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Vote in Topeka Today Hangs on Gay Rights and a Vitriolic Local Protester
By JODI WILGOREN
TOPEKA, Kan., Feb. 24 - Jael Phelps, 20, a nursing student, stood outside the City Council chamber here on a recent night holding a sign with a photograph of the councilwoman whom she hopes to unseat, Tiffany Muller, placed on a dog's body.
"Mutt Muller," read the caption, an allusion to her family's view of homosexuals.
Ms. Muller is the first openly gay officeholder in Kansas, Miss Phelps, a granddaughter of the Rev. Fred Phelps Sr., possibly the nation's most vitriolic protester against gays.
Their battle to represent a working-class slice of northwestern Topeka will almost certainly turn not on typical concerns like sidewalks and snowplows, but on heated questions of civil rights and free speech.
Voters will choose among them and two lesser-known candidates for the seat on the ballot on Tuesday and decide whether to repeal an ordinance that prohibits the city from discriminating against gays in hiring. Ms. Muller sponsored the ordinance shortly after she was appointed to the Council in the fall.
Miss Phelps's family led the petition drive to overturn it.
The twin contests have transformed the often ignored primary into an impassioned struggle. Residents worry that the voting results could brand Topeka as a haven for homophobia or for homosexuality, with many residents unsure which would be worse.
"It's made us do a little soul searching about who we are as Topekans," Deputy Mayor Clark R. Duffy said.
The referendum, which would ban the Council from passing any ordinances specifically protecting gays for 10 years, would be the only one of its type in the nation, after Cincinnati voters in November repealed a similar measure that they passed in 1993.
The battle has become as much as anything a debate over Mr. Phelps, whose incessant daily pickets and hate-filled faxes have plagued Topeka for 14 years, yet whose opposition to the antidiscrimination ordinance is shared by many residents of this church-laden, Republican-leaning city of 125,000.
The Phelpses' tactics have turned some evangelical ministers and conservative businessmen into unlikely crusaders for gay rights, backing measures like the antidiscrimination ordinance. And with an amendment to the State Constitution to ban same-sex marriage on the ballot in April, many other religious and civic leaders are trying mightily to stop the Phelpses from hijacking what they see as a signature issue.
As Ms. Muller and Miss Phelps go door to door in the district, talk about taxes and employment gives way to questions about sex and the Bible. Miss Phelps has been yelled off lawns when residents learned her surname, which appears on campaign fliers in the finest print, and voters have told Ms. Muller's supporters that she would not win their votes if she ran against a pack of snakes.
"If I lose the primary, it'll be because I'm gay," said Ms. Muller, 26, who moved here six years ago and was the lead lobbyist against the same-sex marriage ban in the Legislature. "There are people who are voting for me just because of my stance on gay rights, and there are people who are voting for me just because I got the Phelpses all riled up."
Miss Phelps promoted herself on a radio show last week as the candidate with the appropriate "moral compass," not "a recent transplant who came to Topeka to make a living pushing the gay agenda."
"The main reason why I got into the race," she said as she strolled the streets in search of support, "is so the people of District 9 would know who the incumbent is. We have someone whose goal in life is to make it so the governmental stamp of approval is put on sin, and an abomination at that."
The contest has symbolic significance because of Mr. Phelps's reputation. He picketed the funerals of Matthew Shepard, the gay man who was beaten and left to die in 1998 in Wyoming; Mister Rogers; Sonny Bono; and Al Gore's father. And the dispute here is being repeated across the country.
More than 200 towns, cities and counties and 15 states ban discrimination based on sexual orientation. Dubuque, Iowa, rejected such a measure, for the third time, this month, and lawmakers in South Bend, Ind., and Largo, Fla., are considering them.
Legislators in Kentucky and Georgia have submitted bills that, like the question here, would strike down antidiscrimination ordinances or prohibit them.
The voting on Tuesday caps years of legislative and court fights spurred by Mr. Phelps and his Westboro Baptist Church, where the American and Canadian flags fly upside down, the military sign of distress, in front of a banner that advertises his Web site.
