Fre Waldron Phelps, Sr. (born November 13, 1929) is the pastor of the Westboro Baptist Church (WBC), an independent Baptist church in Topeka, Kansas. He is a disbarred lawyer and founder of the Phelps Chartered law firm. He is known for preaching with slogans and banners denoting phrases such as "Thank God for 9/11", "America is doomed", "God hates fags," "AIDS cures fags," and "Fags die, God laughs (or mocks)," and claims that God will punish homosexuals as well as people such as Bill O'Reilly, Coretta Scott King, Ronald Reagan, and Howard Dean, whom his church considers "fag-enablers". He has also thanked God for the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and the 2005 flooding of James Bay in central Canada.