Anti-gay Pastor to visit Vancouver

Anti-gay Pastor to visit Vancouver
Fred Phelps
  Sunday, November 09 - 08:18:00 PM Renee Bernard

VANCOUVER (NEWS1130) - A controversial anti-gay minister from the States is planning a visit to Vancouver later this month.

Pastor Fred Phelps of the Westboro Baptist Church and his followers have made a point of picketing funerals, applauding what they believe is the wrath of God against those leading "filthy lives."

On their itinerary is a picket of President-elect Barack Obama's grandmother's funeral.

They want to stage a rally at a play called the Laramie Project in Vancouver.

The play is based on the true story of a gay man's brutal murder in Wyoming ten years ago.

Mark Robins of GayVancouver.com says Phelps should be stopped at the border.

"I'm all for freedom of speech, but when that freedom of speech incites hatred that could potentially cause violence against another person, that's where I draw the line," says Robins.

Phelps' fanatical group was prevented from entering Canada to picket the funeral of Tim McLean, the man beheaded on a Greyhound bus last summer.

The group has been known to attend the funerals of US soldiers out of the belief that the war in Iraq is a punishment for America's tolerance of homosexuality.

Phelps can be heard on his website lamenting the fact that only 33 people, and not 33,000, were killed at Virginia Tech last year.