Q Toon: Putting On The Fritts

On Sunday June 2, Grayson Fritts, founding pastor of All Scripture Baptist Church in Knoxville, Tennessee, celebrated LGBTQ Pride Month with a sermon calling upon police to enforce biblical law that "If a man also lie with mankind, as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination: they shall surely be put to death; their blood shall be upon them" (Leviticus 20:13, KJV).

Fritts made several violent statements in his sermon, calling non-straight people "freaks, animals" and other names. He expressed the belief that it is the duty of police and the government to enforce anti-LGBTQ+ laws that are outlined in the Bible.
"Here's how it should work, it shouldn't work when we go out and we enforce the laws, because the Bible says the powers that be are ordained of God and God has instilled the power of civil government to send the police in 2019 out to these LGBT FREAKS and arrest them," he ranted. "Have a trial for them, and if they are convicted then they are to be put to death...do you understand that? it's a capital crime to be carried out by our government."
Fritts went on to say, "All the pride parades, man, hey call the riot teams, we got a bunch of 'em, get the paddy wagon out here, we got a bunch of 'em going to jail, we got a bunch of them we're gonna get convicted because they've got their pride junk on and they're professing what they are, they're a filthy animal."

One might dismiss this as the fulminations of one more Fred Phelps wannabe, but as it happens, Revrunt Fritts is also Deputy Fritts of the Knox County Sheriffs Department. Or, well, he was until video of his sermon got out.

Even as Knoxville Mayor Madeline Rogero and Sheriff Tom Spangler denounced Fritts's sermon and the District Attorney began a review of every investigation in which the former Deputy of the Month had been involved, Fritts doubled down in a follow-up sermon, telling his flock, "Just as God loves, God hates. ... Put homos to death!"

Shortly before that follow-up sermon, someone left an rainbow flag attached to a note outside the storefront church. The message read, "Dear Pastor Fritts, I don't know what happened to you, but I am so sorry. Love, Thy Neighbor."

Q Toon: Danse Macabre

On the evening after the Orlando massacre at Pulse, Pastor Roger Jimenez of Verity Baptist Church in Sacramento, California told his congregation:

"Are you sad that 50 pedophiles were killed today? Um, no, I think that's great! I think that helps society. I think Orlando, Florida is a little safer tonight. ... There’s no tragedy,...I wish the government would round them all up, put them up against a firing wall, put a firing squad in front of them, and blow their brains out.” 

After a terrorist attack, you expect the nut jobs at the Westboro Baptist Church to crawl out of their cesspool to insult the victims. When the victims are LGB or T, the Westboro cult has its share of company among so-called Christians.

"The left is having a dilemma of major proportions and I think for those of us who disagree with some of their policies, the best thing to do is to sit on the sidelines and let them kill themselves.” -- Pat Robertson, 700 Club, Christian Broadcasting Network

"The good news is that there’s 50 less pedophiles in this world, because, you know, these homosexuals are a bunch of disgusting perverts and pedophiles. That’s who was a victim here, are a bunch of, just, disgusting homosexuals at a gay bar, okay? Obviously, it’s not right for somebody to just, you know, shoot up the place, because that’s not going through the proper channels. But these people all should have been killed, anyway, but they should have been killed through the proper channels, as in they should have been executed by a righteous government that would have tried them, convicted them, and saw them executed." -- Pastor Steven Anderson, Faithful Word Baptist Church, Arizona

“These 50 sodomites are all perverts and pedophiles, and they are the scum of the earth, and the earth is a little bit better place now. And I’ll take it a step further, because I heard on the news today, that there are still several dozen of these queers in ICU and intensive care. And I will pray to God like I did this morning, I will do it tonight, I’ll pray that God will finish the job that that man started, and he will end their life, and by tomorrow morning they will all be burning in hell, just like the rest of them, so that they don’t get any more opportunity to go out and hurt little children.” Pastor Donnie Romero, Stedfast Baptist Church, Fort Worth, Texas

Meanwhile, in Buford, Georgia, someone decided to spray paint over a hate message against gays and transgender persons that had been out front of The Back to the Bible Holiness Church for weeks before the massacre. Pastor Bobby Weeks bizarrely claimed that "I haven’t cursed anyone. I haven’t called anyone a name" with his sign which read "God created man and woman. Satan created gays and transgender." He further claimed that everyone is "welcome" in his church.

