kendall -

It might be worth noting that of Fred's 13 children, a couple have disassociated from his "congregation." The remaining, 11 so far as has been reported, and all but one(?) of their spouses, are or have been licensed attorneys, and Fred and his "church" have made a living, according to all reports, from lawsuits against virtually anyone for whom they can think of, or invent, a reason to sue.

From the biography released as a court record:

"On December 16, 1985, a complaint signed by every federal judge in Kansas was lodged against the Phelps lawyers. It called for the disbarment of the seven family attorneys-Fred, Fred, Jr., Jonathon, Margie, Shirley, Elizabeth, and Fred's daughter-in-law, Betty, and the revocation of their corporate charter. The 9 angry judges accused the Phelpses of asserting "claims and positions lacking any grounding in fact", making "false and intemperate accusations" against the judges, and undertaking a "vicious pattern of intimidation" against the court."

An example given in the same biography reports that his "law firm" at one point claimed to be a great defender of civil rights in filing a suit agains a law college claiming discrimination against a black student, and while that same case was still in litigation filed a claim that Fred's own children had been the victims of "reverse discrimination" and were denied admission to the same school "because they were white."

On his "civil rights" philosophy, from the same bio:

[quote]

Mark definitely recalls that his father taught the Ham story and took it to its Calvinist conclusions: the black race was cursed and meant to be the "servants of servants" - i.e., subservient to whites. Nate agrees. "He taught that in Sunday sermon many times while we were growing up." Both boys recall their father used to tell black jokes.
"And he'd imitate them after they'd left our office," remembers Mark. However, the piece-de-resistance in the ongoing saga of Phelps hypocrisy is the pastor's relationship with the Reverend Pete Peters of La Porte, Colorado.

Peters is the guru-philosopher of the Christian Identity Movement. Known simply as "Identity", the movement believes the white race is God's true Chosen People. They assert the Jews are animal souls that rewrote the Old Testament to give themselves the Chosen's birthright. Blacks are "mud people" who also possess animal souls-meaning they are not immortal and cannot go to heaven. According to Identity, blacks and Jews want to eliminate the white race and rule the earth.

[end quote]

The bio contains additional information intended to show that the Peters philosophy was accepted and taught by Fred. It also seems amply to demonstrate that it was force fed to his family and his "congregation" (largely, but not exclusively, the same group).

One of many postings of the bio Addicted to Hate.

Phelps and his gang are more vocal than most others, but from my observation his preaching is not substantially different from that of a number of pastors of large congregations in my area and elsewhere. His professed belief that "the rapture is near" and therefore that "civil law doesn't matter and should be overturned" is apparently shared by far more people than most of us would like to accept, and it appears that quite a few of them are in both state and federal legislatures and in the "cults" (some are called PACs, and some are disguised as "prayer circles" but they're all political) who comprise the closest advisors to a number of very influential people.

John