Alright - here it is!

The mystery father and daughter are Fred Phelps and Shirley Phelps-Roper. I figured they were famous enough to use, but perhaps it was a bit too tricky and perhaps they're not quite prominent enough figures for folks to be able to guess them!

But you guys were really on the right track - I appreciate all the fantastic guess work you did! The connection of religion and politics, focus on taboos, tendency to be 'extreme,' and interest in gaining media attention to highlight issues they wanted to expose (in a negative light), plus the work as lawyers... all dead on!

In case anyone doesn't know of the Phelps family, here's some Wikipedia info:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_phelps
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shir...elps-Roper
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West...ist_Church (their church)

I won't link to their homepage, because it's pretty vile and I'm not sure if that's okay by Tribe - but it's interesting, so look it up if yer curious... There's also a great documentary about them by Louis Theroux (available to watch online):
video.google.com/videoplay

The Phelps family is from Topeka, Kansas. I grew up nearby in Kansas and frequently saw them protesting when I was younger, but they've since gained national attention and a pretty high degree of infamy. Their extended family makes up most of the members of their church - the Wesboro Baptist Church. The church is very heavily focused on protesting against GLBT people and use really nasty, offensive signs at pickets. Their mission is to alert the people of the United States about how God hates gays and anyone who in any way accepts gays. Their ideology and the way they express it is all about divine hatred (one reason I find the Mars/Neptune and Mars/Jupiter connections interesting). They hate plenty of other groups of people, too, but homosexuality is their primary target.

They picket all over, including at other churches, various arts events, and even, horribly, at the funerals of queer folks killed in hate crimes. They also have young children hold very offensive signs which many (understandably) find particularly outrageous. They use a lot of really provocative language, trying to expose how the United States' "acceptance" of GLBT people is the reason God brought about 911 and is killing U.S. soldiers, hence why they've also recently been protesting at soldiers' funerals. Because of the latter reasons, conservative media also HATES the Phelps family ( www.youtube.com/watch ). It's sort of incredible that they've even gotten conservatives so outraged (to the point of the Fox news anchor in that video calls Shirley Phelps-Roper "an abomination" and "the devil"). They're so extreme in their beliefs that some people even speculate that they're undercover liberals working to make extreme conservatives look crazy (which I don't believe, but I could see why people might be in awe of how "out there" they are).

Some refer to their church as a cult, because it's so small, made up of family members, evangelical, and extreme in its beliefs. I also read an expose on Fred (never allowed to be officially published, I believe) saying that he was a horrifically abusive father. It astutely paralleled him as a hate-filled patriarch with his view of God as a hate-filled patriarch. Fred is still technically the leader of the family and the church and is its preacher, but Shirley Phelps-Roper is their publicity head for sure. She's the most outspoken of the group, currently.

Many family members are lawyers and they've used this often to help keep themselves out of legal trouble. They are also sometimes physically assaulted, because they infuriate so many people. In the (above) documentary about them, it's very intriguing that they find it so perplexing that the public absolutely hates them, not making the connection between they hatred they espouse and that as a public reaction. I'd definitely recommend that documentary, as it's a rather complex, compassionate, multi-dimensional look at a family that's hard not to loathe.