Kansas City News Blog

Courtesy of the Westboro Baptist Church

Yesterday, Shirley Phelps-Roper was riding on the high of Sean Penn's derision. She was fresh off the plane. Her voice was hoarse. A fire truck was outside the Westboro Baptist Church (crank call). I caught her in the midst of a flurry. The night before, Phelps-Roper and the members of the anti-gay Westboro Baptist Church picketed the Academy Awards. They offended Sean Penn so much that the actor mentioned them in his speech accepting the best actor award.

Phelps-Roper recalled the scene: standing on a step stool at Highland and Sunset waving her "Heath in Hell" poster at the limos passing by. She was backed by 11 members of the Westboro Baptist Church.

Celebrities yelled at them, Phelps-Roper said. Some took pictures. Others videotaped them. Ben Stiller rolled down his window and "screamed the f-word" at them and took their picture, she said with a laugh.

"It was more than three hours of fast-paced, high-drama, but didn't one of those limos get past that corner," Phelps-Roper said. "It was awesome."

But the highlight of the night for Phelps-Roper was Penn's condemnation.  

"If you tell the words right, you're going to have Sean Penn sitting in there at the Oscars rewriting his acceptance speech so he can fuss about it," Phelps-Roper said. "Heath in Hell and Sean Penn traveled all around the world."

But this wasn't a singular moment for Phelps-Roper. She called it "the perfect hour" and a convergence of events -- the UK banning her and her father from the country, picketing the funeral of a Continental Airlines pilot whose plane crashed in Buffalo, Milk, Prop 8, Kevin Smith's Red State, fires in Australia, laws against picketing funerals, productions of The Laramie Project, and the Antichrist taking office in the White House.

Barack Obama is the Antichrist, Phelps-Roper said, referencing Revelation 13.

"Out of this unwashed, restless sea of mankind here comes Obama rising up," Phelps-Roper said. "And the whole world is wondering after him. You're just going to have to answer that question and tell the truth. Is the whole world fawning after and wondering after Obama? Is the whole world? Yeah. Yeah, they are."

Phelps-Roper said she sees through Obama's talk.

"Unless you read these things with discipline you're going to think that the beast or the Antichrist is going to do really good stuff for this nation and this world," she said. "But it doesn't say he's going to do great things, it just says he's going to speak great things. So even as he's busy getting the largest spending package in the history of the world passed through congress, nothing is getting better with this economy."

And the end is really near, Phelps-Roper said.

"Once the Antichrist is revealed then it speaks in terms of months -- 42 months," she said. "Now's the time for all these prophecies about these last hours of the last days to drop like pegs in a hole, and it's going to get very interesting."

Interesting. It's always interesting.