{"id":1468,"date":"2017-01-31T16:00:08","date_gmt":"2017-01-31T16:00:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/niemanstoryboard.org\/2017\/01\/31\/annotation-tuesday-adrian-chen-and-unfollow\/"},"modified":"2024-10-19T16:18:56","modified_gmt":"2024-10-19T16:18:56","slug":"annotation-tuesday-adrian-chen-and-unfollow","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/niemanstoryboard.org\/2017\/01\/31\/annotation-tuesday-adrian-chen-and-unfollow\/","title":{"rendered":"Annotation Tuesday! Adrian Chen and \u201cUnfollow\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":" \n
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So much of tech journalism today is antiseptic or fawning, with beat reporters chasing the latest product release or \u201cexclusive\u201d CEO interview. Adrian Chen, on the other hand, is a master at revealing the human side of technology, and often its sinister side.<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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Before leaving to freelance in 2013, he spent four years at Gawker (R.I.P.), where he wrote expos\u00e9s about Silk Road<\/a>, the illicit online marketplace, and Reddit\u2019s most notorious troll<\/a>. He won a Livingston Award this year for \u201cThe Agency<\/a>,\u201d his New York Times Magazine feature on a professional trolling organization in Russia that spreads pro-Kremlin propaganda and fake stories online. (In the wake of the revelations that Moscow interfered with the U.S. presidential election, now\u2019s a good time to reread that one.)<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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For me it\u2019s always about something that\u2019s below the surface or behind the scenes of things that are, on the face of it, outrageous and simple.<\/p><\/blockquote><\/figure>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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Now he\u2019s a staff writer for The New Yorker (where he recently moved beyond tech with a profile<\/a> of Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte).<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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His first story in The New Yorker, \u201cUnfollow,\u201d<\/a> was a portrait of Megan Phelps-Roper, once a hard-core proselytizer for the reviled Westboro Baptist Church, known for its \u201cGod hates fags\u201d picket signs. She took to Twitter to spread the message, but ended up striking up online friendships that opened up cracks in her belief system. Social media wasn\u2019t the only thing that pushed her to leave the religion her grandfather had founded, but it opened the door. Amid the bile of online trolls, it was an Internet-based redemption story.<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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The piece is a good example of how to build a moving narrative out of events that were largely psychological or virtual. Rather than fitting Phelps-Roper\u2019s story into neat boxes, Chen unpacks how gradual and confusing the process of change really is. Most stories about social media regard it with romanticism (this new feature will change the world; Twitter caused the Arab Spring)<\/em> or horror (it\u2019s a breeding ground for terrorists; pedophiles will come for your children<\/em>). Chen treats it as a malleable medium that, like any public arena, can reveal and transform our humanity. It\u2019s the kind of technology reporting we could use more of.<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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What\u2019s the backstory of how \u201cUnfollow\u201d came to be?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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I was aware of Megan because I had covered Westboro\u2019s fight with Anonymous for Gawker. Then the news broke that she and her sister had left, and she tweeted that she was in New York. I messaged her and said I\u2019d love to meet up. I later found out she had read an essay<\/a> I wrote for The New Inquiry about online friendship and felt a resonance with what I\u2019d written. I met her and her sister at the Met, and I was struck by how sweet and open they were. They told me everything that happened to them, but afterward said it was off the record. They were hesitant to do more press because they\u2019d done a couple articles they felt were misrepresentative. I was at Gawker then and wanted to do a Q&A. Later, after meeting with an editor at The New Yorker, I went back to the sisters and pitched them on doing a definitive story. Their main concern was that they didn\u2019t want to be inaccurately portrayed or sensationalized. Then Fred Phelps [their grandfather] died and there was a huge media storm, and they said, \u201cWe\u2019re not ready.\u201d Every couple months I would check in, and finally Megan said, \u201cWe\u2019re ready to do it now.\u201d<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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In this 2010 picture, Westboro Baptist Church member Jacob Phelps holds signs in front of the Supreme Court in Washington as the court heard arguments in the dispute between Albert Snyder and members of the church. Carolyn Kaster\/Associated Press<\/small><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n<\/div> \n
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Did any of your preconceptions get overturned during the reporting process?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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The existing narrative was that she had been on Twitter and started arguing with David Abitbol [a Jewish blogger] about doctrine, and he made this one point that was the crack that grew bigger and bigger, and she decided she didn\u2019t believe in the church\u2019s doctrine anymore. I went in expecting an \u201cAha moment.\u201d But it was much more complicated and multilayered. There were multiple things going on on Twitter, in the church and in her own life and mind that all kind of converged.<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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\u201cUnfollow\u201d has gotten a lot of attention. What do you think resonates with people?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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It was first of all a feel-good story: an inspiring tale of somebody who went from being in this horrible situation, having unbelievably hurtful beliefs and dedicating their lives to hurting people, to the complete opposite. I think people were very touched by that transformation, like I was. I got a lot of people saying, \u201cWow, there actually is hope in the world.\u201d<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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It also came out at a time when ISIS was coming up. A lot of the narrative around social media and the Internet was: This is a breeding ground for terrorism. My story countered that in a way people liked. People were saying, This is why we should engage with people online and not just get into flame wars. It was a model of how to live on the Internet a little better. Everyone has had the experience of coming across someone online you find vile and incomprehensible. It was a universal experience and an optimistic view of humanity.<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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That\u2019s something I always say to people: Don\u2019t necessarily try to follow the big stories in whatever field. It\u2019s much more interesting to focus on topics and themes and see what you might be able to dig into that illustrates the issues at hand.<\/p><\/blockquote><\/figure>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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In many ways, Gawker and The New Yorker couldn\u2019t be more different. What did you learn at Gawker that\u2019s helped you?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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I learned how to figure out what good stories were, and which stories would get attention and stand out. For me it\u2019s always about something that\u2019s below the surface or behind the scenes of things that are, on the face of it, outrageous and simple. I like looking at things that a lot of people don\u2019t think are worthwhile or complex or interesting and going into depth about how they work and who the people are behind them. Trying to find the surprising angle or person in these very well-trodden domains is always a good thing. I think about the obvious thing that everybody knows about this, and think: What\u2019s the thing that subverts this and shows it in another light? Having good ideas is more important than anything, because editors are really looking for ideas that stand out and aren\u2019t the same old thing. The Megan Phelps story was a culmination of things I was writing about at Gawker \u2014 explaining things that seemed really horrible.<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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How are you able to get past the tech press releases to find these fascinating stories?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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It\u2019s reading a lot of news. \u201cThe Agency\u201d came from reading a story on BuzzFeed about it and thinking, \u201cThere\u2019s a lot more to this than this story.\u201d I\u2019m never that interested in the big tech stories of the day or what the tech press is covering. I think there are big topics that are really interesting, like privacy, anonymity and online hate speech. If you are keeping those topics in mind as something you want to explore, you\u2019ll find stories that dramatize them in an interesting way. That\u2019s something I always say to people: Don\u2019t necessarily try to follow the big stories in whatever field. It\u2019s much more interesting to focus on topics and themes and see what you might be able to dig into that illustrates the issues at hand.<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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My questions are in red, his responses in blue. <\/em><\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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Unfollow: How a prized daughter of the Westboro Baptist Church came to question its beliefs.<\/a><\/h2>\n\nBy Adrian Chen<\/em>
\nThe New Yorker. November 23, 2015.<\/em>
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\nOn December 1, 2009, to commemorate World AIDS Day, Twitter announced a promotion: if users employed the hashtag #red, their tweets would appear highlighted in red. Megan Phelps-Roper, a twenty-three-year-old legal assistant, seized the opportunity. \u201cThank God for AIDS!\u201d she tweeted that morning. \u201cYou won\u2019t repent of your rebellion that brought His wrath on you in this incurable scourge, so expect more & worse! #red.\u201d <\/a>You probably had thousands of her tweets to choose from. Why did you opt for this one in the lede? Did you see it as a turning point?<\/span> Luckily Megan didn\u2019t delete her old tweets after she left the church\u2014she told me this was out of principle because she didn\u2019t want to hide from her past. So, yeah, there were a lot! But this was the first tweet that really \u201cwent viral,\u201d so it seemed an obvious place to start. I think it also showed her fluency with the platform, and the fallout was the first in a pattern where celebrities and influential users denounced her views, but in the process amplified them.<\/span><\/span>
