Etheridge Takes On the Phelps

Melissa Etheridge tells USA Today that the pastor of Topeka’s gay hating Westboro Baptist Church inspired a track on her new album, The Awakening. Etheridge told the paper that “The Kingdom of Heaven” is an answer to Fred Phelps and “the hating going on in the name of God. We have to stand up to people and say, ‘You don’t own God.’ I am not a godless person because I’m gay or a musician. I know that my creator made me this way.”

Contacted by e-mail this morning, Shirley Phelps-Roper says her father preached about the song two Sundays ago and calls Etheridge “a deep died [sic] pervert.”