't want people to think they'd been had.

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u/IrrelevantPuppy 7h ago

Just goes to show how inherently dangerous religion is. They can do great things and they do, but religion will always be a weapon of control and manipulation. It’s a cheat code for making humans do things that are against their best interests. Idk how we should be keeping checks and balances on it, but we need to. Nearly every fucking time people do evil, they use religion as one of their tools. 

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u/-3udaimonia- 6h ago

It wasn't a principled stance. According to Phelps' estranged son Nate, Phelps was a racist who hated black people his whole life. He only took on the civil rights cases for money and career advancement.

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u/AgentCirceLuna 5h ago

RFK Jr was the same with environmental activism, but not many people know about it.

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u/Flat-Fun-7298 5h ago

Easy money

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u/joelluber 5h ago

His first protests were against the cruising scene at the big city park on the edge of his neighborhood. The rumor that I think is unsubstantiated is that there was some sort of run in between his family or his kids and some guys who were cruising. I'm not sure if one of the apostate grandkids has confirmed it in the 25 years since I knew them, though.

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u/TheLunaLovelace 4h ago

Well if you read the article you would see that his son claims that he only took the civil rights cases for money and his personal views were very racist, so it really doesn’t seem like much of a mystery to me.

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u/Kalium 4h ago

At the time, being loudly Progressive was a good way to attract the attention of a lot of very open-minded - and often impressionable - people. Exactly the sort of thing an aspiring cult leader wants.

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u/reality72 4h ago edited 4h ago

I guess he thinks god loves straight people of every race. But gay people? Absolutely not!

The thing about religious fanatics is that they can occasionally be a force for good when social progress happens to align with their strict interpretation of what god wants.

John Brown being another famous example. Dude thought that god had personally ordered him to end slavery by any means necessary.

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u/RainSurname 3h ago

Clarence Thomas headed the civil rights division of the Department of Education, then chaired the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, and opposed Ronald Reagan’s attempt to end affirmative action. When he became a judge on the DC circuit, he was an enthusiastic and gregarious participant.

But once the Republicans gave him a cushy lifetime job from which he could not be removed, he set aside the man who was born in a shack, whose first language was Gullah, who wore out his copy of Malcolm X’s autobiography, and fought against racism in the Catholic schools he attended, and became Uncle Thomas.

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u/Cummyshitballs 11h ago edited 7h ago

He also supposedly renounced his views a year or so prior to his death.

Edited to add, after doing some more research, family members have stated he was a civil rights lawyer solely for monetary gain, and he’d regularly use hate speech when discussing the clients he worked with once he was no longer in their vicinity.

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u/Evolations 11h ago

By the time of his death he'd been completely cut off by the family apparently. A sad end, really.

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u/DTPVH 11h ago

They didn’t even give him a funeral, all because he stopped hating

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u/BongoProdigy 10h ago

Did they at least protest at his funeral?

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u/DTPVH 9h ago

They didn’t have a funeral to protest. His daughter excommunicated him and buried him in an unmarked grave.

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u/BongoProdigy 9h ago

That is some next level commitment to hate.

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u/DTPVH 9h ago

But it’s at least consistent

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u/BongoProdigy 8h ago

Yeah, at least she's not a hypocrite.

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u/Bitter-Marsupial 7h ago

The hypocrisy would absolutely be the worst part about it

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u/Ok_Birthday_489 6h ago

Shirley Phelps Roper? She's just as bad as he was.

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u/DTPVH 6h ago

I’d argue she’s significantly worse.

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u/Ok_Birthday_489 4h ago

Vile woman. No one would counter-argue.

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u/Murky_Translator2295 4h ago

She's getting hers now. The children she liked have all turned their backs on her, leaving her with the children she was ambivalent towards (they're still desperate for mommy to love them), and although she was supposed to take over the church she can't: her father was excommunicated before he could do it and she has been replaced with men who aren't even Phelps's by blood.

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u/DTPVH 3h ago

No church that conservative was ever going to let a woman be in charge

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u/Ok_Birthday_489 2h ago

Are they still going out and protesting? I feel like I haven't seen them as much as I used to.

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u/magicmom17 8h ago

TBH- with all of the military funerals they protested at saying it was good the soldier was dead, him not getting his own funeral seems fitting, change of heart or not. https://baptistnews.com/article/grandson-says-fred-phelps-changed-mind-about-gays/

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u/DTPVH 8h ago

Fred Phelps is a good example to use when discuss a person is judged. Should you look at the sum of a persons life, or is it more important who they were at the end? It says a lot about a person by whether or not they can accept another as having changed.

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u/PineappleShades 7h ago

Ironically, excommunication by the hate group he founded is just about the best gift they could give him, at least in terms of public perception.

I wonder how many of his family inside the church had this thought.

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u/FlashyChemical2231 7h ago

a civil rights lawyer solely for monetary gain

Yeah, if there's one group of people that you can steal a lot of money from, it's poor black people.

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u/Cummyshitballs 5h ago

The money wouldn’t necessarily come from the clients hiring him for their services but more so from the giant lawsuits for breaking civil rights laws.