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\nAs a member of the Westboro Baptist Church, in Topeka, Kansas, Phelps-Roper believed that AIDS was a curse sent by God. She believed that all manner of other tragedies\u2014war, natural disaster, mass shootings\u2014were warnings from God to a doomed nation, and that it was her duty to spread the news of His righteous judgments. To protest the increasing acceptance of homosexuality in America, the Westboro Baptist Church picketed the funerals of gay men who died of AIDS and of soldiers killed in Iraq and Afghanistan. Members held signs with slogans like \u201cGod Hates Fags\u201d and \u201cThank God for Dead soldiers,\u201d and the outrage that their efforts attracted had turned the small church, which had fewer than a hundred members, into a global symbol of hatred. <\/a>Was it challenging to describe beliefs that (I\u2019m assuming) seemed nutty and often offensive to you? How did you approach that?<\/span> Actually, I agree with Westboro on most things. No, that is a joke. Going into it I had a sort of hunch that Westboro didn\u2019t really believe everything they were preaching\u2014surely it was a put-on at some level for attention, right? As Megan patiently explained the logic behind their doctrine over and over again, I came to understand that she, at least, very sincerely believed these things and really grappled with them on a daily basis to make sure she understood their biblical basis. Everything stems from specific passages, and these passages interlocked into what seemed like an internally consistent belief system. Once I got that, I could just work on describing the logic. One thing I found useful was having Megan explain how specific tweets\u2014which seemed so incomprehensibly cruel\u2014could be defended by pointing back to the words of the Bible.<\/span><\/span>
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\nWestboro had long used the Internet to spread its message. In 1994, the church launched a Web site, www.godhatesfags.com, and early on it had a chat room where visitors could interact with members of Westboro. As a child, Phelps-Roper spent hours there, sparring with strangers. She learned about Twitter in 2008, after reading an article about an American graduate student in Egypt who had used it to notify his friends that he had been arrested while photographing riots. She opened an account but quickly lost interest\u2014at the time, Twitter was still used mostly by early-adopting techies\u2014until someone e-mailed Westboro\u2019s Web site, in the summer of 2009, and asked if the church used the service. Phelps-Roper, who is tall, with voluminous curly hair and pointed features, volunteered to tweet for the congregation. Her posts could be easily monitored, since she worked at Phelps Chartered, the family law firm, beside her mother, Shirley, an attorney. Moreover, Megan was known for her mastery of the Bible and for her ability to spread Westboro\u2019s doctrine. \u201cShe had a well-sharpened tongue, so to speak,\u201d Josh Phelps, one of Megan\u2019s cousins and a former member of Westboro, told me. <\/a>How many current and former members of Westboro ultimately agreed to talk to you? How many did you reach out to?<\/span> I think I spoke to six or seven. I probably reached out to a dozen? A surprising number of people have left over the years; some are very public (like Nate Phelps, Megan\u2019s uncle, who has become a strident gay rights activist), while some have just faded into anonymity, even changing their names to avoid further attention.<\/span> <\/span>
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\nIn August, 2009, Phelps-Roper, under the handle @meganphelps, posted a celebratory tweet when Ted Kennedy died (\u201cHe defied God at every turn, teaching rebellion against His laws. Ted\u2019s in hell!\u201d) and a description of a picket that the church held at an American Idol concert in Kansas City (\u201cTotally AWESOME! Tons going in & taking pics\u2014even tho others tried to block our signs\u201d). <\/a>Again, out of all her tweets, what struck you about these?<\/span> The giddy tone and pop culture references and their contrast with the meanness of the message struck me as the defining sensibility of her Twitter feed.<\/span> <\/span> On September 1st, her sister Bekah e-mailed church members to explain the utility of Twitter: \u201cNow Megan has 87 followers and more are trickling in all the time. So every time we find something else to picket, or have some new video or picture we want to post (or just something that we see on the news and want to comment about)\u201487 people get first-hand, gospel commentary from Megan Marie.\u201d <\/a>Did you have all of the sisters\u2019 emails at your disposal? What a treasure trove!<\/span> Megan had kept her emails. She keeps everything. She described herself as sort of a hoarder. Very good quality to have in a source!<\/span> <\/span>
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\nA couple of hours after Phelps-Roper posted her tweet on World AIDS Day, she checked her e-mail and discovered numerous automated messages notifying her of new Twitter followers. Her tweet had been discovered by the comedian Michael Ian Black, who had more than a million followers. He was surprised that a member of the Westboro Baptist Church was on Twitter at all. \u201cI sort of thought they would be this fire-and-brimstone sort of Pentecostal anti-technology clan that would be removed from the world,\u201d he told me. He tweeted, \u201cSort of obsessed w\/ @meganphelps. Sample tweet: \u2018AIDS is God\u2019s curse on you.\u2019 Let her feel your love.\u201d The director Kevin Smith and \u201cThe Office\u201d star Rainn Wilson mocked her, as did many of their followers.
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\nPhelps-Roper was exhilarated by the response. Since elementary school, she had given hundreds of interviews about Westboro, but the reaction on Twitter seemed more real than a quote in a newspaper. \u201cIt\u2019s not just like \u2018Yes, all these people are seeing it,\u2019 \u201d she told me. \u201cIt\u2019s proof that people are seeing it and reacting to it.\u201d Phelps-Roper spent much of the morning responding to angry tweets, citing Bible passages. \u201cI think your plan is back-firing,\u201d she taunted Black. \u201cYour followers are just nasty haters of God! You should do something about that . . . like tell them some truth every once in a while. Like this: God hates America.\u201d That afternoon, as Phelps-Roper picketed a small business in Topeka with other Westboro members, she was still glued to her iPhone. \u201cI did not want to be the one to let it die,\u201d she said.
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\nBy the end of the day, Phelps-Roper had more than a thousand followers. She took the incident as an encouraging sign that Westboro\u2019s message was well suited to social media. She loved that Twitter let her talk to large numbers of people without the filter of a journalist. During the next few months, Phelps-Roper spearheaded Westboro\u2019s push into the social-media age, using Twitter to offer a window into life in the church and giving it an air of accessibility. <\/a>Were you following her while she was part of Westboro?<\/span>I think I started following her after she had a spat with the hacktivist collective Anonymous, who I frequently covered for Gawker, back in the day. I\u2019m trying to remember what happened. I think I unfollowed her because after a few days of \u201cGod Hates Fags\u201d tweets, the novelty wears off.<\/span><\/span>
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\nIt was easy for Phelps-Roper to write things on Twitter that made other people cringe. She had been taught the church\u2019s vision of God\u2019s truth since birth. Her grandfather Fred Phelps established the church, in 1955. Megan\u2019s mother was the fifth of Phelps\u2019s thirteen children. Megan\u2019s father, Brent Roper, had joined the church as a teen-ager. Every Sunday, Megan and her ten siblings sat in Westboro\u2019s small wood-panelled church as her grandfather delivered the sermon. Fred Phelps preached a harsh Calvinist doctrine in a resounding Southern drawl. He believed that all people were born depraved, and that only a tiny elect who repented would be saved from Hell. A literalist, Phelps believed that contemporary Christianity, with its emphasis on God\u2019s love, preached a perverted version of the Bible. Phelps denounced other Christians so vehemently that when Phelps-Roper was young she thought \u201cChristian\u201d was another word for evil. Phelps believed that God hated unrepentant sinners. God hated the politicians who were allowing the United States to descend into a modern-day Sodom and Gomorrah. He hated the celebrities who glorified fornication.
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\nPhelps also believed that fighting the increasing tolerance of homosexuality was the key moral issue of our time. To illustrate gay sin, he described exotic sex acts in lurid detail. \u201cHe would say things like \u2018These guys are slobbering around on each other and sucking on each other,\u2019\u201d Megan said. In awe of his conviction and deep knowledge of Scripture, she developed a revulsion to homosexuality. \u201cWe thought of him as a star in the right hand of God,\u201d she said. <\/a>A lingering question I had while reading the story was: How did this man get so many people to vehemently believe him \u2014 people who were in many ways in touch with the outside world? How far did you go in trying to understand this, and do you feel like you arrived at a satisfying answer?<\/span>Alas, I didn\u2019t have the space, or time, to go much into Fred Phelps\u2019 backstory. He certainly had a strength of conviction and a weird charm\u2014if he wanted to charm\u2014that were infectious, according to Westboro members I spoke to. But he actually never got many people to believe him. The congregation was mostly his children and their grandchildren and never numbered more than 100. And I think that is the crux of it: It was as much about the strength of the WBC community, a family mission, that kept people in line.<\/span><\/span>
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\nWestboro had started as an offshoot of Topeka\u2019s East Side Baptist Church, but by the time Phelps-Roper was born its congregation was composed mostly of Fred Phelps\u2019s adult children and their families.
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\nNevertheless, Phelps-Roper didn\u2019t grow up in isolation. Westboro believed that its members could best preach to the wicked by living among them. The children of Westboro attended Topeka public schools, and Phelps-Roper ran track, listened to Sublime CDs, and read Stephen King novels. If you knew the truth in your heart, Westboro believed, even the filthiest products of pop culture couldn\u2019t defile you. She was friendly with her classmates and her teachers, but viewed them with extreme suspicion\u2014she knew that they were either intentionally evil or deluded by God. <\/a>Did you try to talk with any of her classmates and teachers about how they perceived Megan and the other Westboro children? Or would that have been an unnecessary tangent to an already long story?<\/span> I spoke with a couple of teachers, and they said the Westboro kids were really disciplined and generally excellent students who kept to themselves but didn\u2019t cause much trouble in school. I didn\u2019t speak to classmates, because it seemed to me they were kept pretty much at arm\u2019s length.<\/span> <\/span> \u201cWe would always say, They have nothing to offer us,\u201d Phelps-Roper said. She never went to dances. Dating was out of the question. The Westboro students had a reputation for being diligent and polite in class, but at lunch they would picket the school, dodging food hurled at them by incensed classmates.
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\nPhelps-Roper was constantly around family. Nine of Fred Phelps\u2019s children were still in the church, and most of them had large families of their own. Many of them worked as lawyers at Phelps Chartered. <\/a>I’m so curious: What kind of cases did they handle, and who were their clients?<\/span> I don\u2019t recall; I think they do all sorts of stuff. And from what I understand they have a successful practice. Despite them being pariahs in the community, Topekans have realized they\u2019re good lawyers.<\/span> <\/span>The church was in a residential neighborhood in southwest Topeka, and its members had bought most of the houses on the block around it. Their back yards were surrounded by a tall fence, creating a huge courtyard that was home to a trampoline, an in-ground pool, a playground, and a running track. They called the Westboro compound the Block, and considered it a sanctuary in a world full of evil. \u201cWe did lots of fun normal-kids stuff,\u201d Megan said.
