Fred Phelps, founder of Westboro Baptist Church ... DEAD

No word on whether he's having a funeral.

Will there be picketing?










Too soon?

VICE reached out to Lucien Greaves, spokesperson for the New York-based Satanic Temple, to get his take on the imminent death of Westboro's notorious founder. Greaves garnered media attention in late 2013 when he performed a "Pink Mass" over the grave of Phelp's mother, Catherine Johnston, a ritual that Greaves claimed would make Johnston gay in the afterlife.

Greaves is now claiming that he will perform another "Pink Mass" -- this time over the grave of Phelps following his death. Greaves told VICE:


"The Satanic Temple exercised its own right to offensive Free Speech in our performance of the Pink Mass at Fred Phelps’s mother’s grave this past summer. After having two same-sex couples (one male, one female) engage in homoerotic activity at the grave site, we declared Fred Phelps’s mother a post-mortem homosexual conversion. At the time, I predicted that Fred hadn’t too much longer till he would pass, and I stated –- in a direct tweet to the WBC -– that I would be presiding over Fred’s own Pink Mass before too long. As I have made a promise to a dying man, I fully intend to do my very best to see it through, and the pomp and circumstance of this Pink Mass will surely far, far exceed that of the original event in Meridian, Mississippi."

Fred Phelps, founder of Westboro Baptist Church ... DEAD

Ticomaya wrote:

Fred Phelps, founder of Westboro Baptist Church ... DEAD

But all the people who happily followed him are still here. Ready to follow the next hate monger who rings their inner bells.

But Shirley Phelps-Roper, Phelps' daughter, said Westboro will not hold a funeral for its patriarch.

"We do not worship the dead," Phelps-Roper told CNN.

The Southern Poverty Law Center calls Westboro Baptist Church "arguably the most obnoxious and rabid hate group in America."