A disbarred civil rights lawyer, Mr. Phelps founded the church, whose pews are mainly filled by his 13 children and 52 grandchildren, shortly after moving to Topeka in 1954. He began his pickets outside Gage Park, which he said was a magnet for gay sex, 40 years later.
Politicians and business leaders who say Mr. Phelps has cost the city at least half a dozen conventions and other corporate business have tried for years to tamp him down. They passed ordinances to limit the pickets at churches and funerals to the other side of the street. They cut public comment at Council meetings, a favorite forum for Mr. Phelps, to 4 minutes from 10, televising them once a month instead of every week.
They staged counterprotests, which sometimes turned violent, and formed Concerned Citizens of Topeka, whose main purpose was to act as a counterpoint to the Phelpses .
In 2002, the Council approved a hate-crimes ordinance that included sexual orientation, which could also be nullified in the referendum, but rejected a ban on discrimination against gays in housing and employment.
Its sponsor, Lisa Hecht, lost her re-election race.
After Ms. Muller joined the Council, she reintroduced a watered-down ordinance to cover just hiring by the city government. It passed, 5 to 4.
Outside the Council chamber that night, three separate rallies were held. One was by supporters, one by the Phelpses and the third by opponents of the ordinance and of Westboro Baptist.
Inside, many residents who testified against the ordinance began by disavowing Mr. Phelps.
"We aren't part of their message of hate; we do this in love," said Dan Walker, a spokesman for the Family Action Network, a group of church and family groups whose campaign to overturn the ordinance has largely focused on distancing the initiative from the Phelpses. "This is not an issue about Westboro Baptist Church. This is an issue about what the homosexual movement is trying to do in Topeka, Kan."
Although Mr. Walker and like-minded ministers preach the importance of distinguishing the message from the messenger, Andrew McHenry, president of the Evangelical Association of Greater Topeka, invokes the New Testament warning that a bad tree cannot bear good fruit.
"Normally," said Mr. McHenry, who opposes the referendum despite supporting a ban on same-sex marriages, "I would like to separate the individual from the issue. In Topeka, it's just too hard to do that. We don't agree with that lifestyle. But taking sides with hatemongers doesn't help."
Muddying the debate is the confusing language of the referendum. A "yes" vote is to repeal the ordinance. A "no" vote is to keep it.
The ordinance is narrow, yet its supporters say in campaign mailings that a "yes" vote will prevent churches, schools and day care centers from being "forced" to hire gay pastors and teachers, adding as a tagline, "Voting yes is not a vote for hate."
There is perhaps no better sign of the Phelpses' power than that 12 people from each side interviewed about the referendum refused to identify themselves.
A retired banker said, "If I gave you my name, the next thing, they'd have their placards where I live."
"I'll speak my mind by going to vote," the former banker said over lunch at Terry's Bar and Grill downtown, naming Mr. Phelps as his "motivation for voting no, period."
Though he backs the ban on same-sex marriages, the banker said: "We don't need the kind of publicity that they give this community. I don't care whether you're a liberal or a Bible Belter or what."
Debra Goodrich, an opponent of the referendum who is publisher of The Kansas Journal of Military History, said: "Topeka is a much more tolerant community because of Fred. As long as Fred can spout what he does safely, we're all O.K.
"It's almost as if the gay rights people had hired Fred. He's so galvanized the community for gay rights. People are so outraged you could be so mean to people."
Miss Phelps knows well the toxic reaction. Hence the yard signs that say simply, "Jael," and her bland introduction as she knocks on the doors of Meadow Lane: "My name is Jael. I'm running for City Council."
Although her grandfather is easily caricatured, she is a wholesome tomboy with straight A's.
"People find out who I am, what my last name is, and they immediately start treating me differently," said Miss Phelps, who has been picketing daily with her family since kindergarten. "I just love that. It's a sign I'm doing the right thing, serving the Lord."
For years, Mayor James A. McClinton said, City Hall has received countless e-mail messages from around the world questioning Topeka's tolerance of hatemongers.
"We always write back and say the cult is not representative of the community," Mr. McClinton said of the Phelpses. "We think. I guess we'll find out for sure March 1."
I love how "serving the Lord" involves making crude and obscene references to somebody's imaginary sex life. Guess I was wrong to think that God's work involved things like charity, forgiveness, and love.
