In Topeka, Hate Mongering Is a Family Affair

Residents of Topeka, Kans., accustomed to seeing daily placards with such coarse slogans as GOD HATES FAGS and GOT AIDS YET?, have learned to put up with the family responsible for those signs in the same way some people endure living next to screeching railroad tracks. Now they're enduring the typically grating campaign of a young member of the clan who is trying to unseat the first openly gay member of the city council.

Thanks to the Phelps family, this small, gossipy city can perhaps lay claim to being the homophobia capital of the U.S. Since 1991, the Rev. Fred Phelps,...