Anti-gay Phelps group sneaks into Canada

Anti-gay Phelps group sneaks into Canada

By 365gay Newscenter Staff
08.08.2008 3:39pm EDT

(Winnipeg, Manitoba) Members of an anti-gay group which describes itself as a church managed to enter Canada overnight despite a directive to border agents to bar them.

The Canwest News Service reports that the group, members of Rev. Fred Phelps’ Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka, removed all material that referred to the “church” from their vehicles and shipped them by courier to Winnipeg after the material was used to blocked them from another crossing into Manitoba on Thursday.

The group announced earlier in the week it would picket the Winnipeg funeral of a man decapitated on a Greyhound bus. Another passenger is charged with the sensational killing.

The group says by protesting the funeral of Tim McLean it will show Canadians the murder was God’s response to liberal Canadian policies toward homosexuality.

Pat Martin a New Democratic Party member of Parliament from Winnipeg asked Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day to send an alert to the border patrol to look out “for people with signs and pamphlets that fit the hateful messages that the church promotes and to keep them out of the country.”

Canadian hate laws give the government the power to deny entry to people likely to violate the law. The so-called church was listed as a hate group under the law following previous protests.

Shirley Phelps-Roper, Phelps’ daughter and a frequent spokesperson for the “church” confirmed to Canwest that a group of followers had successfully entered the country overnight.

Earlier she had warned that the group would “cross in another spot. They’ll have to strip search everyone who crosses that border or they won’t know who we are. They’ll have to see the WBC [Westboro Baptist Church] tattoo on our butts.”

In addition to the threatened protest at the McLean funeral the group had said it would demonstrate in Toronto where a satirical play titled “The Pastor Phelps Project.” is being performed. No members of the church showed up for the demonstration which had been planned for Thursday evening.

Westboro Baptist members frequently demonstrate at funerals for American servicemembers killed in Iraq. The group claims the deaths are God’s punishment on America for being too pro-gay.

Westboro’s members are made up mostly of Phelps’ relatives. Although it professes to be Baptist it is not affiliated with any national Baptist group.

Westboro operates Web sites including GodHatesFags and GodHatesAmerica and has been described as a cult.

Phelps and the church first came to national attention when he organized a protest by his followers outside the 1998 funeral for Matthew Shepherd, the gay college student who was beaten to death in Wyoming. The killing, Phelps’ protest, and the reaction of townsfolk led to the play “The Laramie Project.”

Church members routinely demonstrate at the funerals of people with AIDS and most recently at the funerals of soldiers killed in Iraq.