Crowd Pickets Phelps' Anti-gay Rally

[FORT COLLINS, CO] - Hundreds of people demonstrated in Fort Collins, Colo., against anti-gay Rev. Fred Phelps on the weekend.

Phelps and eight other members of his Westboro Baptist Church had made the trip from Topeka, Kan., to stage a rally on the fourth anniversary of the death of Matthew Shepard.

Phelps, carrying a sign with Shepard's picture and the words "Matt 4 years in hell," picketed outside Hughes Stadium Saturday during the Colorado State-Wyoming football game.

Shepard had been a student at Wyoming before being lured out of a bar by two men, beaten, and left tied to a fence on a rural road. He died 10 days later, in a Fort Collins hospital on Oct. 12, 1998.

Many of those going to the football game ignored the Phelps picketers as they entered the stadium. Some made obscene gestures or yelled at them.

Across the street, nearly 500 people staged a counter demonstration, organized by CSU's Gay Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender Student Services. Some signs read, "Your hate is your hell" and "Stop hate."

Phelps told a radio reporter on Saturday that the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks were God's "wrath and vengeance" against an evil country. "This nation is filthy because it accepts the gay lifestyle," he said.