“Well, I am so glad that she is safe from the other PRISONERS!” I yelled. “Now, when can she get out of there?” My wife’s volunteering to go to the jail probably kept the Secret Service and the local cops from shooting each other. This was just about the only bright spot to this that I had heard so far.
“Sir, the latest we’ve been told is that she will be in jail overnight, and then be booked and processed in the morning…”
“Tremendous. Now, just shut up and stand there. I’ll get back to you in a second.”
I thought hurriedly for a few seconds. I could call the Attorney General, and get Frank Keating to yank Marilyn out of there, but that would just create even more problems. It didn’t sound like my wife was in any particular danger. I picked up the phone. “Get me David Boies. He’s one of my attorneys. I don’t care if he is undergoing a heart transplant. Wake him up and hand him a phone. Thank you.” I turned back to Thompson. “Now, who or what is this Westboro Church and why do they want my son dead?”
Just as I asked this question, the phone rang. I picked it up. “DADDY!”
“I’m here. Where are you guys?”
“We’re at the Hyatt!” answered Molly. “Mom’s been arrested!”
“So I’ve been told. I’m trying to get a lawyer for her…”
“You have to get her out of jail!”
“We’ll do that. I just learned about this. Now, are you all there? Did any of you guys get arrested, too?”
“DADDY! No!”
I sighed. “Let me speak to Bucky.”
I heard the phone fumbling some, and then my son-in-law came on the line. “Hello?”
“Bucky, keep a lid on those women! I am leaving you in charge.” I heard him chuckle. “Under no circumstances are any of them to talk to a reporter or go anywhere near the jail unless I tell you to, got it? Don’t even let them out of the room!”
“Got it, Uncle Carl. They really want to go down there and bust out Aunt Marilyn,” he replied.
“Tell them they can’t bail out their mother if they are in jail with her!”
“Yes, sir!” he laughed.
“I have to go.”
“I have to tell you, Uncle Carl, she was pretty awesome! I had to see it to believe it!”
Awesome! Great! “You are not making me any happier, Bucky! I am expecting more calls on this. Keep those women under lock and key!” I hung up and put the phone back down. I looked back at Thompson. “You were saying?” The phone rang again, and I swore. I picked it up and said, “Hello?”
“Carl, it’s David Boies. I just heard about your wife. How can I help?”
Finally, somebody who might be able to help! “David, just get her out of there!”
“I’m in New Mexico at the moment, but I have somebody making some calls. I’ll get somebody in Pittsburgh and call you back. I’ll call you back in half an hour or less.”
I agreed to that and we hung up. I looked back at John Thompson and motioned him to start. “Just who the hell is this Westboro whatever and why do they want to kill my son?”
“It’s the Reverend Fred Phelps of the Westboro Baptist Church of Topeka, Kansas. They are the bunch that protest at military funerals,” he began.
I vaguely remembered these crazies. They hated gays and figured that God was punishing America and the Army because we weren’t killing them off. Or something like that. “So? Charlie’s not gay! Trust me, he’s not gay!”
“It doesn’t matter, sir.” Then he began to explain about Reverend Fred Phelps and the Westboro Baptist Church. Phelps was a uniquely American creation. In any sane society somebody would have either locked this guy up in jail or locked him up in a psycho ward, and thrown away the key in either case. He was an old guy, in his mid 70s, an Eagle Scout, a disbarred lawyer, an abusive husband and father, a Democratic political wannabe who kept running for office in Kansas and losing in the primaries, and a preacher.
His Baptist church, Westboro Baptist, was unaffiliated with any other Baptist organization and his theology was suspect, to say the least. It was very small, only a few dozen parishioners, mostly members of his extended family. Church doctrine was organized around whatever Fred Phelps hated the most. Gays headed that list, but it also included almost every religion other than the Baptists, including Judaism, Catholicism, Mormonism, Buddhism, and Islam. He also wasn’t all that thrilled with most Baptists! As a general rule, he hated practically every Democrat in the nation, and yet he continued to run for office in Kansas as a Democrat.
Phelps’ God was a hateful God, and Westboro Baptist’s agenda was simply to picket every military and political funeral around the country, waving signs that said ‘God Hates Fags!’ and all sorts of other crap, including wishes for death to other people. They had a website which basically said the same thing. Today, since they didn’t have any convenient funerals to harass, and they had been in Cleveland on Saturday protesting at the funeral of a soldier who had died when he fell asleep at the wheel and went off the road, Fred and his merry minions decided to protest Charlie being in the hospital. They had crude signs made up and bullhorns blaring ‘God hates fags!’, ‘God hates Catholics!’, ‘God hates Buckman!’, and various exhortations for God and everybody else to kill all of the above.
More than a few states and municipalities had enacted laws banning protests at funerals because of him, and Phelps and his church had been arrested more than a few times for disturbing the peace and other crimes. At least one law suit had made it to Federal Court, suing the Phelps family for emotional distress, and had been found in favor of the complainants; the Supreme Court had not yet taken it up. Phelps kept winning the lawsuits based on the First Amendment right of free speech.
“So what set Marilyn off with these idiots?” I asked.
“When she and your children came out, Phelps saw her, and began yelling into his bull horn that she was an idol worshipper and had raised her children up in the ways of Satan, that sort of thing, and how they were praying that God would strike down her son so that people would learn about how gays were destroying America. What really set her off, we think, was when he called her the Whore of Babylon.”
Frank and Will visibly winced at that, and I just buried my face in my hands. Anywhere else this would almost be amusing. Almost. In reality it was an unmitigated disaster. I was saved from a response by the phone ringing. It was David Boies again, this time with a conference call including a criminal lawyer from Pittsburgh who was taking the case. He assured me that he would go over to the jail immediately and figure things out. Simply let the Secret Service know he was coming. I jotted down his name.
As soon as I hung up, I turned to Thompson. “Tell your people at the Pittsburgh jail to expect this guy, Paul D’Agosta, to be coming. He is to get access to everything. Then get out of here. The next Secret Service agent I see had better be Ralph Basham, and it better be now!”
“Yes, sir!” He turned around and moved out.
I looked over at Frank Stouffer and Will Brucis, both of who were simply sitting their slack jawed and disbelieving. “Please, for the love of God, tell me this isn’t as bad as I think it is.”
They looked at each other and shook their heads. Frank said, “Sorry, boss. I got nothing to help you.”
“It’s probably worse,” added Will. “I can’t even begin to think about how I am writing this press release!”
“Shit! I don’t suppose I can use my power to pardon on my own wife.”