I believe Phelps was an agent-provocateur for the Democrats.
Well, he was a crusading civil rights attorney before founding his “church”. He ran numerous political campaigns on the Democratic side of the ticket in Kansas. He campaigned and held fund-raisers for Al Gore.
Oh, and his “church” was simply his family of lawyers, and they engaged in provocative and offensive public demonstrations and routinely sued the hell out of anyone who violated the church’s free speech rights.
All in all, it certainly sounds like a lawsuit machine dreamed up by annoying liberal lawyers now doesn’t it? And the press gobbled it up like a hog at the trough - the image the “church” presented fed every nasty and hateful bias the American left and the communist infiltrators in the media cherish.
I’ve had similar suspicions about him myself.
I, too, have considered that as a possibility but for the homos, not the Dems (though he would have been serving their interest also).
His background was strictly Democrat, his "church" could have held services in a phone booth, yet he got a ton on media attention as the face of the anti-homos. Something about that doesn't ring true.