pstrong2007 Choice Outstanding Academic TitlestrongppAt the funeral of Matthew Shepard--the young Wyoming man brutally murdered for being gay--the Reverend Fred Phelps led his parishioners in protest, displaying signs with slogans like Matt Shepard rots in Hell, Fags Die God Laughs, and God Hates Fags. In counter-protest, activists launched an angel action, dressing in angel costumes, with seven-foot high wings, and creating a visible barrier so one would not have to see the hateful signs.ppThough long thought of as one of the most virulently anti-gay genres of contemporary American politics and culture, in emGod Hates Fagsem, Michael Cobb maintains that religious discourses have curiously figured as the most potent and pervasive forms of queer expression and activism throughout the twentieth century. Cobb focuses on how queers have assumed religious rhetoric strategically to respond to the violence done against them, alternating close readings of writings by James Baldwin, Tennessee W