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u/Thanos_Stomps 10h ago

Fred Phelps shifted the culture that led to same sex marriage being upheld and legalized.

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u/northrupthebandgeek 8h ago

Makes me wonder if that was intentional: to make homophobia look as bad as possible so that people would reject it.

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u/Thanos_Stomps 8h ago

It’s my favorite conspiracy theory. It made conservatives not want to align with the people picketing soldiers’ funerals.

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u/AcrolloPeed 7h ago

I remember back in 2004 or 2005 they had his oldest daughter on Fox News and Sean Hannity was like “do you think it’s okay to protest soldier’s funerals?” and her response was “these soldiers are the pawns of an evil satanic pro-homo f*g-loving empire and they will burn in hell forever and we are here to proclaim God’s truth to American infidels and sodomite supporters” and I stg Sean had a BSOD moment.

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u/DogLogForPresident 10h ago

I find this one especially funny, because at the end of his life he recanted his hate, and was excommunicated from his own cult of hate.

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u/ricree 7h ago

Though if you read about his disbarment in the 70s, he wasn't exactly "heroic" then either:

The case appeared to be Phelps' personal case. He called the defendant, Carolene Brady, as his witness, had her declared hostile, then proceeded to cross-examine her for 3 or 4 full days. The record discloses that his cross-examination was abusive, repetitive, irrelevant, and represented a classic case of "badgering" a witness. Then he had the temerity to complain that Brady cried in the presence of the jury. Throughout the trial, Phelps made attempt after attempt to adduce testimony concerning Carolene Brady's reputation for truth and veracity, her reputation for competency, the falsification of her income tax return and her morality, or lack thereof.

It is clear from our examination of the record and transcripts in that case that the trial was a personal vendetta by Fred Phelps, Sr. against Carolene Brady. The jury verdict didn't stop the onslaught of Phelps. He was not satisfied with the hurt, pain and damage he had visited on Carolene Brady.

That is from the Kansas Supreme court when he tried to challenge his disbarment.

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u/Am_Deer 6h ago

He’s unique that he became the villain to both. Near the end he turned away from the hate and was kicked out of his own church.

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u/makemeking706 11h ago

Wasn't Mitch McConnell a civil rights activist previously, or am I misremembering?

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u/showyerbewbs 9h ago

Wasn't Mitch McConnell a civil rights activist previously, or am I misremembering?

No, he's always been a turtle

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u/WakeIslandTango 7h ago

Bernie bros voting for Trump.

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u/MontuckyMoose 5h ago

Growing up with this guy and his crazies protesting your high-school plays for the views was insane times. Got some cool stories out of it though. My gym teacher let us outside to counter protest the haters.

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u/murderedbyvirgo 3h ago

According to some family members Fred denounced all of the terrible shit he did with Westboro in his final days. His daughter was enraged and locked him in a room for days to die alone. I'm not saying he deserved that because we all have a right to ask for forgiveness but ...

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u/NoSabbathForNomads 2h ago

My grandma actually knew Phelps in that era, they both lived in the same town in Kansas. She said the civil rights thing was always just a way to make money for the church. No one else would take those cases, so it was a good way for him to make money with no competition.

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u/Cyberbug7 8h ago

It always funny to me when people aren’t like across the board bigots. Like he just really hated gay people and was fine with everyone else. It’s so odd

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u/OozeNAahz 6h ago

If you haven’t heard some of Kevin Smith’s (Director of Clerks, Dogma, etc…) interactions with this church you should seek them out. Damn funny.

They were protesting one of his movies in Kansas City and he joined the protest complete with signs about how he was evil and the movie sucked. Talked to some of the family that were protesting alongside him. Ended up making the acquaintance of one (want to say her name was Meghan but could be totally dreaming that bit up).

He ended up having her on his podcast a few times iirc.

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u/Certain-Surround-104 5h ago

Walter White, easily. He started with “I’m doing this for my family” and somehow ended up becoming the exact person his family needed protection from.

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u/Pheehelm 5h ago

I think you missed both the correct comment box and the part of the title that says "real-life example."

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u/SAINTnumberFIVE 4h ago

There was a prominent peace activist I think in the 1970s who killed his girlfriend in stashed her body in the closet. These are just cases of wolves and sheep‘s clothing.

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u/manof_v 4h ago

Fred Phelps really speedran the “hero → villain” character arc. Dude went from civil rights lawyer to being synonymous with hate.

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u/pwolf1771 4h ago

Seeing how Jim Jones and his crew started and how it eventually ended is absolutely insane to think about

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u/Aggressive_Stick4107 1h ago

I recall also that a couple of prominent civil rights activists actively pushed people to kill Jews in the wake of that sad accident where a rabbi’s entourage ran over two Ghanaian kids in the early 90s. I was so surprised because I was in school at the time and had just learned about civil rights fight in the US. 

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u/TheRogueTemplar 57m ago

He sued Reagan on the basis of separation of Church and State.

WHAT??

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u/Swimming-Law-104 1h ago

I think so too

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u/Ok-Pack-4390 1h ago

It really isn't me. Let someone come forward.