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\nThe Phelps-Roper home was the biggest on the Block, and a room in the basement acted as a kind of community center for Westboro. An alcove in the kitchen had cubbies for the signs that were used in pickets. On summer afternoons, Shirley led Bible readings for young members. She had a central role in nearly every aspect of Westboro\u2019s operations: she was its media co\u00f6rdinator, planned the pickets, and managed Phelps Chartered. A parade of journalists and Westboro members sought meetings with her. Louis Theroux, a British filmmaker who made two documentaries about Westboro, said, \u201cMy feeling was that there was a pecking order and there was an unacknowledged hierarchy, and at the top of it was Shirley\u2019s family.\u201d Starting in middle school, Megan worked side by side with Shirley; among her siblings, she had a uniquely strong bond with her mother. \u201cI felt like I could ask her anything about anything,\u201d Megan told me.
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\nOther young Westboro members regarded Shirley with a mixture of fear and respect. \u201cShirley had a very abrasive personality,\u201d Josh Phelps said. But, he added, she could be remarkably tender when dispensing advice or compliments. Megan lacked Shirley\u2019s hard edge. \u201cShe was just happy in general,\u201d her cousin Libby Phelps, one of Megan\u2019s close friends, told me.
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\nShirley, as Westboro\u2019s de-facto spokeswoman, granted interviews to almost any outlet, no matter how obscure or adversarial. \u201cShe was smart and funny, and would answer impertinent questions and not be offended about it,\u201d Megan said. When reporters wanted the perspective of a young person, Shirley let them speak to Megan. In sixth grade, Megan gave her first live interview when she answered a call from a couple of radio d.j.s who wanted to speak to her mother. Megan recalls, \u201cThey thought it was hilarious, this eleven-year-old talking about hating Jews.\u201d
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\nObedience was one of the most important values that Shirley instilled in Megan. She would sum up the Bible in three words: \u201cObey. Obey. Obey.\u201d The smallest hint of dissent was seen as an intolerable act of rebellion against God. Megan was taught that there would always be a tension between what she felt and thought as a human and what the Bible required of her. But giving place to rebellious thoughts was the first step down the path toward Hell. \u201cThe tone of your voice or the look on your face\u2014you could get into so much trouble for these things, because they betray what\u2019s in your heart,\u201d she said. Her parents took to heart the proverb \u201cHe that spareth his rod hateth his son.\u201d Her uncle gave them a novelty wooden paddle inscribed with the tongue-in-cheek direction \u201cMay be used on any child from 5 to 75,\u201d and her father hung it on the wall next to the family photos. <\/a>What was fact-checking like for the story? Is Drain the only current church member who engaged with you? Did you have to take Megan\u2019s word for details like this?<\/span> Fact-checking was pretty straightforward. Megan was always trying to tell a story that would seem accurate not just to her but to her family as well. Megan has a really astonishingly good memory, and this was the kind of detail I felt pretty comfortable that she would not misremember. Drain was the only current member, yes\u2014at the time he was the gatekeeper to the entire church (not sure if that\u2019s still the case), which was of course a big change from Megan\u2019s time, when it was her mom.<\/span><\/span> The joke hit close to home for Phelps-Roper, who was spanked well into her teens. Sometimes, she told me, \u201cit went too far, for sure.\u201d But, she added, \u201cI also always knew that they were just trying to do what God required of them.\u201d
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\nAs she grew older, she came to find comfort, and even joy, in submitting her will to the word of God. Children in Westboro must make a profession of faith before they are baptized and become full members of the church. One day in June, when she was thirteen, her grandfather baptized her in the shallow end of the Block\u2019s pool. \u201cI wanted to do everything right,\u201d she said. \u201cI wanted to be good, and I wanted to be obedient, and I wanted to be the object of my parents\u2019 pride. I wanted to go to Heaven.\u201d
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\nWestboro started picketing in June, 1991, when Phelps-Roper was five years old. Fred Phelps believed that Gage Park, less than a mile from the Block, had become overrun with gay men cruising for sex. Phelps claimed that he was inspired to launch the Great Gage Park Decency Drive, as he called it, after one of his young grandsons was propositioned while biking through the park. <\/a>Where did this detail come from?<\/span> This was the official WBC origin story of the pickets. Phelps said it in a few interviews with local newspapers when they first started picketing. They sent a letter to the mayor at the time that claimed as much, according to a documentary that\u2019s up on their website (the documentary Steve Drain actually made before joining the church.)<\/span><\/span>The church sought redress from city officials, to no avail, so throughout the summer church members, including Megan, protested every day, walking in a circle while holding signs with messages written in permanent marker such as \u201cWarning!\u00a0Gays in the Bushes!\u00a0Watch Your Children!\u201d and \u201cAnd God Over-Threw Sodom.\u201d
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\nThe pickets were met with an immediate backlash from the community, but Phelps was not deterred. He had been a committed civil-rights attorney in the nineteen-sixties and seventies, one of the few lawyers to represent black Kansans in discrimination suits, before the state disbarred him, in 1979, for harassing a court reporter who failed to have a transcript ready in time. <\/a>That\u2019s fascinating! Did you dig into his transformation at all? That seems like a whole other story of its own.<\/span>Unfortunately, Phelps\u2019 backstory was beyond the scope of the piece. There has been one book written about him, \u201cAddicted to Hate,\u201d by Jon Michael Bell. The book is fairly comprehensive, but I was told by church members it has a lot of inaccuracies. According to the book, one key moment in Phelps\u2019 journey towards what he became was when he was disbarred; he saw it as discrimination for his Bible views, and his stand for social justice, and it hardened his us-against-the world mentality.<\/span><\/span>Now Westboro targeted local churches, politicians, businesses, journalists, and anyone else who criticized Phelps\u2019s crusade. Throughout the nineties, Westboro members crisscrossed the country, protesting the funerals of AIDS victims and gay-pride parades. They picketed the funeral of Matthew Shepard, the gay man whose murder, in what was widely believed to be a hate crime, became a rallying cry for gay-rights activists. They picketed high schools, concerts, conferences, and film festivals, no matter how tenuous the connection to homosexuality or other sins. \u201cEventually, the targets broadened such that everyone was a target,\u201d Phelps-Roper said.
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\nPhelps-Roper enjoyed picketing. When the targets were within driving distance, the group packed into a minivan and her grandfather saw them off from his driveway. \u201cAt five in the morning, he\u2019d come out and give us all hugs,\u201d she said. When they flew, she and Libby recounted \u201cSaturday Night Live\u201d skits. Amazing things happened on the trips. In New Orleans, they ran into Ehud Barak, the former Israeli Prime Minister, and serenaded him with an anti-Semitic parody of Israel\u2019s national anthem. Phelps-Roper learned to hold two signs in each hand, a technique that Westboro members called the Butterfly. Her favorite slogans were \u201cGod is your enemy,\u201d \u201cNo Peace for the Wicked,\u201d \u201cGod hates your idols,\u201d and \u201cMourn for your sins.\u201d She laughed and sang and smiled in the face of angry crowds. \u201cIf you were ever upset or even scared, you do not show it, because this is not the time or the place,\u201d she said. Phelps-Roper believed that she was engaged in a profound act of love. Leviticus 19:17 commands, \u201cThou shalt not hate thy brother in thine heart: thou shalt in any wise rebuke thy neighbour, and not suffer sin upon him.\u201d \u201cWhen you see someone is backing into traffic, you yell at them,\u201d Phelps-Roper said. \u201cYou don\u2019t mope around and say it\u2019s such a good idea.\u201d <\/a>This quote does a good job of shedding light on the thought process behind some of Westboro\u2019s despicable actions. Were you trying to humanize the people behind the angry slogans as much as possible? How did you balance that with not justifying or apologizing for their hurtful beliefs?<\/span> Megan told me that she was always driven by a desire to do good and to save people and to be obedient to God. Pretty much everyone else in the church I spoke to stressed Megan\u2019s good intentions, even if they suggested other members did not have such pure motivations. One of the compelling things about Megan\u2019s story, pre-Twitter, was how her good intentions got twisted towards really terrible ends thanks to their screwed-up doctrine. To make this point convincingly, I wanted to show how a \u201cgood\u201d person can do all this stuff but still see themselves as doing the right thing. I guess that is humanizing her, but in the end I think this shows just how warped WBC\u2019s doctrine is\u2014if it can convince this sweet person that the only way to save people is by hurting them so deeply.<\/span><\/span>One of the most common questions she was asked on the picket line was why she hated gay people so much. She didn\u2019t hate gay people, she would reply, God hated gay people. And the rest of the world hated them, too, by cheering them on as they doomed themselves to Hell. \u201cWe love these fags more than anyone,\u201d she would say.
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\nIn the summer of 2005, Westboro began protesting the funerals of soldiers killed in Iraq and Afghanistan, holding signs like \u201cThank God for IEDs.\u201d \u201cThey turned the country over to the fags\u2014they\u2019re coming home in body bags!\u201d Fred Phelps would say. He believed that 9\/11 was God\u2019s punishment for America\u2019s embrace of homosexuality, but that, instead of repenting, Americans had drowned this warning in a flood of patriotism. Phelps believed that God had killed the soldiers to warn a doomed America, and that it was the church\u2019s job to make this fact explicit for the mourners. The scale of the picketing increased dramatically. One of Phelps-Roper\u2019s aunts checked the Department of Defense Web site every day for notifications of casualties. The outrage sparked by the soldier-funeral protests dwarfed anything that Phelps-Roper had experienced previously. Crowds of rowdy, sometimes violent counterprotesters tried to block their signs with huge American flags. A group of motorcyclists called the Patriot Guard Riders eventually began to follow Westboro members around the country, revving their engines to drown out their singing.
