{"id":7911,"date":"2009-06-09T03:46:13","date_gmt":"2009-06-09T11:06:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=7911"},"modified":"2009-06-09T03:46:13","modified_gmt":"2009-06-09T11:06:01","slug":"fred-phelps-son-discusses-abusive-childhood","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=7911","title":{"rendered":"Fred Phelps' son discusses abusive childhood"},"content":{"rendered":"

(MAJOR TRIGGER WARNINGS — Lots of stuff about how Fred Phelps abused his entire family. Please be cautious about reading on or following the links if you think it may be a trigger for you.)<\/em> <\/p>\n

Nate Phelps, the son of the infamously hateful preacher Fred Phelps<\/a>, delivered a speech<\/a> at this year’s American Atheist Convention. In the speech, Nate describes life with his father:<\/p>\n

Yet when my father turned his instructive fist on my mother, I instinctively felt internal conflict. For me, it was intuitively wrong that a 6 foot 2, 250 pound man be allowed to beat up a woman barely half his size. But we dared not intervene or even question his actions, because his behavior was sanctioned by god.<\/p>\n

In one instance, as my father was stalking our mother at the top of the stairs, she stumbled and started to fall. Reaching out to catch herself she ripped her arm out of the socket. My father refused to let her get medical treatment to repair the damaged muscles and tendons. In subsequent, years when he was angry with her, he would inevitably grab for that injured arm. On a few occasions he managed to get hold of it and re-injure it. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In addition to his misogyny, homophobia, anti-Semitism, and pretty much every other kind of bigotry under the sun, Phelps is also a fat-hater, abusing his children and wife for not being slender enough. It’s interesting how all these forms of othering slide so naturally into one another.<\/p>\n

Reading through Nate’s site, it seems amazing that Nate got out (and, after years of involvement with less insane forms of Christianity than his father’s, became a firm atheist). Most of his siblings haven’t been so lucky (a section of the site includes a long email from his sister making excuses for Fred Phelps’ behavior).<\/p>\n

Via Figleaf<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

(MAJOR TRIGGER WARNINGS — Lots of stuff about how Fred Phelps abused his entire family. Please be cautious about reading on or following the links if you think it may be a trigger for you.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[102,96],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7911","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-conservative-zaniness-right-wingers-etc","category-rape-intimate-violence-related-issues"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7911","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7911"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7911\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7911"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7911"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7911"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}