It's not impossible to agree with Fred Phelps...once in awhile

I'm shocked. I agree with something Fred Phelps said.

Rev. Fred Phelps is the guy from Topeka, Kansas who travels around the country in a bus, preaching and protesting and doing anything else that might effectively spread the message that God hates America, namely homosexuals.

365gay.com ran an article by Jeff Golimowski last week, who accompanied Phelps for a brief time as he and his flock protested in front of a Catholic church, and some of the quotes that Golimowski was able to extract from that experience are unbelievable, yet typical Fred Phelps.

Phelps offered up the usual, "God hates America", and "This country is hellbound," in an attempt to get all of us to repent for things that he happens to consider sin, but when he was asked whether or not the death penalty--his solution for nearly everything--should be attached to homosexuals, he stopped short. Sort of. Phelps thinks we gay folks are sodomites and he believes sodomy should be criminalized, which caused Golimowski to wonder aloud to Phelps, "So then kill all homosexuals?" Phelps replied, "You can't make that leap. When you pass a law that doesn't mean that everybody is going to break it, but those that do break it ought to be executed."

Of course, this isn't the Phelps statement I agree with. It's inflamatory, highly judgmental, and it doesn't even remotely hit the true nature of homosexuality. He wants a law to be passed that would classify us as something we're not, and then he wants us to be punished for something that is not a crime. We've been over the ways to reconcile homosexuality and Christianity a million times in this blog, at 20Something, in our prayers, etc. and it can be done. The most important thing to note is that homosexuality is one avenue by which love enters the world, and that is evidence enough not only of God's involvement, but also God's endorsement. This concept is foreign to Phelps and others like him, who tend to see the world in black and white and who seem to enjoy the idea of executing those who are in the gray. Or should I say in the Grace.

When Phelps was asked why he is so hateful not only to homosexuals but to just about anyone who doesn't believe as he does, he responded by saying, "Those old Baptist preachers delivered me a charge from Isaiah 58:1. Cry aloud, spare not, lift up thy voice like a trumpet and show thy people their transgressions." He considers it his duty to spread hate and judgment.

The call to "show thy people their transgressions" sometimes even extends to those whom you would assume might be in Phelps' corner, like anti-gay marriage activist Terry Fox. This is the one Phelps statement that isn't too difficult to agree with. Regarding Fox, Phelps says, "That jackass down there, Fox in Wichita, his church is just chock full of divorced and remarried people. He has no moral authority to preach about homosexuals." Finally, a thread of truth rises up out of the Fred Phelps muck and mire. Phelps is right that Fox doesn't have the moral authority to preach about homosexuality. But then, neither does Phelps.