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\nPhelps-Roper picketed her first military funeral in July, 2005, in Omaha. She was nineteen years old and a sophomore at Washburn University, a secular public college in Topeka, where many Westboro children went. The Westboro members stood across the street from the church, in a quiet neighborhood in South Omaha, as the mourners filed in. \u201cEverybody\u2019s in close quarters, and marines in dress blues are just staring at us with\u2014the word that comes to mind is hateful \u2018disgust.\u2019 Like \u2018How could you possibly do this?\u2019\u201d Phelps-Roper said. But, before the picket, she asked her mother to walk her through the Bible passages that justified their actions. \u201cI\u2019m, like, O.K., it\u2019s there,\u201d she said. \u201cThis is right.\u201d She added, \u201cThis was the only hope for mankind, and I was so grateful to be part of this ministry.\u201d
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\nIn September, 2009, when Phelps-Roper began to use Twitter in earnest, Westboro was preparing for the end of the world. Fred Phelps had preached for years that the end was near, but his sermons grew more dire after Barack Obama\u2019s election in 2008. Phelps believed that Obama was the Antichrist, and that his Presidency signalled the beginning of the Apocalypse. The sense of looming calamity was heightened by a multimillion-dollar judgment against the church that had been awarded, in 2007, to Albert Snyder, who sued Westboro after it picketed the funeral of his son Matt, a U.S. marine killed in Iraq. Westboro members drew prophecies from the Book of Revelation about how the end might unfold. First, the Supreme Court would overturn the Snyder verdict. The country would be so enraged by Westboro\u2019s victory that its members would be forced to flee to Israel. Obama would be crowned king of the world, then lead every nation in war against Israel. Israel would be destroyed, and only a hundred and forty-four thousand Jews who repented for killing Jesus would be spared. (Revelation says that a hundred and forty-four thousand \u201cchildren of Israel\u201d are \u201credeemed from among men.\u201d) Westboro members would lead these converted Jews through the wilderness until Christ returned and ushered them into Heaven. Phelps-Roper and her family members all got passports, so that they could travel to Israel. One day, she was in the grocery store and picked up a container of yogurt with Oreo pieces. She stared at it, thinking, We won\u2019t have modern conveniences like this in the wilderness. Is it better to learn to live without them, or to enjoy them while we can? <\/a>This is a great detail. How did you elicit it?<\/span>As I said, Megan\u2019s memory is amazing. This was just one moment she remembered. I think for her now, it symbolizes how she was really willing to believe almost anything at that time\u2014no matter how outlandish. She mentioned it a couple times while we were talking about this period, and I put it in.<\/span><\/span>
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\nStill, she had a hard time believing in aspects of the future foretold by some church members, like the idea that they would soon be living in pink caves in Jordan. \u201cWe were making specific predictions about things without having, in my mind, sufficient scriptural support,\u201d she said. Many other members shared her bewilderment, she found, and so she turned to Twitter for answers. Most of the prophecies centered on Jews, so she found a list, published by the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, a syndicated news service, of the hundred most influential Jewish Twitter users. She created an account under the pseudonym Marissa Cohen and followed many of the people on the list, hoping to learn if Westboro\u2019s prophecies were coming true.
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\nAs the prophecies were developed, Westboro expanded the focus of its preaching to include the Jewish community. Members hoped to find the hundred and forty-four thousand repentant Jews. They picketed synagogues and sent anti-Semitic DVDs to Jewish organizations. Westboro called the protests the Fateful Fig Find, after a parable in the Book of Jeremiah that compares Jews who had been captured by the Babylonians to two baskets of figs, one good and one \u201cnaughty.\u201d Phelps-Roper thought that this initiative was more explicitly supported by the Bible than other parts of the prophecies were, so she threw herself into the effort. She wrote the church\u2019s press release: \u201cWBC is looking for the good figs among the Christ-rejecting hypocrites!\u201d She looked at the J.T.A. list of influential Jews and saw that No. 2 was David Abitbol, a Jerusalem-based Web developer and the founder of the Jewish-culture blog Jewlicious. With more than four thousand followers and a habit of engaging with those who tweeted at him, he would be a prime target for Westboro\u2019s message of repentance, she figured.
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\nOn September 9, 2009, Shirley gave an interview to an Atlanta radio station, and Phelps-Roper shared a quote on Twitter. Phelps-Roper tagged Abitbol in the post so that he would see it. She wrote, \u201cAtlanta: radio guy says \u2018Finish this sentence: the only good Jew is a . . .\u2019 Ma says \u2018Repentant\u00a0Jew!\u2019 The only answer that suffices @jewlicious.\u201d \u201cThanks Megan!\u201d he responded. \u201cThat\u2019s handy what with Yom Kippur coming up!\u201d Phelps-Roper posted another tweet, spelling it out more clearly. \u201cOh & @jewlicious? Your dead rote rituals == true repentance. We know the diff. Rev. 3:9 You keep promoting sin, which belies the ugly truth.\u201d \u201cDead rote rituals?\u201d he responded. \u201cU mean like holding up God Hates Shrimp, err I mean Fag signs up? Your \u2018ministry\u2019 is a joke.\u201d <\/a>In this story, a lot of the action and dialogue takes place on Twitter. What was it like having that medium as a key source, compared to more traditional ones (interviews, documents, perhaps letters or emails)?<\/span>It was both a blessing and a curse. A blessing because I was able to have a real-time record of her changing style and friendships over time. But it was also so overwhelming. I felt like I had to read every tweet or I\u2019d be missing something important!<\/span><\/span>
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\n\u201cAnybody\u2019s initial response to being confronted with the sort of stuff Westboro Baptist Church says is to tell them to fuck off,\u201d Abitbol told me. Abitbol is a large man in his early fifties who often has a shaggy Mohawk, which he typically covers with a Montreal Expos baseball cap. He was familiar with Westboro from its godhatesfags.com Web site. He had lived in Montreal in the nineties, and had become fascinated with the explosion of hate sites on the early Internet. \u201cMost people, when they first get access to the Internet, the first thing they wanted to see was naked ladies,\u201d he told me. \u201cThe first thing I wanted to see was something I didn\u2019t have access to in Montreal: neo-Nazis and hate groups.\u201d There were few widely available search engines at the time, so he spent hours tracking down the Web sites of Holocaust deniers, anti-Semites, and racists of all types. He and a friend eventually created a directory called Net Hate, which listed the sites along with mocking descriptions. \u201cWe didn\u2019t want to debate them, we just wanted to make fun of them,\u201d he said. As for the Westboro members, \u201cI just thought they were crazy.\u201d
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\nPhelps-Roper got into an extended debate with Abitbol on Twitter. \u201cArguing is fun when you think you have all the answers,\u201d she said. But he was harder to get a bead on than other critics she had encountered. He had read the Old Testament in its original Hebrew, and was conversant in the New Testament as well. She was taken aback to see that he signed all his blog posts on Jewlicious with the handle \u201cck\u201d\u2014for \u201cchrist killer\u201d\u2014as if it were a badge of honor. Yet she found him funny and engaging. \u201cI knew he was evil, but he was friendly, so I was especially wary, because you don\u2019t want to be seduced away from the truth by a crafty deceiver,\u201d Phelps-Roper said. <\/a>Was it easy for Megan to recall her thoughts before she left the church? Considering the massive break in her identity, did it seem as if you were asking her to describe a different person altogether?<\/span> I think it was easy for her\u2014she had so much practice explaining her beliefs to people. One of the key points that I hope the story brought out is that her loss of faith was not a complete break in her personality. It was a struggle with old beliefs that led gradually, and with the help of other people, to a new understanding of what was right.<\/span><\/span>
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\nAbitbol had learned while running Net Hate that relating to hateful people on a human level was the best way to deal with them. He saw that Phelps-Roper had a lot of followers and was an influential person in the church, so he wanted to counter her message. And he wanted to humanize Jews to Westboro. \u201cI wanted to be like really nice so that they would have a hard time hating me,\u201d he said. One day, he tweeted about the television show \u201cGossip Girl,\u201d and Phelps-Roper responded jocularly about one of its characters. \u201cYou know, for an evil something something, you sure do crack me up,\u201d Abitbol responded.
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\nOn December 20, 2009, Phelps-Roper was in the basement of her house, for a church function, when she checked Twitter on her phone and saw that Brittany Murphy, the thirty-two-year-old actress, had died. When she read the tweet aloud, other church members reacted with glee, celebrating another righteous judgment from God. \u201cLots of people were talking about going to picket her funeral,\u201d Phelps-Roper said. When Phelps-Roper was younger, news of terrible events had given her a visceral thrill. On 9\/11, she was in the crowded hallway of her high school when she overheard someone talking about how an airplane had hit the World Trade Center. \u201cAwesome!\u201d she exclaimed, to the horror of a student next to her. She couldn\u2019t wait to picket Ground Zero. (The following March, she and other Westboro members travelled to New York City to protest what they described in a press release as \u201cFDNY fags and terrorists.\u201d) But Phelps-Roper had loved Murphy in \u201cClueless,\u201d and she felt an unexpected pang\u2014not quite sadness, but something close\u2014over her death. As she continued scrolling through Twitter, she saw that it was full of people mourning Murphy. The contrast between the grief on Twitter and the buoyant mood in the basement unsettled her. She couldn\u2019t bring herself to post a tweet thanking God for Murphy\u2019s death. \u201cI felt like I would be such a jackass to go on and post something like that,\u201d she said.
