i've just spent the past hour on google looking for an investigative piece that was done by a topeka journalist on fred phelps going all the way back to his origins in mississippi, i believe, through his beginnings and raising his family etc. it was seriously one of the most horrific and sickening things i have ever read. this journalist, whoever he was, pulled no punches and really did his work. so much so that the newspaper was afraid to run it, iirc, and for some reason that i can't remember now, the whole thing ended up in court. the copy i read was presented as a brief in the court proceedings. and right now i can't find the damn thing. there was always a whole ot of secrecy about this piece - which was quite long, more than 100 pages - and it was considered a kind of underground document. i'm going to keep looking for it, and will post a new post to you if i find it. but there has been so much publicity around the wbc that it's hard to dig for this piece.

anyway, a short synopisis: fred phelps was always violent even in high school where he went in for wrestling. he was really good at it, and looked to be up for the state championship. but he would wrestle these guys and then it would turn violent. there was something about the way this journalist described it, that made me think 'aha, phelps himself is gay, or has felt those feelings'. i honestly believe phelps' closeted homosexuality is the source of all the craziness: he takes the position of god's mouthpiece, saying 'god hates fags' and then he's standing on god's side, so to speak, and it defelcts from the real state of affairs, that fred phelps hates himself for these feelings, etc.

he never worked a day in his life at a real job, horrifically abused his wife, horrifically abused his children, but the state was so afraid of his abiity to sue them, that they dropped pursuing child abuse investigations against him. a few of his sons he beat so badly they couldn't move their joints, they were so swollen. shirley phelps, their sister, who is now the head of the church, would go into a kind of catatonia when her brothers were being beaten and hide under the dining room table. she must have the strongest case of stockholm syndrome on the planet. fred phelps was a pill popper - uppers, downers. he'd send his kids around the neighborhood to operate these vitamin sales/pyramid schemes. that's what the family lived off of. phelps tried to break apart any relationship his children had with outsiders, including love interests, and almost always succeeded. he drove one daughter to suicide. a few escaped, including one who lives on welfare in topeka, she's so damaged.

fred phelps is truly pure evil made manifest imo. i think he's an extreme case of something i've found to be almost axiomatic: the more stringently, strongly someone identifies with religiousity, of being holy, the more that is exactly where to look for your pedophile, your incest perpetrator, ... just about every possible sordid thing.