Vote in Topeka Today Hangs on Gay Rights and a Vitriolic Local Protester
By JODI WILGOREN
TOPEKA, Kan., Feb. 24 - Jael Phelps, 20, a nursing student, stood outside the City Council chamber here on a recent night holding a sign with a photograph of the councilwoman whom she hopes to unseat, Tiffany Muller, placed on a dog's body.
"Mutt Muller," read the caption, an allusion to her family's view of homosexuals.
Ms. Muller is the first openly gay officeholder in Kansas, Miss Phelps, a granddaughter of the Rev. Fred Phelps Sr., possibly the nation's most vitriolic protester against gays.
Their battle to represent a working-class slice of northwestern Topeka will almost certainly turn not on typical concerns like sidewalks and snowplows, but on heated questions of civil rights and free speech.
Voters will choose among them and two lesser-known candidates for the seat on the ballot on Tuesday and decide whether to repeal an ordinance that prohibits the city from discriminating against gays in hiring. Ms. Muller sponsored the ordinance shortly after she was appointed to the Council in the fall.
Miss Phelps's family led the petition drive to overturn it.
The twin contests have transformed the often ignored primary into an impassioned struggle. Residents worry that the voting results could brand Topeka as a haven for homophobia or for homosexuality, with many residents unsure which would be worse.
"It's made us do a little soul searching about who we are as Topekans," Deputy Mayor Clark R. Duffy said.
The referendum, which would ban the Council from passing any ordinances specifically protecting gays for 10 years, would be the only one of its type in the nation, after Cincinnati voters in November repealed a similar measure that they passed in 1993.
The battle has become as much as anything a debate over Mr. Phelps, whose incessant daily pickets and hate-filled faxes have plagued Topeka for 14 years, yet whose opposition to the antidiscrimination ordinance is shared by many residents of this church-laden, Republican-leaning city of 125,000.
The Phelpses' tactics have turned some evangelical ministers and conservative businessmen into unlikely crusaders for gay rights, backing measures like the antidiscrimination ordinance. And with an amendment to the State Constitution to ban same-sex marriage on the ballot in April, many other religious and civic leaders are trying mightily to stop the Phelpses from hijacking what they see as a signature issue.
As Ms. Muller and Miss Phelps go door to door in the district, talk about taxes and employment gives way to questions about sex and the Bible. Miss Phelps has been yelled off lawns when residents learned her surname, which appears on campaign fliers in the finest print, and voters have told Ms. Muller's supporters that she would not win their votes if she ran against a pack of snakes.
"If I lose the primary, it'll be because I'm gay," said Ms. Muller, 26, who moved here six years ago and was the lead lobbyist against the same-sex marriage ban in the Legislature. "There are people who are voting for me just because of my stance on gay rights, and there are people who are voting for me just because I got the Phelpses all riled up."
Miss Phelps promoted herself on a radio show last week as the candidate with the appropriate "moral compass," not "a recent transplant who came to Topeka to make a living pushing the gay agenda."
"The main reason why I got into the race," she said as she strolled the streets in search of support, "is so the people of District 9 would know who the incumbent is. We have someone whose goal in life is to make it so the governmental stamp of approval is put on sin, and an abomination at that."
The contest has symbolic significance because of Mr. Phelps's reputation. He picketed the funerals of Matthew Shepard, the gay man who was beaten and left to die in 1998 in Wyoming; Mister Rogers; Sonny Bono; and Al Gore's father. And the dispute here is being repeated across the country.
More than 200 towns, cities and counties and 15 states ban discrimination based on sexual orientation. Dubuque, Iowa, rejected such a measure, for the third time, this month, and lawmakers in South Bend, Ind., and Largo, Fla., are considering them.
Legislators in Kentucky and Georgia have submitted bills that, like the question here, would strike down antidiscrimination ordinances or prohibit them.
The voting on Tuesday caps years of legislative and court fights spurred by Mr. Phelps and his Westboro Baptist Church, where the American and Canadian flags fly upside down, the military sign of distress, in front of a banner that advertises his Web site.
A disbarred civil rights lawyer, Mr. Phelps founded the church, whose pews are mainly filled by his 13 children and 52 grandchildren, shortly after moving to Topeka in 1954. He began his pickets outside Gage Park, which he said was a magnet for gay sex, 40 years later.