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\nHer hesitance reflected a growing concern for the feelings of people outside Westboro. Church members disdained human feelings as something that people worshipped instead of the Bible. They even had a sign: \u201cGod hates your feelings.\u201d They disregarded people\u2019s feelings in order to break their idols. Just a few months earlier, the Westboro Web site had received an e-mail arguing that the church\u2019s constant use of the word \u201cfag\u201d was needlessly offensive. \u201cGet a grip, you presumptuous toad,\u201d Phelps-Roper had replied. She signed off, \u201cHave a lovely day. You\u2019re going to Hell.\u201d
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\nBut on Twitter Phelps-Roper found that it was better to take a gentler tone. For one thing, Twitter\u2019s hundred-and-forty-character limit made it hard to fit both a florid insult and a scriptural point. And if she made things personal the conversation was inevitably derailed by a flood of angry tweets. She still preached God\u2019s hate, and still liberally deployed the word \u201cfag,\u201d but she also sprinkled her tweets with cheerful exclamations and emoticons. She became adept at deflecting critics with a wry joke. \u201cSo, when do you drink the Kool-aid?\u201d one user tweeted at her. \u201cMore of a Sunkist lemonade drinker, myself. =)\u201d she replied. Phelps-Roper told me, \u201cWe weren\u2019t supposed to care about what people thought about us, but I did.\u201d As she developed her affable rhetorical style, she justified it with a proverb: \u201cBy long forbearing is a prince persuaded, and a soft tongue breaketh the bone.\u201d
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\nOther Twitter users were fascinated by the dissonance between Westboro\u2019s loathsome reputation and the goofy, pop-culture-obsessed millennial who Phelps-Roper seemed to be on Twitter. \u201cI remember just thinking, How can somebody who appreciates good music believe so many hateful things?\u201d Graham Hughes said. In November, 2009, Hughes, then a college student in British Columbia, interviewed Phelps-Roper for a religious-studies class. Afterward, they corresponded frequently on Twitter. When Hughes was hospitalized with a brain infection, Phelps-Roper showed him more concern than many of his real-life friends. \u201cI knew there was a genuine connection between us,\u201d he said.
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\nAs Phelps-Roper continued to tweet, she developed relationships with more people like Hughes. There was a Jewish marketing consultant in Brooklyn who abhorred Westboro\u2019s tactics but supported the church\u2019s right to express its views. There was a young Australian guy who tweeted political jokes that she and her younger sister Grace found hilarious. \u201cIt was like I was becoming part of a community,\u201d Phelps-Roper said. By following her opponents\u2019 feeds, she absorbed their thoughts on the world, learned what food they ate, and saw photographs of their babies. \u201cI was beginning to see them as human,\u201d she said. When she read about an earthquake that struck off Canada\u2019s Pacific coast, she sent a concerned tweet to Graham Hughes: \u201cIsn\u2019t this close to you?\u201d
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\nIn February, 2010, Westboro protested a festival in Long Beach, California, that David Abitbol had organized through Jewlicious. Phelps-Roper\u2019s conversations with Abitbol had continued through the winter, and she knew that debating him in person would be more challenging than on Twitter. The church set up its picket a block from the Jewish community center where the festival was taking place. Phelps-Roper held four signs, while an Israeli flag dragged on the ground from her leg. The church members were quickly mobbed by an angry crowd. \u201cEach of us was really surrounded,\u201d Phelps-Roper said. \u201cTwo really old women came up behind me and started whispering the filthiest stuff I\u2019d ever heard.\u201d
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\nShe recognized Abitbol from his Twitter avatar. They made some small talk\u2014Abitbol was amused by a sign, held by one of Phelps-Roper\u2019s sisters, that said \u201cYour Rabbi Is a Whore\u201d\u2014then began to debate her about Westboro\u2019s doctrine. \u201cOur in-person interaction resembled our Twitter interaction,\u201d Phelps-Roper said. \u201cFunny, friendly, but definitely on opposite sides and each sticking to our guns.\u201d Abitbol asked why Westboro always denounced homosexuality but never mentioned the fact that Leviticus also forbade having sex with a woman who was menstruating. The question embarrassed Phelps-Roper\u2014\u201cI didn\u2019t want to talk about it because, ugh\u201d\u2014but it did strike her as an interesting point. As far as she could remember, her grandfather had never addressed that issue from the pulpit. Still, Phelps-Roper enjoyed the exchange with Abitbol. Not long after, she told him that Westboro would be picketing the General Assembly of the Jewish Federations, in New Orleans, that year. Abitbol said that he\u2019d be there, too, and when they met again they exchanged gifts.
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\nPhelps-Roper and Abitbol continued their conversations via e-mail and Twitter\u2019s direct-message function. In Phelps-Roper\u2019s effort to better understand Westboro\u2019s new prophecies, she had bought a copy of \u201cThe Complete Idiot\u2019s Guide to Understanding Judaism,\u201d but she found it more profitable just to ask Abitbol her questions. Here was a real live Orthodox Jew who lived in Israel and was more than happy to enlighten her. During their debates over Scripture, Phelps-Roper sometimes quoted passages from the Old Testament; Abitbol often countered that their meaning differed in the original Hebrew, so Phelps-Roper bought some language-learning software. She figured that, since she would soon be living in Israel awaiting the end of the world, she should learn the language. <\/a>This is funny \u2013 the practical side of waiting for the apocalypse. Did you mean for it to be humorous? How do you bring that in without mocking someone?<\/span> This was another detail, like the yogurt one, that she brought up to sort of emphasize just how totally she believed in Westboro\u2019s teachings. I just tried to describe their beliefs as neutrally and accurately as possible. Obviously, the WBC end times narrative is absurd to an outsider. But as a non-believer myself, I find a lot of more mainstream religious beliefs almost equally as baffling. So it wasn\u2019t hard to suspend judgment.<\/span> <\/span>Abitbol helped her with the vocabulary.
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\nPhelps-Roper still urged Abitbol to repent, but as someone who was concerned about a wayward friend. \u201cI just wish you would obey God and use your considerable platform to warn your audience about the consequences of engaging in conduct that God calls abomination,\u201d she e-mailed Abitbol in October, 2010.
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\nIn response, Abitbol kept pressing Phelps-Roper on Westboro\u2019s doctrine. One day, he asked about a Westboro sign that said \u201cDeath Penalty for Fags,\u201d referring to a commandment from Leviticus. Abitbol pointed out that Jesus had said, \u201cHe that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone.\u201d Abitbol knew that at least one member of Westboro had committed a sin that Leviticus also deems a capital crime. Phelps-Roper\u2019s oldest brother, Sam, was the product of a relationship that Shirley had had with a man she met while she was in law school, before she married Megan\u2019s father.
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\nShirley\u2019s sin of fornication was often thrown in the church members\u2019 faces by counterprotesters. Westboro always argued that the difference between Shirley and gay people was that Shirley had repented of her sin, whereas gays marched in pride parades. But Abitbol wrote that if gay people were killed they wouldn\u2019t have the opportunity to repent.
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\nPhelps-Roper was struck by the double standard, and, as she did whenever she had a question about doctrine, she brought up the issue with her mother. Shirley responded that Romans said gays were \u201cworthy of death,\u201d and that if it was good enough for God it was good enough for Westboro. \u201cIt was such a settled point that they\u2019ve been preaching for so long it\u2019s almost like it didn\u2019t mean anything to her,\u201d Phelps-Roper said. Still, she concluded that Westboro was in the wrong. \u201cThat was the first time I came to a place where I disagreed, I knew I disagreed, and I didn\u2019t accept the answer that they gave,\u201d she said. Phelps-Roper knew that to press the issue would create problems for her in the church, so she quietly stopped holding the \u201cDeath Penalty for Fags\u201d sign. There were plenty of other signs whose message she still believed in wholeheartedly. She also put an end to the conversations with Abitbol.
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\nPhelps-Roper found it easy to ignore her doubt amid the greater publicity that Westboro was receiving, much of it tied to her Twitter activity. In February, 2011, the hacker collective Anonymous declared war against Westboro. On Twitter, Phelps-Roper taunted the group\u2019s members as \u201ccrybaby hackers.\u201d Anonymous retaliated by hacking godhatesfags.com, and blogs seized on the drama. \u201cThanks, Anonymous! Your efforts to shut up God\u2019s word only serve to publish it further,\u201d Phelps-Roper tweeted. In March, Westboro members walked out of a screening of the film \u201cRed State,\u201d which spoofed the church. They had been invited by the director, Kevin Smith, with whom Phelps-Roper had kept up a running feud on Twitter since World AIDS Day. <\/a> You mentioned that the story was originally supposed to be half its final length. Is this the kind of detail you would\u2019ve left out, or what would go instead? What do you think would\u2019ve been lost if the piece was 5,000 words?<\/span> Are you saying it\u2019s not as good a detail as others? How rude. But seriously, I don\u2019t know if I would have left any particular detail out or not. It was hard enough to write the damn thing; I don\u2019t even want to think about if I\u2019d had to cut it. I\u2019m just glad I had the space I did.<\/span> <\/span> Ten days earlier, the Supreme Court had overturned the judgment against Westboro in the Albert Snyder case. Phelps-Roper was inundated with tweets and new followers. That month, she tweeted more than two thousand times; by the end of the month, she had more than seven thousand followers. \u201cThat explosion of activity, it was insane,\u201d she said.
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\nBut as other members of the church joined Twitter they began to question her friendly relations with outsiders. In April, 2011, the BBC aired one of Louis Theroux\u2019s documentaries about Westboro. In one scene, Phelps-Roper explained how she used Twitter to keep up with a group of four Dutch filmmakers who had visited Westboro in 2010. She showed Theroux a picture of one of the filmmakers, Pepijn Borgwat, a smiling, handsome young man holding a package of chocolate truffles that she and her sister Grace had given to him.
