By Ben Ducoff and Jared Skoff
Beachwood, Ohio- Anybody who passed the JCC, The Jewish News, the Maltz Museum or Park Synagogue East on August 31st would have seen a group of about ten people, ages six to sixty, holding up signs that read “God Hates Jews,” “Jews Will Eat their Babies,” “God Hates Fags,” and “Thank God for 9/11.” The next morning, the same group was seen in the Taylor Road neighborhood of Cleveland Heights, holding the same signs.
The people who protested at these local Jewish institutions were from an extremist Christian organization called the Westboro Baptist Church, which is based in Topeka, Kansas. Believing in the literal interpretation of the Christian Bible, they consider homosexuality to be a grave sin. They are also extremely critical of the Catholic Church. The Jews, according to the organization, need to “repent” for killing Jesus, their messiah, and for “breaking their covenant” with God.
The Beachcomber contacted Shirley Phelps, the organization’s leader, in an effort to understand the group’s thinking and motivation. In a wide-ranging interview, Phelps stated that Jews “stole” the land of Israel, and that the “beast, Anti-Christ Barack Obama” is currently planning an “infiltration of the Holy Land,” with the help of the rest of the world in order to bring about “eternal damnation” to them all. “The [Jews] are filthy people, I mean filthy; Tel Aviv is the Middle Eastern Mecca for fags,” Phelps said.
The Westboro Baptist Church makes it their job to spread their world view as loudly and widely as possible. “We are spreading a message of love,” said Phelps, “Heaven is reserved only for those who completely obey the words of God.”
Shirley Phelps explained that the Westboro Baptist Church is a group of 70 people living in Topeka, Kansas, 80% of whom are related to her by blood or by marriage. This group travels around the country in order to picket certain groups that support Jews, homosexuals, abortion, or the “Catholic pedophile machine,” in the words of Phelps.
The Westboro Baptist Church, which the Southern Poverty Law Center and the Anti-Defamation League has deemed a hate group, operates over a dozen websites preaching their various warnings.
According to the church, America is a doomed, “fag-enabler” country in which nearly all of its occupants will “burn in hell.”
They justify their use of the word fag by calling it an “elegant, perfect metaphor.” “Fags literally mean ‘bundles of sticks,” Phelps said. Invoking her belief in hell she said, “Fags burn fast, and they burn hot.” She continued, “We don’t find ‘gay’ to be a good word at all.”
While the organization protested in the heavily Jewish Taylor Road neighborhood of Cleveland Heights on a Saturday morning, local community member, Custodian of Park Synagogue Main, and neighborhood “gate keeper” Bill Richardson witnessed the picketing outside of his house. When he went to confront the group, a local police officer stopped him. “Cleveland Heights is a very peaceful community, where Jews and Christians have been getting along for a long time,” Richardson said, “They were trying to bring their hate into my neighbor-hood, and it was my job, a gentile, to give them a piece of my mind.” “They don’t even know their own religion,” Richardson said, “Jesus was a Jew, how could they pray to someone they hate?”
Betty Sue Foyer, director of the Cleveland chapter of the Anti-Defamation League, described the Westboro Baptist Church as a hateful organization that “just wants publicity.” She advised the Beachcomber not to talk to them. “They haven’t been to Cleveland in the past nine or ten years, but when they come, they love to flood our fax machines with hateful messages,” Foyer said.
The Beachcomber interviewed a secretary at Temple Beth Shalom, a synagogue in Topeka, Kansas, located three blocks from the Westboro Baptist Church building. “People around here mostly try to stay away from them,” the secretary said. “Our synagogue is located outside the main thoroughfare, so they tend to picket where there is more traffic,” she continued.
In our interview with her, Shirley Phelps continued to say that “We are hastening on to the coming of the Lord,” and that “All the Jews need to gather in the house of Israel” so that they can “be de-stroyed.”
When asked about her picketing signs that read “Thank God For 9/11,” Shirley Phelps explained, “I don’t praise the terrorists, I praise God.” “There is not one thing happening on this earth that doesn’t flow directly from the hands of the Lord your God,” she continued.
When asked what she knew about Beachwood, and why she decided to protest here, she explained that she had done research about the community, saying, “The Lord gave us that internet so that we can get where we need to be…and get the word in front of these Jews.”