Politicians and business leaders who say Mr. Phelps has cost the city at least half a dozen conventions and other corporate business have tried for years to tamp him down. They passed ordinances to limit the pickets at churches and funerals to the other side of the street. They cut public comment at Council meetings, a favorite forum for Mr. Phelps, to 4 minutes from 10, televising them once a month instead of every week.
They staged counterprotests, which sometimes turned violent, and formed Concerned Citizens of Topeka, whose main purpose was to act as a counterpoint to the Phelpses .
In 2002, the Council approved a hate-crimes ordinance that included sexual orientation, which could also be nullified in the referendum, but rejected a ban on discrimination against gays in housing and employment.
Its sponsor, Lisa Hecht, lost her re-election race.
After Ms. Muller joined the Council, she reintroduced a watered-down ordinance to cover just hiring by the city government. It passed, 5 to 4.
Outside the Council chamber that night, three separate rallies were held. One was by supporters, one by the Phelpses and the third by opponents of the ordinance and of Westboro Baptist.
Inside, many residents who testified against the ordinance began by disavowing Mr. Phelps.
"We aren't part of their message of hate; we do this in love," said Dan Walker, a spokesman for the Family Action Network, a group of church and family groups whose campaign to overturn the ordinance has largely focused on distancing the initiative from the Phelpses. "This is not an issue about Westboro Baptist Church. This is an issue about what the homosexual movement is trying to do in Topeka, Kan."
Although Mr. Walker and like-minded ministers preach the importance of distinguishing the message from the messenger, Andrew McHenry, president of the Evangelical Association of Greater Topeka, invokes the New Testament warning that a bad tree cannot bear good fruit.
"Normally," said Mr. McHenry, who opposes the referendum despite supporting a ban on same-sex marriages, "I would like to separate the individual from the issue. In Topeka, it's just too hard to do that. We don't agree with that lifestyle. But taking sides with hatemongers doesn't help."
Muddying the debate is the confusing language of the referendum. A "yes" vote is to repeal the ordinance. A "no" vote is to keep it.
The ordinance is narrow, yet its supporters say in campaign mailings that a "yes" vote will prevent churches, schools and day care centers from being "forced" to hire gay pastors and teachers, adding as a tagline, "Voting yes is not a vote for hate."
There is perhaps no better sign of the Phelpses' power than that 12 people from each side interviewed about the referendum refused to identify themselves.
A retired banker said, "If I gave you my name, the next thing, they'd have their placards where I live."
"I'll speak my mind by going to vote," the former banker said over lunch at Terry's Bar and Grill downtown, naming Mr. Phelps as his "motivation for voting no, period."
Though he backs the ban on same-sex marriages, the banker said: "We don't need the kind of publicity that they give this community. I don't care whether you're a liberal or a Bible Belter or what."
Debra Goodrich, an opponent of the referendum who is publisher of The Kansas Journal of Military History, said: "Topeka is a much more tolerant community because of Fred. As long as Fred can spout what he does safely, we're all O.K.
"It's almost as if the gay rights people had hired Fred. He's so galvanized the community for gay rights. People are so outraged you could be so mean to people."
Miss Phelps knows well the toxic reaction. Hence the yard signs that say simply, "Jael," and her bland introduction as she knocks on the doors of Meadow Lane: "My name is Jael. I'm running for City Council."
Although her grandfather is easily caricatured, she is a wholesome tomboy with straight A's.
"People find out who I am, what my last name is, and they immediately start treating me differently," said Miss Phelps, who has been picketing daily with her family since kindergarten. "I just love that. It's a sign I'm doing the right thing, serving the Lord."
For years, Mayor James A. McClinton said, City Hall has received countless e-mail messages from around the world questioning Topeka's tolerance of hatemongers.
"We always write back and say the cult is not representative of the community," Mr. McClinton said of the Phelpses. "We think. I guess we'll find out for sure March 1."
I love how "serving the Lord" involves making crude and obscene references to somebody's imaginary sex life. Guess I was wrong to think that God's work involved things like charity, forgiveness, and love.