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\nThe day after the documentary aired, Sam Phelps-Roper sent an e-mail to church members urging more discretion in their tweets. \u201cI understand the concept of showing the world our brotherly kindness, but we don\u2019t have to let it all hang out,\u201d he wrote. Megan\u2019s father made her block the Dutch journalists from her private Twitter account. \u201cIt feels like we are opening ourselves up for entangling ourselves with the affairs or cares of this life,\u201d he e-mailed Phelps-Roper and her siblings. Phelps-Roper said, \u201cIt made me scared for myself that I wanted that. And so I was, like, \u2018O.K., you gotta step back.\u2019\u201d
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\nAnother online relationship proved more threatening. In February, 2011, Phelps-Roper began to have conversations on Twitter with a user named @F_K_A. His avatar was Robert Redford in \u201cThe Great Gatsby.\u201d He had learned of Westboro after reading an article about the Anonymous hack. \u201cHe sent me a tweet, and initially it was like this angry, nasty tweet,\u201d Phelps-Roper said. But @F_K_A was disarmed by Phelps-Roper\u2019s friendly demeanor. He began to ask her questions about life in Westboro, and, because he was curious instead of condemning, she kept answering them. One day, Phelps-Roper recalled, \u201cI asked him some kind of pointed question about the Bible. He said something like, \u2018I can\u2019t answer that, but I have never been beaten in Words with Friends\u2019\u201d\u2014the popular online Scrabble knockoff. Phelps-Roper replied, \u201cI can\u2019t boast the same. =)\u201d She put her Words with Friends username at the end of the tweet.
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\nThey began to talk about the church using the in-game chat function, free from Twitter\u2019s character limit. @F_K_A told Phelps-Roper to call him C.G. But C.G. remained a mystery. She knew that he was an attorney, but she didn\u2019t know where he lived or how old he was. \u201cHe was careful not to reveal anything about himself,\u201d Phelps-Roper said.
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\nLike David Abitbol, C.G. argued against Westboro\u2019s beliefs and practices, but while Abitbol\u2019s arguments were doctrinal C.G. was most critical of Westboro\u2019s cruelty. \u201cWe had the same discussion several times when someone would die,\u201d Phelps-Roper said. C.G. urged Phelps-Roper to think of how much hurt it must cause the families of the deceased to see Phelps-Roper and her family rejoicing. Westboro divided people into good and evil, but, Phelps-Roper said, C.G. \u201calways tried to advocate for a third group of people: people who were decent but not religious.\u201d She had heard all these arguments before, but they had never affected her as they did when C.G. made them. \u201cI just really liked him,\u201d she said. \u201cHe seemed to genuinely like people and care about people, and that resonated with me.\u201d
\n
\nPhelps-Roper increasingly found herself turning to Bible passages where tragedy is not met with joy. The Old Testament prophet Elisha, for example, weeps when he foresees disaster for Israel. One day in July, 2011, Phelps-Roper was on Twitter when she came across a link to a series of photographs about a famine in Somalia. The first image was of a tiny malnourished child. She burst into tears at her desk. Her mother asked what was wrong, and Phelps-Roper showed her the gallery. Her mother quickly composed a triumphant blog post about the famine. \u201cThank God for famine in East Africa!\u201d she wrote. \u201cGod is longsuffering and patient, but he repays the wicked TO THEIR FACE!\u201d When Brittany Murphy died, Phelps-Roper had seen the disparity between her reaction and that of the rest of the church as a sign that something was wrong with her. Now the contradiction of her mother\u2019s glee and her own sadness made her wonder if something was wrong with the church.<\/a> Was it challenging to tease out the turning points along Megan\u2019s journey? Did she have a good sense of them herself, or did it take a lot of talking and going back over the same time periods to tease them out?<\/span>It took a lot of talking to really get the step-by-step transformation. I\u2019d like to think that talking it over with me gave Megan a clearer sense of her own story, but it could also be that I am super dense. In the case of the Brittany Murphy anecdote, she mentioned it vaguely a number of times before I really understood it was a crucial moment and went in depth with her. Usually that\u2019s how it worked: Something would come up a few times in our conversations before I realized that she was repeating it for a reason. It was difficult because a lot of the moments were pretty minor on their surface, like this one. But when I dug into them it was clear they really highlighted the change.<\/span> <\/span>
\n
\nPhelps-Roper\u2019s conversations with C.G. often drifted away from morality. C.G. liked indie rock and literary fiction. He introduced Phelps-Roper to bands like the Antlers, Blind Pilot, and Cults\u2014\u201cfunnily enough,\u201d she said\u2014and to the novels of David Foster Wallace and Marilynne Robinson. \u201cHipster shit,\u201d Phelps-Roper said. He turned her on to the Field Notes brand of notebooks. He poked fun at the inelegant fonts that Westboro used for its press releases. After C.G. complimented her on her grammar, she took pains to make sure that her tweets were free of clunky text-message abbreviations.
\n
\nAs Phelps-Roper developed her relationship with C.G., her sister Grace grew suspicious. \u201cSuddenly, her taste in music started changing,\u201d Grace told me. \u201cIt annoyed me, because it wasn\u2019t coming from Megan. It was coming from him, this question mark of a person that I don\u2019t get to know about, but she has some kind of thing with.\u201d As young children, Grace and Megan had squabbled constantly, but they had grown close. Grace was seven years younger than Megan, and still in high school at the time. Grace would scroll through Megan\u2019s iPhone, asking about the various messages and e-mails. But soon after Megan started talking to C.G. she stopped letting Grace look at her phone. \u201cI remember thinking, What the heck? What are you hiding?\u201d Grace said.
\n
\nFor young women in Westboro, having romantic interactions with someone outside the church was forbidden. When Phelps-Roper was growing up, one of her cousins had been pushed out of the church for, among other things, getting entangled with boys; other young women had been harshly punished. Phelps-Roper had long assumed that she would likely never get married, since she was related to almost every male in the church. \u201cI was terrified of even thinking about guys,\u201d she said. \u201cIt\u2019s not just the physical stuff that can get you in trouble.\u201d She did her best to displace her feelings for C.G. onto the music and books he recommended, which she fervently consumed. \u201cI was in denial,\u201d she said.
\n
\nThen, on September 30, 2011, she had a dream: It was a beautiful summer day, and she was standing on the driveway of the church. A black car with tinted windows pulled up, and a tall, blond man got out. She couldn\u2019t see his face, but she knew it was C.G. She walked up to him, and they embraced. She knew her family could see them on the surveillance cameras that line the Block, but she didn\u2019t care. \u201cIt was so real, that feeling of wanting to be with him,\u201d Phelps-Roper told me. She woke up fighting back tears. \u201cHe was not a good person, according to the church,\u201d she said. \u201cAnd the fact that I dreamed about him, and the strong feeling of wanting that relationship, represented huge danger to me.\u201d That day, she told C.G. that they couldn\u2019t talk anymore. She deleted her Words with Friends account. C.G. deleted his Twitter account.
\n
\nPhelps-Roper tried to throw herself back into the Westboro community, but the atmosphere had changed while she was distracted by her relationship with C.G. It had started in April, 2011. Her mother seemed mysteriously troubled. After Phelps-Roper pressed her parents, they showed her an e-mail they\u2019d received from her oldest brother, Sam, and Steve Drain, another church member. It accused her mother of lacking humility, saying that she was too zealous in correcting other members\u2019 behavior and had overreached her authority on a number of occasions, Phelps-Roper told me. Reading the e-mail made her sick with fear. When a Westboro member was singled out for bad behavior, it often triggered a harrowing period of discipline. The smallest transgression could spark another round of punishment, until the member either shaped up or was kicked out of the church.
\n
\nShirley\u2019s role in the church was reduced dramatically. \u201cMy mother was supposed to be primarily a mother and a caretaker,\u201d Zach Phelps-Roper, Megan\u2019s younger brother, told me. Megan took over picket planning, while Steve Drain became the church\u2019s media manager. The Phelps-Roper house was now quiet, as the flow of church members and reporters stopped. \u201cI watched her all my life work so hard and sacrifice so much, and just be so willing to do anything for anybody,\u201d Phelps-Roper said. \u201cShe had to be put in her place, essentially, and that feeling\u2014it just was really, really wrong to me.\u201d (Drain insists that Megan\u2019s description of the letter is inaccurate. He said that it was a \u201cdisciplinary message,\u201d but wouldn\u2019t reveal its contents. \u201cWe don\u2019t air our dirty laundry,\u201d he said.)
\n
\nAn all-male group of nine elders took control of church affairs. Previously, decisions at Westboro had been hashed out in church meetings, where consensus was required before moving forward. But the elders met separately before bringing their decisions to the rest of the group. The church became more secretive, as members were reluctant to discuss important issues for fear of appearing to go behind the elders\u2019 backs.
\n
\nWomen like Shirley and her older sister Margie\u2014an attorney who had argued the Snyder case in front of the Supreme Court\u2014had always been among the most public and influential members of the church. Westboro members drew on stories of powerful women in the Bible, like Deborah, a prophet and judge of Israel. But now the emphasis shifted to passages about women submitting to their husbands. Fred Phelps encouraged church members to read the Evangelical writer John R. Rice\u2019s book \u201cBobbed Hair, Bossy Wives, and Women Preachers,\u201d from 1941, which offered a view of gender roles that was regressive even when it was published. \u201cIt suddenly sucked to be a woman,\u201d Phelps-Roper said. \u201cIt was, like, I would need to get permission from Dad to talk to anybody else.\u201d
\n
\nWestboro women had long been forbidden to cut their hair, and had restrictions on other aspects of their appearance. But now the elders required more severe standards of modesty. Phelps-Roper had to wear high-necked shirts and dresses or shorts that covered her knees. After one shopping trip with her mother and her sisters, Phelps-Roper had to show her clothes to her father and her brother Sam, to make sure that they were appropriate. She was barred from wearing colorful nail polish and her favorite gold sandals to church. Phelps-Roper was upset to learn that some of her cousins lived under more liberal standards. How could God\u2019s judgment differ from house to house?
