# The Most Hated Family in America

The Most Hated Family in America is a 2008 television documentary written and presented by Louis Theroux about the Westboro Baptist Church. The church, in Topeka Kansas USA, consists largely of the members of a single family by the name of Phelps. At the head of the family is Fred Phelps, father of thirteen children, but the day-to-day running of the church is largely in the hands of Fred's daughter Shirley Phelps, herself mother of eleven children. The church is Christian fundamentalist in character, and seems particularly exercised over the issue of homosexuality. This has led their members to picket the funerals of American soldiers, believing their deaths to be punishment from God for a nation which tolerates same-sex relationships.

## Shirley

* God hates Louis Threox, God hates Louis Threox, therefore God hates America and all of his military. Don't be a faggot.
* Don't think of fags as just those guys who are taking it up the tailpipe. Think of it as people who are involved in some perverted sex act, and I'm talking about anything other than one man, one woman, in their marriage bed.
* If you see a nation or a people who have risen up with one voice to say that it's OK to be gay, you're looking at a doomed people. Those people have crossed the line. When you say "gay pride," you obviously have given over any trace or any notion that you're going to admit that you're sinning.
* The streets of this nation are full of married men having fag sex. That's adultery. So don't try to pretend that you don't come under the umbrella of adultery just because you're a fag.
* I will not have my kids call themselves dating anyone, or doing any activity that would remotely resemble what this generation calls dating. To what end would they do that? What would be the purpose? So they can fornicate?

## Fred

* Billy Graham, hell-bound false prophet. I've known Billy Graham more than fifty years, and Billy, you are headed straight and irreversibly for hell. You are a lying, money grubbing, Arminian heretic . . . At 88, Graham will soon die, and split hell wide open. And Westboro Baptist Church will picket your funeral. Amen.
* Same-sex marriage, by any name, civil union or otherwise, is the ultimate smashed-mouth in-your-face insult to God almighty, and you think he's going to let England and America and the rest of this evil world get by with it? God almighty has not joined fags in holy wedlock. God no longer keeps America safe, America is doomed. We're getting the pants beat off of us, in Iraq, in Afghanistan. God is now America's terrorist, that's who Bush is fighting, that's the terrorist that he best be afraid of. You tweaked his nose you jackass, you tweaked his nose! God put it in your earth wicked heart to start that war. That's the message we've got at the funerals of these dead soldiers. God duped you into starting a war, so he could punish you. And any preacher preaching it any other way is a lying hell-bound false prophet. So almost eighteen months now and the siege has got people eating their babies, and their small children, and each other! You're going to eat your babies! God himself duped Bush into a no-win war, and he did that by the technique of putting a lying spirit in the mouth of all his trusted advisers, to punish America.

## Dialogue

* Shirley: Noah, do you know what fag troops are?
* Noah (age 8 approx): Yeah.
* Shirley: What?
* Noah: It's this nation. Of these fags. It's this nation of fags. That's what fag troops means.
* Shirley: It is the nation of fags, that's right . . . Noah, do you know what else you could be besides a fag, to be in trouble with God and be included in that sign? If you're not just a fag, but what else?
* Noah: Erm . . . and . . . soldiers and . . .
* Shirley: But what are you if you're not a practicing fag, what are you? What if you support fags, what does that make you?
* Noah: A dyke?
* Louis: I was struck by your preaching, you referred mainly to the Old Testament and it was almost as though you felt that we were living in a time of biblical prophecy. Is that accurate?
* Fred: No, it's not accurate. If you had just a little knowledge of the Bible, you would know that what you just said is stupidity in spades. I don't know how to deal with a question like that. You're just too dumb, sorry. You've got a duty to know the Bible as well as I do.
* Louis: Why?
* Fred: Because you're a human being, because God almighty made you, and God almighty is going to send your ass to hell.
* Louis: Did you rejoice yesterday when that church burned down?
* Steve: You're supposed to rejoice over all of God's judgements.
* Louis: And do you rejoice when soldiers die in Iraq?
* Steve: Absolutely, I do.
* Louis: And do you rejoice when people are knocked over by cars and they get cancer?
* Steve: Absolutely, I love it. And I can tell you right now because it's the righteous judgement of God almighty.
* Steve: The Jews killed Christ! You're going to try to tell me that they worship the same God as I worship? They killed Christ, what more do you...
* Louis: Newsflash, brainiac, Christ was Jewish.

## External links

* The Most Hated Family in America – BBC website
* God's squad – The Guardian