THE WASHINGTON POST — Fred Phelps Sr., a fire-and-brimstone preacher whose anti-gay picketing at military funerals inflamed the nation and drew international scorn but was protected by the U.S. Supreme Court as an exercise in free speech, died March 19 at a hospice in Topeka, Kan. He was 84.
His daughter Shirley Phelps-Roper confirmed his death to the Topeka Capital-Journal. The cause was not reported.
Rev. Phelps was an ordained Baptist minister, a disbarred Kansas lawyer and, according to a BBC documentary, the patriarch of the “most hated family in America.”
Read more at The Washington Post