\n
\nPhelps-Roper\u2019s confusion soon turned to outrage. In 2012, she was twenty-six years old, but she was still being treated like a child. Once-minor indignities, like being accompanied by an adult chaperone while eating lunch at a restaurant with other young church members, now seemed unbearable. In April, she was shocked when Westboro expelled a cousin of hers without adhering to the process that the church had always followed, which was derived from the Book of Matthew. Typically, expulsion resulted only after a unanimous decision, but in the cousin\u2019s case she was excluded over other members\u2019 objections. (Drain recalls no objections, and said, \u201cEverything was done decently and in accordance with Scripture.\u201d) \u201cIt stopped feeling like this larger-than-life divine institution ordained and led by God, and more like the sniping and sordid activity of men who wanted to be in control,\u201d Phelps-Roper said.
\n
\nShe resented the increasing authority wielded by Drain. One of the few Westboro members unrelated to Fred Phelps, Drain had visited Topeka in 2000 to film a skeptical documentary about the church, but he soon became convinced of its message. <\/a>Another completely fascinating detail that could be its own story. Were you tempted to explore his conversion further in the piece?<\/span> Not really. The local Topeka alt-weekly already did a very good profile of Drain a while ago, and I knew it would just be opening a whole other can of worms.<\/span><\/span>The next year, he and his family joined the church. He\u2019d long pushed for a larger role in Westboro, and after the elders came to power his influence increased. In February, 2012, during the funeral of Whitney Houston, in New Jersey, Drain urged Phelps-Roper and other members to tweet poorly Photoshopped images that depicted them haranguing mourners. The media quickly unravelled the hoax. (Drain told me that the fake picket was never meant to be taken literally.)
\n
\nPhelps-Roper was embarrassed by the debacle. It undermined her own proud claims on Twitter to be spreading God\u2019s truth\u2014and lying violated Scripture. In addition, she now had to have all her media appearances approved by Drain. \u201cIt seems like he wants to be Pope Steve and for no one else to do anything without his permission,\u201d she wrote in her journal. <\/a>It must\u2019ve been so helpful to have access to this. Did she let you read her entire journal? If so, you only mention it in a couple of places. Did you rely on it for other things without citing it explicitly?<\/span> She sent me key passages, and I used those. It was probably only 10-12 pages in total. But I think she only started keeping a journal after she had already decided she was going to leave, so it wasn\u2019t that long.<\/span><\/span> \u201cI hate it so much.\u201d
\n
\nMegan\u2019s doubt engendered by the \u201cDeath Penalty for Fags\u201d sign grew. She started to complain to her mother, saying that the elders were not obeying the Bible. They treated her mother and other members with cruelty when the Bible required brotherly love, she said. The elders acted arrogantly and tolerated no dissent, when God demanded meekness and humility. Phelps-Roper was struck by the similarities between her arguments and what C.G. and David Abitbol had always said about the church. \u201cIt was like we were finally doing to ourselves what we had done to everyone else,\u201d she said. \u201cSeeing those parallels was really disorienting.\u201d
\n
\nDrain disputed many of Phelps-Roper\u2019s characterizations of the changes in the church. He acknowledged that an all-male group of elders assumed preaching duties, but not that this led to a less open atmosphere in the church. \u201cThere\u2019s definitely more participation than when I first got here, in 2001, when you had one person doing all the sermons,\u201d he said, referring to Fred Phelps.
\n
\nHe also denied that women in the church had been significantly marginalized. \u201cWomen do a lot at Westboro now, as they always have,\u201d he said. Shirley\u2019s role was not reduced as a punishment for overstepping her bounds, he said. Instead, after the Snyder decision, other members had volunteered to help her deal with an overwhelming torrent of media. \u201cWe lifted her burden,\u201d he said. He pointed out that Shirley had recently spoken at a picket protesting Kim Davis, the Kentucky clerk who had refused to issue marriage licenses to gay couples\u2014the church took issue with Davis\u2019s remarriages after divorce. (Through Drain, Megan\u2019s parents declined to comment.)
\n
\nPhelps-Roper first considered leaving the church on July 4, 2012. She and Grace were in the basement of another Westboro family\u2019s house, painting the walls. The song \u201cJust One,\u201d by the indie folk group Blind Pilot\u2014a band that C.G. had recommended\u2014played on the stereo. The lyrics seemed to reflect her dilemma perfectly: \u201cAnd will I break and will I bow \/ if I cannot let it go?\u201d Then came the chorus: \u201cI can\u2019t believe we get just one.\u201d She suddenly thought, What if Westboro had been wrong about everything? What if she was spending her one life hurting people, picking fights with the entire world, for nothing? \u201cIt was, like, just the fact that I thought about it, I had to leave right then,\u201d she said. \u201cI felt like I was going to jump out of my skin.\u201d
\n
\nThe next day, she mentioned the possibility of leaving to Grace. Grace was horrified. \u201cIt just sounded ridiculous to even suggest it,\u201d Grace told me. \u201cThese were the points I brought up: we\u2019re never going to see our families again, we\u2019re going to go to Hell for eternity, and our life will be meaningless.\u201d Megan, still uncertain, agreed. But she plunged into a profound crisis of faith. \u201cIt was like flipping a switch,\u201d she said. \u201cSo many other thoughts came in that I\u2019d never pursued, and that\u2019s every doubt that I\u2019d ever had, everything that had ever seemed illogical or off.\u201d
\n
\nWhen they were together, Megan engaged Grace in interminable theological conversations. When they were apart, Megan detailed her doubts in text messages. One day, she texted Grace, \u201cWhat if the God of the Bible isn\u2019t the God of creation? We don\u2019t believe that the Koran has the truth about God. Is it just because we were told forever that this is How Things Are?\u201d She added, \u201cDoes it really make you happy when you hear about people dying or starving or being maimed? Do you really want to ask God to hurt people? I ask myself these questions. I think the answer is no. When I\u2019m not scared of the answer, I know the answer is no.\u201d Two days later, she texted Grace about Hell: \u201cWhy do we think it\u2019s real? It\u2019s starting to seem made up to scare people into doing what they say.\u201d Grace replied, \u201cBut what if?\u201d
\n
\nThat day, Grace wrote to Megan, \u201cOur belief in God has always curbed everything. Like, pain & sorrow, I mean. Without that we\u2019d only have our belief in each other. But we are human & humans die. What would we have if we didn\u2019t have each other?\u201d For Megan, the answer could be found in other people. \u201cWe know what it is to be kind & good to people,\u201d she wrote. \u201cWe would just have to find somewhere else, other people to love and care about and help, too.\u201d Grace wrote back, \u201cI don\u2019t want other people.\u201d In truth, Megan didn\u2019t want other people, either; she desperately wanted things in Westboro to go back to the way they had been. But the idea of living among outsiders was no longer unimaginable.
\n
\nPhelps-Roper spent the summer and the fall in an existential spiral. She would conclude that everything about Westboro\u2019s doctrine was wrong, only to be seized with terror that these thoughts were a test from God, and she was failing. \u201cYou literally feel insane,\u201d she said. Eventually, her doubts won out. \u201cI just couldn\u2019t keep up the charade,\u201d she said. \u201cI couldn\u2019t bring myself to do the things we were doing and say the things we were saying.\u201d
\n
\nShe largely stopped tweeting and tried to avoid journalists on the picket line, for fear that she might say something that revealed her misgivings. At one protest, a journalism student cornered her and asked if she ever got tired of picketing. \u201cI honestly replied no,\u201d she wrote in her journal. \u201cIt\u2019s not about being tired, it\u2019s about not believing in it anymore. If I believed it, I could do it forever.\u201d In October, Megan finally persuaded Grace to leave. At the end of October, the sisters started secretly moving their possessions to the house of one of their high-school teachers, who agreed to help them. Many of Megan and Grace\u2019s young relatives who left the church had slipped away quietly, in order to avoid confronting their families. But the sisters wanted to explain to their parents the reasons behind their decision.
\n
\nAs the sisters agonized over whether to leave, they befriended an older man in the church and his wife, eventually becoming allies in discontent. For a while, they all planned to leave together. Then the couple\u2019s marriage began to deteriorate, and the husband told Megan and Grace that they were going to divorce. Grace became involved in a brief romantic relationship with the man. After the relationship ended, the wife learned about it, and sent a letter to Megan and Grace\u2019s parents revealing both the relationship and the sisters\u2019 plan to leave. <\/a>That\u2019s a twist. Did the sisters ask you not to include parts of this anecdote initially, and if so how did you convince them to put it on the record? Why did you choose not to explore their relationship with the couple in detail?<\/span> This was something that took a bit of delicacy to do, for sure. I think they and I both felt that it was important to be upfront about this episode, so that it wouldn\u2019t seem like the story was hiding the \u201creal\u201d reason for their departure. The fact is, they had already made up their minds to leave when it happened, so it\u2019s incidental to the whole change-of-heart narrative. That\u2019s why I didn\u2019t dwell on it.<\/span><\/span>
\n
\nOn Sunday, November 11th, the family had just returned from church when Megan and Grace were called into their parents\u2019 bedroom, where their father began to read the letter out loud. Megan told Grace quietly that they had to leave: \u201cIt was like the world was exploding and I didn\u2019t want to be around to see it.\u201d Their mother tried to calm things down. Their parents wanted to talk things over\u2014they seemed to think that the sisters could be persuaded to stay\u2014but Megan and Grace had made up their minds. As Grace packed, their father came into her room and asked what she wanted the church to do differently. \u201cI want you and everyone else to leave with me,\u201d Grace replied. Their parents were stunned, but they didn\u2019t try to force the sisters to stay.
