Fred Phelps, a former street preacher who led a family ministry that raged against what he perceived as a morally bankrupt society, died Thursday. His legacy of picketing funerals of military veterans and disaster victims, promoting coarse language to condemn conduct he viewed as amoral, and waging legal battles that protected his actions under the First Amendment, earned him an international reputation of a man’s whose absolute conviction was never swayed in the face of widespread contempt. “The level of his vitriol, the savageness of his comments, were just unmatched anywhere. His rhetoric was such he united people both on...