DenPost: Phelps' ("God Hates Fags") Arts Center Protest Gets Facts Wrong

[Hissyspit]

That 'God Hates Fags' dork, Fred Phelps, is in the news again and even the Denver Post (theatre critic) points out that he is looking dorkier... (than usual or dorky as ever?)

Critic John Moore argues that Phelps and his church are misinterpreting information, "and the next thing you know special-interest groups are chanting in the streets" and that that is the case in a planned protest apparently called for last Sunday by his "high-profile Kansas Church" against a Colorado Springs arts and humanities center.

http://www.artsjournal.com/artsissues/
Sunday, March 27, 2005
How To Give The Right Wing A Really Bad Name Kansas-based preacher Fred Phelps, an ultra-right-wing activist best known for parading with his followers at the funerals of victims of AIDS and gay bashings while shouting through a megaphone and waving signs reading "God Hates Fags," is taking on a Colorado Springs arts center that has accepted funding from a gay/lesbian action group. The reverend's merry band says that the arts center has signed on to promote "the radical homosexual agenda" by accepting the money. The reality of the situation, unsurprisingly, bears little resemblance to the Phelps interpretation, but that isn't deterring protest organizers in their crusade to wipe out the "sodomite juggernaut" that is apparently running rampant in Colorado Springs. Denver Post 03/27/05

http://www.denverpost.com/Stories/0,1413,36~415~2782037,00.html

When religion and art collide:
A planned protest at Arvada Center confuses the facts
By John Moore
Denver Post Theater Critic
Sunday, March 27, 2005 -

- snip -

"They are about the business of enabling and promoting and assisting the homosexual agenda. That's their primary mission," said Shirley Phelps-Roper, a mother of 11 and one of 13 children of Westboro pastor and well-known Christian activist Fred Phelps. "They would not receive funding from the Gay & Lesbian Fund if they weren't."

As is so often the case in emotional, polarizing debates, Phelps-Roper is operating on incorrect information.

The Arvada Center has received $10,000 to $15,000 annually from the G&LF since 2000, money that has helped fund productions such as "Sweet Charity," "The Rise and Fall of Little Voice" and, most recently, the baseball-dad buddy play, "Rounding Third." These are classics or family dramas that a critic would be hard pressed to label as "gay entertainment."

And that's no accident because the Gay & Lesbian Fund, created by Quark founder Tim Gill, is made available only for programming that does not cover specifically gay topics.

Facts may only be getting in the way here, though.

"That does not matter." Phelps-Roper said. "What matters is that these people flip off God when they set about to do what they are doing."

MORE AT ORIGINAL LINK

[jmowreader]

1. Tim Gill is one of my heroes

Tim Gill wrote a computer program called QuarkXPress. It became the standard of the design-for-print industry, and it made Tim Gill filthy rich. (Gill isn't just a software guy. He started out by building the best hard drives for the Apple II.)

In 1994, Gill started his Gill Foundation, which was chartered to "ensure equal opportunity for all persons regardless of sexual orientation or gender expression."

I think it was 1997, I'm not sure, when Gill decided he had enough money and quit working at Quark.

The only beef I have with Tim is that, because he was the only person in the world who knew how QuarkXPress worked on the inside, the program really sucked for the first couple of years after he left. But it's much better now.