Phelps Clan Goes After Jews in NYC

The Topeka, Kansas-based Westboro Baptist Church, which is principally made up of Rev. Fred Phelps and his extended family, is mostly known for its anti-gay rhetoric and its picketing actions, which take place across the country and target everything from high school productions of "The Laramie Project" to the funerals of U.S. servicemembers killed in Iraq and Afghanistan. (The Phelps crew say God is punishing America for not persecuting gays stringently enough, with the deaths of our troops the proof of the Almighty's displeasure.)

But the Westboro congregation have other targets as well. The group's picketing of Jewish institutions in New York City on Aug. 11 served as a reminder of that fact.

An Aug. 12 article at The Jerusalem Post recounted that the Phelps congregation showed up, famously offensive placards in hand, to picket Temple Shearith Israel, the Jewsih Community Center, and other places that serve Jewish New Yorkers.

When the clan picket, they are often met with counter-demonstrations, sometimes in the form of jubilant parties that celebrate gay culture. Other times, however, the local community do their best to avoid or ignore the congregation.

The Jerusalem Post article noted that Rabbi Joy Levitt, the JCC's executive director, encouraged the latter approach.

However, Levitt was clear that silence did not, in this case, amount to consent.

"Our communication remains the same," Levitt stated in an email.

"The JCC in Manhattan does not welcome this group's message or actions in any way."

That said, "Our best and only response is to conduct business as usual."

Though the Phelps crew usually make headlines for their anti-gay street preaching, "They have ramped up their protest in front of Jewish institutions," the article quoted Deborah Lauter, who serves the Anti-Defamation League's as director of civil rights, as saying.

Noted Lauter of the Westboro congregation, "They're definitely, unequivocally anti-Semitic and they always have been."

That doesn't mean that the Phelpses have abandoned their anti-gay preaching: indeed, on Aug. 7 the congregation picketed a Texas jail, claiming that a mother who allegedly murdered her newborn did so as the result of gays not being persecuted in America.

News station Q101.9 at its Web site, Q News reported that the group claimed the mother, Otty Sanchez, who is accused of beheading her three-week-old infant, was "the daughter of your doings."

Even though the Jewish community had been encouraged to ignore the Phelps clan, some individuals saw it as necessary to demonstrate in turn, the Jerusalem Post reported.

The article quoted counter-demonstrator Ina Gail Goldberg as saying, "As a Jew, as a community member, as someone who highly values diversity and as a human, I felt it was important to come to show support" even as the Phelpses were picketing the JCC.

Bob Lamm, another counter-demonstrator, declared, "I'm here to stand up against bigotry, anti-Semitism, homophobia, against any other form of bigotry."

Added Lamm, "I think it's essential that Jews stand up against them."

Indeed, as reported by The Deseret News in a July 28 article, the group's actions at a previous demonstration at the JCC, two weeks earlier, went beyond waving palcards bearing slogans like, "God Hates Jews."

Members of the Phelps clan dragged an American flag on the ground and stepped on an Israeli flag, going so far as to use the Israeli flag as Kleenex.

Those provocations resulted in a loud volley of obscenities, reported The Deseret News, but that did not, in itself, model tolerance, or even reasoned disagreement.

Reported The Deseret News item, "Since being obnoxious does not violate the Constitution, and since these people were clearly beyond reasoned argument, and since there were only three of them, you might have thought that a wise response would be to ignore them.

"That's what officials at the community center had sensibly urged," the article added.

"But a cluster of New Yorkers, 20 people or so with nothing better to do, gathered to taunt the Topekans" during their July demonstration, which the article reported was carried out by an adult female and two juveniles, also females.

"They did so in a manner that makes New York an inspiration to the world," the article went on. "They shouted sexually charged vulgarities.

"A teachable moment it was not," the article lamented. "Free expression had been reduced to distasteful simultaneous monologues between the bigoted and the crude."

The article went on to note that the Phelps clan is far from alone in its faith-based hatred of homosexuals.

Indeed, a publisher called Choice Books published Christian books such as "Emergency Prayers" and "500 Questions & Answers from the Bible," which, the article noted, denounced gay intimacy, likening it to "cancer" and calling it "detestable."

A local newspaper responded to complaints from two women about the books, which were stocked at CVS drug store, by calling them examples of "hate speech," The Deseret News reported.

CVS took the books off the racks, with spokesperson Michael DeAngelis telling The Deseret News, "We are committed to building an environment of inclusion and acceptance that values diversity across all areas of our business."

But even that action had repercussions from the political left: a local activist, Michael Meyers, who heads the New York Civil Rights Coalition, spoke against the removal o the books from CVS stores, saying that what was needed was to "oppose inane attempts to silence people and to suppress ideas or to ban books that disagree with us."

Added Meyers, who wrote his comments in a letter to the same local paper that had decried the hate books, Chesea Now, "The tired canard of 'protecting' our children from 'hate speech' is exactly the cry of those who have long opposed positive social and cultural change."

The Phelps congregation has often been challenged for its hate speech-filled street preaching, but has usually prevailed by citing its Constitutionally protected right to freedom of expression.

Meantime, the local communities the Phelps crew impacts continue to wrestle with appropriate responses: to ignore them, to counter-protest them, or to throw a big, gay party and make a day of it.