Shirley Phelps-Roper

Shirley Lynn Phelps-Roper (born October 31, 1957) is an American lawyer and political activist. She is best known as the spokesperson of the controversial Westboro Baptist Church of Topeka, Kansas, an organization known for its highly publicized public protests conducted under the slogan “Got Hates Fags.”

Biography

Shirley L. Phelps-Roper was born October 31, 1957 in Topeka, Kansas. She is the daughter of attorney and pastor Fred Phelps, minister of the Westboro Baptist Church, an independent church often characterized as a hate group. She and the church have received widespread media coverage on news outlets such as the BBC and Fox News for the group’s aggressive preaching and controversial campaigns such as the picketing the funerals of AIDS victims with signs such as “God hates fags” and funeral processions for American soldiers killed in combat.

Phelps-Roper received a B.A. in Criminal Justice from Washburn University in Topeka, Kansas in 1979 and a J.D. degree from Washburn in 1981. She practices for Phelps-Chartered Co., the Phelps family’s law firm established by her father in 1964, and is currently licensed to practice before all Kansas courts up through the United States Supreme Court.

Phelps-Roper is currently named a defendant in the Supreme Court case Snyder v. Phelps.

Phelps-Roper is the wife of Brent D. Roper and a mother of 11 children. Besides her father Fred, Shirley Phelps-Roper has been the most public spokesperson of the Westboro Baptist Church and answers many of the e-mails sent to the church in a column called “Dear Shirley”. She is currently on the list of individuals banned from entering the United Kingdom for “fostering extremism or hatred”.