I'm flabbergasted

To give my serious opinion, I have to agree with nwr and chiroptera. It's hard to imagine the dean wouldn't know who she is, and going to tell the dean would appear intolerant.Having said that, it would be tough for her to choose a worse occupation, and if I were an AIDS patient under her care I would be very nervous...

I know how you feel though. There was a faculty member in a graduate program I attended who felt that the US should engage in unilateral military actions and assassinate foreign leaders for the spurious security reasons given by the administration. It is a shock when people who are highly educated and clearly very, very intelligent are, nonetheless, very, very stupid.

Quite an interesting topic!What can we surmise?
1) The Phelps family uses outrage and blood money from bigots to earn a living. I am quite sure that she is smarter than her daddy, but maybe she needs Jesus! The ball is in your court as to engaging her in any sort of discussion. The Phelps family thrives on publicity and public outrage. I would never let her know that I knew who she was.
2) One picture is not enough to indict her to Hell. Maybe she laughs at Dads odd ways of making money...(I would question her morals, however.)Probe just a bit in casual conversation as to what she thinks about the American dream, morality, and ethics. If she retreats to "The Bible says..." and all, I would merely look at her and say "The Bible says that the love of money is the root of all evil...how do you justify wealthy evangelists?"Then again, maybe you should just ignore her.

[grammar cop]
I hope I may be forgiven for a nitpicking comment on the horrendous misuse of the apostrophe and the simple plural form of the name Phelps on this thread, and ideally that the comment might serve a constructive purpose.Come ON all you intelligent educated people. I know the apostrophe is a tiny little thing but so is a genome.The name is PHELPS. The plural is a bunch of PHELPSES. There is NO apostrophe in a mere plural, so it is NOT Phelps' -- that is the possessive case, and it refers to only ONE Phelps, not two or more of them.Correct:
The Phelps daughters are standing on the flag. [adjective]
Fred Phelps' daughters are standing on the flag. [possessive singular]
The Phelps family are known for their radical anti-gay views. [adjective]
The Phelpses are known for their radical anti-gay views. [simple plural]
The Phelpses' philosophy is way out there. [possessive plural]Thank you for your indulgence. [/grammar cop]This message has been edited by Faith, 09-20-2005 04:55 PM

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Then again, maybe you should just ignore her.

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I believe I'll be opting for this one.Not that I don't think that matching wits with her would be pretty damn entertaining, but then again I don't really care to have her kin protesting outside our house either.....

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hen again, maybe you should just ignore her.

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Judging from Opus' comfort level in this matter, I think that it would be inadvisable to initiate a conversation with her.Me, I wouldn't avoid a conversation with her, either, unless she was pretty unpleasant in person as well, but I can be pretty tolerant of bigots in personal interaction (I come from a long line of rednecks).

Gosh Faith, I did not know that you cared about my grammar? Will it keep me out of Heaven?

Well, it can make you the target of my nagging. So REPENT and be spared!This message has been edited by Faith, 09-20-2005 07:07 PM

Why ignore her? Obviously she intrigues you, and upsets you, and has no problem with troubling other people with her beliefs.You don't have to spit on her, but why don't you use this chance to find out a little bit more regarding someone you figure you would hate based on what she has done, or what you have seen she has done.I would find this an interesting learning experience.

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holmes
"...what a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.."(D. Bros)

good point.challange her but in a positive and non-threatening way. have coffee (but not gaybucks) and broach the subject delicately. she may not want to talk about it. but then she might. you never know what could happen. maybe you could be the inspiration that changes her mind. if no one ever confronts her, she is lost in her hate. if you challenge her to defend herself she may discover how flawed her logic is.

There is another option, if it really disturbs you or if you feel you must make a statement of some kind of objection, and that is to go to the dean and say that you have objections to being in the same class and get transfered.Is there any reason these people should be coddled to in any way? Why let them get away with their hate?

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we are limited in our ability to understand
by our ability to understand

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RebelAAmerican.Zen[Deist
... to learn ... to think ... to live ... to laugh ...
to share.

I did a little more reading on Phelps. I'm feeling sick to my stomach.I knew he was a bigotted, hatefilled, violent bastard. But apparently it gets even worse. I'm starting to wonder if Libby is someone to be pitied and helped rather than despised.Take a look at this.Warning - some of this is not for the squeemish.

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Phelps' sons Nate and Mark, who claim that they were among the most abused, each suffer permanent debilitating injuries consistent with their stories of Phelps beating them with a mattock handle. According to the boys, he woke them one Christmas Eve in the 1970s while under the influence, bent them over a bathtub, and struck them nearly 300 times with the mattock handle.

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In 1972 the boys showed up to school covered in welts, bruises, and bleeding wounds; the school nurse determined that Nate exhibited signs of shock. The family was investigated by social services, but Nate and Mark claim that their father threatened them with death if they spoke about their beatings. Phelps likewise issued threats against individual police officers and school staff, and filed a lawsuit against the school claiming they beat his children; the charges against Phelps, and Phelps' lawsuit, were dropped, but the affidavit that the school principal issued to social services remained on file as concrete evidence to support the stories of child abuse.

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Multiple members of his congregation and some of his children actually boast that they regularly beat their wives and children.

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A good left hook makes for a right fine wife. Brethren, they can lock us up, but we'll still do what the Bible tells us to do. Either our wives are going to obey, or we're going to beat them!
  —"Fred Phelps"

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I'm starting to wonder if Libby has been abused and forced into this whole mess by her parents, and, by extension, her grandfather. Fear of horrible beatings is a powerful tool for indoctrination and brainwashing. If she simply buys into her grandfather's hate of her own volition, then she is worthy of our collective dislike and any consequences of her hate-filled rhetoric. If she has been brainwashed and abused from childhood into a violent cult, however, she is deserving of our pity and help.MisterOpus1, I have no earthly idea how to behave towards her. Maybe she's a hate-filled monster, or maybe she's just an abused kid who's too scared to speak against her messed-up family, and really needs a friend.All I can say for certain is that Fred Phelps is a monster of the highest order, and it makes me sick that he has spread his violence and hate, even to his own children and grandchildren. I can't even describe what sort of monster Phelps is - if you read the article I linked to, you'll start to see what I mean.

They just dropped the charges? Because he said to?

I had similar thoughts, and I hinted at that possibility in Message 8.

I'm not sure exactly how much credibility to give to the article, because it's from Wikipedia.But according to further info in the article, the police chief at the time had a "no-arrests" policy in effect for Phelps and his group. Apparently he was worried about lawsuits, since Phelps and most of his kids are (or were, until disbarment) lawyers.That policy has since been rescinded by another police chief.It wasn't so much of a "he told them to" situation. There was a large cult with a known history of violence and lawsuits sending death threats to anyone involved, as well as Phelps alleging that it was the school, not he, who abused the boys. Rememeber also that this stuff was happening in the 60s or 70s - to my understanding it was easier to "get away" with abuse charges back then.In any case, everything I see in that article matches up with well-known Phelps rhetoric. While I cannot say that Phelps definitely beat his wife and kids, since there was never a trial or conviction, I can say that such an allegation would seem to have merit given his religious views on the subject.