I suspect that the vandals possessed the same degree of restraint, love, and charity as Mr. Weeks.

This Week's Sneak Peek

In matters that have nothing to do with this week's cartoon, a small contingent from the Westboro Batshit Church has been picketing churches, schools and other sites in my neck of the woods yesterday and today. Their targets included the high school just two blocks from where I work; their picketing was planned for dismissal time, so the school let out two hours early.

I opted not to take part in the spectacle, although some people from work did take the time to counter protest the Westboro Clan in the chilly drizzle. (Beth A. Gilmore set up a Facebook page on the Racine counter-protesters' behalf; the Racine Journal Times's coverage of the Westborg and the counter-protests at St. Lucy's afternoon mass is here.)

Phelps Retrospective

Mr. Fred Phelps died yesterday, and as I said in yesterday's post, there are some who believe his passing is best ignored. The question of how to react to Fred Phelps and his cult following is nothing new.

Phelps first came to public attention in the early 1990's pushing to criminalize homosexuality in Topeka public parks. No doubt, homosexual activity in Topeka public parks was already illegal, so that must have been an easy win for him. Flush with that victory, he began busing his Westboro Baptist family around the country to gay pride events to wave their God Hates Fags pickets and shout abuse through bullhorns.

This won the ire of LGBT groups wherever he went (and wherever it was rumored he might show up), but little attention outside of the LGBT community. Leaders in the LGBT community decided that the best way to deal with the Westboro gang was to ignore them.

So Phelps decided to escalate. In 1998 came the gay-bashing murder of 21-year-old Matthew Shepard in Laramie, Wyoming, which came to national attention. Phelps announced that he and his spawn were going to wave their hateful pickets at Shepard's funeral. Taking a cue from a series of Nixon cartoons by Herblock (but with only one photo of Phelps to work from), I drew this:

Counter-protesters with enormous crane puppets (a mainstay of peace protests) shielded Shepard's mourners from the Westboro picketers, but Phelps was close enough to the limelight for the mainstream media to take notice. So he continued showing up at funerals of anyone at all remarkable who died of gay-bashing, AIDS, or "a lingering illness."

The Phelps clan financed their travels, it seems, by filing lawsuits against anyone whose response to their picketing could be construed as assault or infringing on their religious liberty. In the first month of the Dubya Bush administration, the new president promised federal handouts to faith-based religious social service organizations. I imagined that the Westborans might take advantage of this new source of funding:

My favorite Phelps cartoon came one year later, when a story came out that the New York Aquarium at Coney Island had a pair of male penguins, Wendell and Cass, who had seemed to have developed a mating bond. (A more famous pair at Manhattan's Central Park Zoo, Roy and Silo, made news a couple years later.)

By this time, Phelps and his spawn were having more difficulty attracting media attention, even after adding "Thank God for 9/11" to their picket canon. The mainstream media had figured out that he was news only if they made him news, and there were plenty of other nutty religious zealots out there. Again feeling ignored, Phelps upped the ante and started picketing the funerals of American soldiers killed in Iraq and Afghanistan.

In 2006, the family of one such soldier sued Phelps and two of his daughters for "defamation, intrusion upon seclusion, publicity given to private life, intentional infliction of emotional distress and civil conspiracy," in a case that went all the way to the Supreme Court. In 2011, in Snyder v. Phelps, The Supreme Court ruled 8-1 in favor of Phelps and his ghouls (Justice Samuel Alito dissenting).

I've drawn other cartoons featuring the Phelps brood, but the nine-year gap between the penguin cartoon and the Snyder v. Phelps cartoon represents my attempt to go along with the conventional wisdom that it were best to ignore them.

