Fred Phelps, founder of anti-gay Westboro Baptist Church, reported near death

From LGBTQ Nation: Anti-gay extremist Fred Phelps, founder of the Westboro Baptist Church and the “Gods Hate Fags” fundamentalist movement, is apparently near death in a local hospice, according to a Facebook post Saturday night by his son Nathan Phelps.

The younger Phelps, who left the church and his family’s compound in 1976 when he was 18-years-old, writes:

“I’ve learned that my father, Fred Phelps, Sr., pastor of the “God Hates Fags” Westboro Baptist Church, was ex-communicated from the “church” back in August of 2013. He is now on the edge of death at Midland Hospice house in Topeka, Kansas.

I’m not sure how I feel about this. Terribly ironic that his devotion to his god ends this way. Destroyed by the monster he made.

I feel sad for all the hurt he’s caused so many. I feel sad for those who will lose the grandfather and father they loved. And I’m bitterly angry that my family is blocking the family members who left from seeing him, and saying their good-byes.”

The group came into the national spotlight in 1998, when it picketed at the funeral of Matthew Shepard, an openly gay student at the University of Wyoming who was tortured near Laramie, Wyo., in October 1998, then tied to a fence and left to die.

 Since that time, the group has become famous for anti-gay protests all over the country, including picketing the funerals of fallen US soldiers.