By ninemsn staff
Anti-gay religious leader Fred Phelps has launched a scathing attack on Heath Ledger, saying his death was "the best thing that ever happened" to his family.
Phelps, the 78-year-old pastor of the homosexual hate group from the US known as the Westboro Baptist Church also hit out against Australia, calling it "the land of sodom".
Phelps was referring to Ledger's Oscar-nominated role as a gay cowboy in the 2005 film Brokeback Mountain when he made his extraordinary comments in an interview with A Current Affair.
"Dying time is truth time," he said. "This is the best thing that ever happened to that family.
"The bottom line is that guy went out of his way to spend his time and make a little money, and glamorise and glorify that filthy, deadly sin of sodomy.
"And you're (the public) making the hero out of him!"
The right-wing pastor also had a verbal spray against Australia.
"We've been preaching to Australia for years now, and we've got a map of Australia and we've got (written) across the front of it, all the way from one end to the other: S-O-D-O-M'."
"Australia, the land of the sodomite-damned. Australia, which passes draconian laws to put Bible preachers in jail if they peach the proof about fags."
Phelps and his 70-odd followers are well known across the US for picketing the funerals of fallen American soldiers, gay rights parades and other public events.
The radical Kansas-based church plans to picket Ledger's memorial service which will be held in Los Angeles.
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