It's sort of a shame that I had to draw this week's cartoon on Sunday in such a way that it would work whether Fred Phelps died right away or lingered for months. I had a better cartoon idea (similar to Nate Beeler's cartoon today) showing the Phelps clan at his grave site, brandishing "God Hates Dad" and "Grandpa In Hell" picket signs as one of them explains, "He would have wanted it this way."

Q Toon: Ready for Freddy

Reports on Sunday that Fred Phelps, leader of the Westboro Baptist Church is near death have started a debate on how to respond to the news. (Phelps has supposedly been excommunicated from the family "church" for unstated reasons. Be that as it may.) Shall we gloat? Shall we pretend we don't care?

A number of LGBT bloggers have stated their intention to prove that they are bigger than the Westborans. As George Takei posted on Facebook,

I take no solace or joy in this man's passing. We will not dance upon his grave, nor stand vigil at his funeral holding "God Hates Freds" signs, tempting as it may be.
He was a tormented soul, who tormented so many. Hate never wins out in the end. It instead goes always to its lonely, dusty end.

As an editorial cartoonist, my job is not to turn the other cheek. I'm reminded that when Richard Nixon died, Pat Oliphant published a neutral cartoon remarking on the man's passing, and instantly regretted it. As the nation's cartoonists (myself included) cranked out charitable eulogy cartoons, Oliphant promptly followed his initial cartoon with another reminding readers of the more reprehensible side of Nixon's legacy. (See the third and fourth cartoons on this page: "Nixon Victory Salute" and "RMN: Lest We Forget.")

How To Respond To Fred Phelps is nothing new. In a future post, I'll dredge up some of my earlier cartoons about him and his clan to illustrate a few thoughts on the Descent and Fall of Fred Phelps.

Q Toon: The Lady Reappears

A couple weeks ago, Airport Dude made his third appearance in my cartoons. This week's cartoon marks a return of a One Million Mom character who appeared in my cartoons last June and August. She didn't even have a speaking part in her first appearance, but now I've committed to filling in her back story, I guess. For this cartoon, I had to figure out what her husband might look like.

Which is all to say that I don't really know who the couple that stiffed their waiter at a Kansas restaurant are or what they actually look like.

Instead of a tip, a couple who dined at Carrabba’s Italian Grill in Overland Park this week left a message for their waiter that has social media buzzing.
Said the message: "Thank you for your service, it was excellent. That being said, we cannot in good conscience tip you, for your homosexual lifestyle is an affront to God. [Antigay slur] do not share in the wealth of GOD, and you will not share in ours. We hope you will see the tip your [antigay slur] choices made you lose out on, and plan accordingly. It is never too late for GOD’S love, but none shall be spared for [antigay slur]. May God have mercy on you."

The anonymous waiter may have been flamboyant enough to trip this couple's gaydar, but even they admit right up front that his service was "excellent," and he has been thoroughly professional about the incident afterward. Although it came out early on that his mother is a manager at the restaurant, his name has not been made public, and he has not commented on the customers involved.

Perhaps this couple were drawing their own conclusions from the parable of the shrewd manager. If so, they stopped before arriving at Luke 16:15, in which Jesus tells his pharisee critics, “You are the ones who justify yourselves in the eyes of others, but God knows your hearts."

I suppose we could blame the boorish behavior of these so-called Christians on Fred Phelps's Westboro Baptist Church; they are 70 miles away, but they do get around. If they happen to be local people,they certainly can't expect excellent service at that particular Carrabba's again.

Twned this week: Fred Phelps & Clan

Personally, I don't think any caricature of the Westboro Baptist Church of Ghouls can ever possibly be mean enough.

Still, it's hard to argue that these miserable cretins do not have the rights of free speech guaranteed in the Constitution. Eventually, they will die and spend eternity serving their Lord of Hate; but until then, it is up to good-hearted people everywhere to exercise our own right of free speech to defend grieving funeral-goers from their vicious depravity.

This week's Q Syndicate cartoon