Kansas City News Blog

Shirley Phelps-Roper

After reading way too much into this field report on the official blog of Topkea's Westboro Baptist Church, several bloggers -- here, here and here -- wondered if the Phelps family should be placed on suicide watch, wondering if they were a glass of Kool Aid or a set of matching Nikes away from their eternal reward. Uh, no.

"I say first -- this is wishful thinking and standard slander," Shirley Phelps-Roper tells The Pitch in an e-mail. "It means nothing."

Phelps-Roper says Westboro has a packed schedule of upcoming pickets, and besides, she writes, "WHY NOW would anyone think that we would do anything as disobedient and lawless as murder?"

The field report is the same ol' preaching that Westboro has always dished out to "doomed America." And those telling them to "get the f#@& out," Phelps-Roper says, "We will get out, and that day will come EXACTLY when the Lord our God has fixed for us to get out."

In short, they're not going anywhere.