Inside the Westboro Baptist Church

NPR's Barbara Bradley Haggerty took her listeners inside Fred Phelps' Westboro Baptist Church and found much more savvy than the group is thought to have. Fred Phelps was a shrewd civil rights attorney before his Church raised its profile by showing up at Matthew Shepard's Wyoming funeral. Bill Sherman, the religion writer for Tulsa World, visited their upscale neighborhood compound.

"They're college educated. They're well-spoken. The daughter herself argued before the United States Supreme Court," Sherman says. "They're not what I expected."
     Eleven of Fred Phelps' 13 children have law degrees. Four are estranged from the family, and most of the rest live in the family compound and practice law.
     "They have a very well-respected law firm in Topeka," Sherman says. "People in town said, 'Well, we don't like them, but if we want to win a case, we'll go to them.' "
     Church spokeswoman Phelps-Roper says their booming employment and family law practice pays the bills for their travels across the country, when they shout their anti-gay message. They travel in vans to keep down the costs, which she says can add up to $200,000 a year.
     Do they have secret contributors? Phelps-Roper is adamant they do not.
     "We all work, and we all pay our own way," she says. "We don't ask for anything from anyone, and we don't take anything from anyone."
The protests are in themselves a source of some income, according to Potok. Over the years the Phelpses have filed lawsuits against communities that try to stop them from demonstrating.
     "And as a general matter they have won," he says. "They know their First Amendment rights very well, and they've been very good at defending them."
When they win, they often receive tens of thousands of dollars in court fees.