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UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Wednesday, February 17, 1993
5
Gage Park.
CHILDREN ON THE LINE FOR GOD
The Rev. Fred
Phelps preaches about recent news concerning homosexuals during a service at Westboro Baptist Church, 3701 SW 12th St. in Topeka.
Continued from Page 1.
am was born on a Tuesday in February 1979 The next Sunday he was in his mother's arms a church He has not missed a day of church at Westboro Baptist since.
He looked up at his grandfather, who stood at the pulpit,
"It's a little bit too cold in here," the Rev. Phelsid. said. Sam
looked up as his mother automatically rose, his baby sister
in her arms, and adjusted the thermostat.
The Rev. Phelps was recalling a conversation with the hosts of a talk show in Lauderdale, Fla., "kind of a Larry King-type thing, fag-style," he called it.
"There is only one kind of sex among human beings that is acceptable with God Almighty," he yelled to the 50 people sitting in the pews.
"You can ask me 150,000 questions," he said, "but it's all coming back to that."
"You two guys romping around with each other on rubber sheets with Vaseline and Preparation H are defied."
Several small children sucking on their fingers opened their eyes as the Rev. Phylls' voice reached a croissant.
their eyes as the Rev. Phelps 'voice reached a crescendo. Sam nodded his head, perhaps thinking about the picketing that cold morning before the 11:30 a.m. service or about the signs he and other church members had held: "Gays Hate Family" and "Gays are worthy of death."
Or maybe he was thinking about what the kids at Landon Middle School had in store for him in the coming week.
"Don't be worried about mental and emotional stress. It's good for you," the Reh Phelps said as the women, all wearing black, stared at her.
S am says he knows how to handle stress. After 88 consecutive weeks of being under attack on the picket line, anyone would. He says he does not wish to be a victim. So he believes his conventions are far more important than usual.
believes his convictions are far more important than winning friends.
"The short time that we are on this earth, any amount of anything that we have to deal with here is nothing com-
"His mother, Shirley, who never let Sam out of her sight during the interview, interrupted. "Sam knows exactly what he is involved in," she said. "He goes out on the picket line; he understands his convictions."
Although some schoolmates at Landon accept the straight-A student's convictions, there are the others.
"People will pass by me in the hallway and say, Your grandpa's sav," Sam said.
About five children at his school wear shirts that say "Drop Dead Fred" and display a lightning bolt striking a picketer holding a "God Hates Fags" sign, Sam said.
In response he points calmly to the sign on the shirt and tells them, "I like that part right there."
Once students in his art class told him that they were going to burn his house down. After football practice one day, a teammate slammed him into a locker. On the picket line, he once had to use his sign to fend off a male attacker who punched Sam in the arm.
*Despite the attacks, Sam remains firm in his convictions.
*"I'll take what comes my way," he said.
14 Sam's mother said none of her seven children had thought about missing a Sunday service.
"First of all, these children, they don't have an option. And it has not even ever been discussed," she said. "You train up a child in the way he should go, and when he's old he'll not depart from it."
"I don't want the choice," he said. "it's never crossed my mind. It's not something that would cross your mind."
Sam's father, Brent, said he would not have anything to do with one of his children if he found out he or she were
; "I would hope that I'd done a better job of raising them," he said. "I'd hope I'd have more influence."
hortly after the service, members of the congregation recess to Gage Park to picket for the second time that day. A car passes; the driver honks and flips his middle finger at the nicketers.
Children of all ages stand next to their parents.
James Hockenbarger, 15, holds up an anti-homosexual
sign. The freshman does not have many friends in high school. Students in his gym class call him "Freddy."
"Most people won't talk to me just because they don't like what I do," he said.
James said that students came up to him at school and said things such as, "Did you hear Fred Phelps is a fag?"
A boy in his gym class constantly threatens to beat him up, James said.
"I tell him that it would be a mistake," he said. But the phrase does not force him.
"It doesn't bother me," James said. "It's all to my glory in heaven that these people treat me like that."
James has younger brothers and sisters who are picked on at their schools, too.
"It makes me mad to know that I can't stop these people from picking on them," he said.
he abuse does not seem to bother the children. They say they would never leave the church because of it.
Nate Phelps, the Rev. Phelps' 34-year-old son, is one of them.
Nate, one of the Rev. Phelps' 13 children, left home at 18 and was excommunicated from the church.
He does not go into much detail about his departure, but it is clear that he had been having problems with his father. "It had to do with the kind of person he was and the way he treated his wife and kids," he said.
In the last 16 years, Nate has had almost no contact with his family. He now lives with his wife and four children in Rancho Santa Margarita, Calif., where he is a co-owner of six sixing companies.
Nate compared his father to Jim Jones, a cult leader who convinced about 900 of his followers to drink cyanide-laced Kool Aid in November 1978 in Gowanu.
He said that all it would take was for his father to make a decision and his congregation would follow him.
"It's a classic profile of a cult," he said.
Nate said his father's message had brainwashed the children who attend the church.
"It's been hammered into them," he said. "They haven't been able to see and look at any other options critically."
Dennis Dalley, a KU professor of social welfare, said that the minds and souls of the children could be poisoned and that they might grow up afraid.
Every major decision has to be approved by him. Others who have not been involved in the church also have some concerns about the way these parents are rearing their children.
But they probably are not a whole lot different than other children. Dailey said.
The Rev. Ken Liles of South Knollwood Baptist Church ... Topeka said that the children would be affected by the activities in which their parents involved them.
"The only difference will be in the degree of their homophobia," he said.
"Sometimes parents may not fully understand what they are doing." Liles said. "There should always be an open door for the child, even if the child rejects what they believe."
The Rev. Paul Calmese of the Covenant Baptist Church in Topeka said, "Anyone who would be willing to let little children be persecuted for their cause has given more allegiance to that cause than to their own children."
He says he does know, however, that he wants to always be close to his home.
He says he is thinking about becoming a doctor.
am doesn't have any definite plans for the future.
For now, Sam says he knows what he has to do. And he will continue to picket in Gage Park, he says, for humani-
The Rev. Phelps and his family will always be there to encourage him.
"We'll be there where that big, electric sign for the park shines its fulgent blue light out on our signs," the Rev. Phelps said. "When it gets dark, man, it makes it look like we're putting on a Broadway play or something."
Editor's note: Kansas staff writer Will Lewis attended a service at Westboro Baptist Church on Jan. 24.
During an early
migrant picket
in Gage Park,
Deborah
Hockenbarger
waves to a
passerby
honking in
protest.
Keeping his sign upright, Joshua Phelps Roper, 8, bows down to tie his shoe during a morning picket in Gage Park.
Phelps facts
Born: Nov. 13, 1929, in Meridian, Miss.
First sermon: May 24, 1946, at Porterville Methodist Church,
Porterville, Miss.
Ordained: Sept. 8, 1947, at First Baptist Church in Vernal, Utah
Married: May 15, 1952, to Margie Sims
Came to Topeka: May 4, 1954
First service in Topeka: Nov. 17, 1955
Church Organized: May 20, 1956
Degrees: Bachelor's in history, 1962,
doctorate in law in 1964, both from
Washburn University
Disbarred by the state court: July 1979
First started pickinget: June 30, 1991,
in Gage Park, Topeka
First nurselick of a man who died
from AIDS complications: Dec. 23,
1991
Shirley Phipps, Roger shoulders her two year-old son, Zacharias, during a Sunday morning protest in Gage Park.
Derek Noien/KANSAN