Fred Phelps, Westboro Baptist Church founder, dead at 84

Fred Phelps, the pastor who led a small Kansas church's vitriolic "God Hates Fags" anti-gay campaign across the United States, has died, the church said on Thursday. Phelps, whose Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka, Kansas, won a 2011 freedom-of-speech U.S. Supreme Court decision related to their anti-gay picketing, died on Wednesday in a Kansas hospice at the age of 84. "People die - that is the way of all flesh," a blog post on the church's website said. Phelps founded the church in the 1950s. In his later years, Phelps, known as "Gramps" to his family, turned over much of the church's day-to-day operations to his offspring.

http://www.torontosun.com/2014/03/20/fred-phelps-westboro-baptist-church-founder-dead-at-84