Fred Waldron Phelps Sr., who founded
the anti-gay Westboro Baptist Church in the 1950s, has died. He was
84.
Margie Phelps said her father died on
Thursday but did not disclose the cause of death.
On Sunday, Phelps' estranged son Nate
Phelps said in a Facebook post that his controversial father was
excommunicated from the church last August and was living in a
hospice house in Topeka.
Church spokesman Steve Drain, who
decided to join the church through the course of filming a
documentary, declined to say whether the church had excommunicated
its founder. Over the weekend he confirmed that Fred Phelps Sr. was
living in the hospice house named by his son but added: “The source
that says he's near death is not well informed.”
Westboro Baptist Church is best known
for coining the phrase “God hates fags” and picketing
at the funerals of fallen soldiers, because their deaths are the
price America pays for its acceptance of “the sin of
homosexuality.”
In the late 70s, Phelps, a Washburn
University law school graduate, was disbarred from Kansas state
courts.