\n
\nAs the sisters packed, their younger brother Zach sat at the piano downstairs, crying and playing hymns, which he hoped might change their mind. Other church members stopped by to say goodbye and to warn the sisters of the consequences of their decision. \u201cThe fact that I\u2019m coming face to face with the damage that I was doing to them was even worse than anything else that was happening to me,\u201d Phelps-Roper said. Her parents told her to say goodbye to her grandfather. She walked over to the residence where her grandparents lived, above the church sanctuary. When Megan told them she was leaving, her grandfather looked at her grandmother and said, \u201cWell, I thought we had a jewel this time.\u201d
\n
\nMegan and Grace\u2019s father drove them to a hotel in Topeka, where he had paid for a room, but they were too scared to spend the night alone, so they called the teacher who had agreed to store their boxes. That night, they cried themselves to sleep on couches in his basement. Megan and Grace returned to their house the next day with a U-Haul truck to pick up their remaining possessions. As they walked away for the last time, Shirley called after them, \u201cYou know you can always come back.\u201d
\n
\nFor the next few months, the sisters drifted. They lived in Lawrence for a month with their cousin Libby, who had also left the church, while Grace finished the first semester of her sophomore year at Washburn. They travelled to Deadwood, South Dakota, because Megan wanted to see the Black Hills. As she drove there, she kept imagining her car careering off the highway\u2014she was so afraid of God\u2019s wrath. \u201cWe were a mess, crying all the time,\u201d she said. Phelps-Roper was tempted to hide in the Black Hills forever, but soon decided that, after spending so many years as the public face of Westboro, she wanted to go public with how she\u2019d left the church, and to start making amends for the hurt she had caused. In February, 2013, she wrote a statement on the blogging platform Medium. \u201cUntil now, our names have been synonymous with \u2018God Hates Fags,\u2019\u201d she wrote. \u201cWhat we can do is try to find a better way to live from here on.\u201d She posted a link to the statement on Twitter. It was her first tweet in three months. \u201cHi,\u201d she wrote. Tweets of encouragement and praise poured in. \u201cI expected a lot more people to be unforgiving,\u201d she said.
\n
\nWhen David Abitbol learned that the sisters had left Westboro, he invited them to speak at the next Jewlicious festival in Long Beach. They agreed, hoping that the experience might help them to find their way, and to finally understand a community that they had vilified for so long. \u201cIt was like we were just reaching out and grabbing on to whatever was around,\u201d Megan said. Abitbol said, \u201cPeople, before they met them, were, like, \u2018So, now they\u2019re not batshit-crazy gay haters and we\u2019re supposed to love them? Fuck that.\u2019\u201d He added, \u201cAnd then they heard them speak, and there wasn\u2019t a dry eye in the house.\u201d The sisters befriended their hosts, an Orthodox rabbi and his family. They went kosher-grocery shopping together, and Megan and Grace looked after the kids. Grace became especially close with the family, and ended up staying for more than a month. \u201cThey were amazing and super-kind,\u201d Phelps-Roper said. Abitbol joked about the dramatic role reversal: \u201c\u2018Your Rabbi Is a Whore\u2019? Your rabbi is a\u00a0host.\u201d
\n
\nMegan tried to put herself in situations that challenged the intolerance she had been indoctrinated with. One evening, after speaking at a Jewish festival in Montreal, she and Grace passed a group of drag queens on the sidewalk outside a cabaret. She felt a surge of disgust, but when Grace asked if they could watch the show she agreed. \u201cIt felt illicit,\u201d she said. \u201cLike, oh, my gosh, I can\u2019t believe I\u2019m here.\u201d She and Grace ended up dancing onstage during the intermission. <\/a>This is pretty heartwarming. How did you get at this moment?<\/span>I love this detail too. How many times do we get to dance with someone we thought for so long was the enemy? This was another thing that Megan brought up a couple of times when discussing the days after her departure. I was definitely looking for moments that showed them crossing boundaries they would have never crossed before. I think it\u2019s a sign of their exuberance and real genuine love for other people that they would not just cross them but leap over them enthusiastically.<\/span><\/span>Wherever Megan and Grace went, they met people who wanted to help them, despite all the hurt they had caused. The experience solidified Megan\u2019s increasing conviction that no person or group could claim a monopoly on moral truth. Slowly, her fears about God\u2019s judgment\u2014the first terrifying understanding of her faith as a child, and its most stubborn remnant\u2014faded. \u201cAs undeniable as they had seemed before, they seemed just as impossible now,\u201d she said.
\n
\nOne Sunday last February, I went with Megan and Grace to visit their old neighborhood. We parked a few blocks from the church and walked down a quiet street lined with ranch-style homes. It was sunny and warm for a winter day in Kansas. Phelps-Roper wore a green polka-dot dress and high leather boots, and her long curly hair\u2014she still hadn\u2019t cut it since leaving the church\u2014fell down her back. Now twenty-nine, she lives in a small town in South Dakota, where she works at a title company. Six months after she left the church, she went on a date with C.G. They met in Omaha, in driving distance for both of them, and saw \u201cThe Great Gatsby,\u201d the Baz Luhrmann movie. \u201cIt\u2019s hard to even describe how weird it was,\u201d she told me. It was her first date ever, and it was with someone who had become a symbol of the unattainable. \u201cI was quite a bit like a teen-ager. He put his arm around my waist at one point, and I just stood up so straight.\u201d She and C.G. connected as strongly in person as they had online, and they now live together.
\n
\nWhen we reached the Block, we walked along the privacy fence. In front of each house where Westboro members live, Megan pointed out colorful numbers on the curb; Grace had helped paint them when she was a teen-ager. We passed the Phelps-Roper house and came to an intersection. A group of men and boys came toward us. \u201cI can\u2019t tell yet, but it sure looks like a group of brothers and cousins,\u201d Megan said. First came five of their young cousins, followed by two of their brothers, Sam and Noah. Steve Drain, a large bearded man, trailed behind. They carried tools. Megan later explained that they had probably just come from doing repairs on a Westboro member\u2019s house. The group passed us without stopping. Grace called out, \u201cHi!\u201d Sam nodded and gave a terse smile and a small wave. \u201cHi, how are you?\u201d he said. Sam and Noah had recently had birthdays, and Megan wished them a belated happy birthday. The sisters said nothing to Drain. The crew quickly disappeared into a house.
\n
\nWe reached the church, an unremarkable white and brown mock-Tudor building on the northeast corner of the Block. A banner advertised a Westboro Web site, godhatesamerica.com. Two American flags\u2014one of them rainbow colored\u2014flew upside down from a pole. The church sign read \u201cST. VALENTINE IS A CATHOLIC IDOL AND AN EXCUSE TO FORNICATE! JUDE 7.\u201d
\n
\nDirectly across the street stood a house painted in bright, horizontal rainbow stripes. The house had been bought, in 2012, by Planting Peace, a nonprofit group whose mission, according to its Web site, is \u201cspreading peace in a hurting world.\u201d The Equality House, as it\u2019s known, is home to a group of young L.G.B.T. activists. Planting Peace has worked with former Westboro members to spread its message of tolerance. Megan first visited the house in 2013, after her cousin Libby encouraged her to visit. She sneaked in the back door, for fear of being spotted by her family.
\n
\nToday, Megan and Grace\u2019s only connection to Westboro is virtual. Although Phelps-Roper no longer believes that the Bible is the word of God, she still reads it to try to find scriptural arguments that could encourage Westboro to take a more humane approach to the world. Sometimes she\u2019ll tweet passages, knowing that church members will see them. After they left the church, Megan and Grace were blocked from Westboro\u2019s Twitter accounts, but they created a secret account to follow them. Sometimes, when her mother appears in a video, Megan will loop it over and over, just to hear her voice. <\/a>When I first finished reading this story, I immediately followed Megan on Twitter and Facebook to find out how the sisters were doing. It seems she\u2019s still pretty active on social media. What was it like to tell the story of someone who had essentially been telling her own story online in real time and would continue when you were through?<\/span>It honestly wasn\u2019t too different than a lot of stories I\u2019d done before. I\u2019ve written a lot about hackers, trolls and other tech-savvy people who are very active on social media and have a big platform to get their own side of the story out. I like it because it keeps you on your toes; if you get something wrong, you are going to hear about it. It also gives you extra incentive to really add something to the story.<\/span><\/span>
\n
\nFred Phelps died in March, 2014, at the age of eighty-four. Former members of the church told me that Fred had had a softening of heart at the end of his life and had been excommunicated. (The church denies these claims.) Zach Phelps-Roper, Megan\u2019s younger brother, who left the church later that year, said that one of the precipitating events in Fred\u2019s exclusion had been expressing kindness toward the Equality House. At a church meeting, Zach recalls, members discussed the episode: \u201cHe stepped out the front door of the church and looked at the Rainbow House, the Planting Peace organization, and looked over and said, \u2018You\u2019re good people.\u2019\u201d <\/a>Why did you decide to end the story with Fred\u2019s death and potential reversal? Why not end with Megan, since the story is about her?<\/span>I knew I had to talk about Fred Phelps\u2019 death somewhere and this just seemed the most natural. It also highlighted a theme that became clear to me during the reporting: WBC often changes. It\u2019s not obvious to people outside the church, but WBC is made up of people. They grow up and grow old and die. There are power struggles and disagreements over tactics. There\u2019s a steady stream of people leaving, especially from Megan\u2019s generation. WBC seems to be as solid now as it was back then, but who\u2019s to say where it will be in another five years? Nobody who met Megan back then would have believed she could be where she is today.<\/span><\/span>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The New Yorker writer talks about his story on the awakening of a daughter of the reviled Westboro Baptist Church, calling it “a culmination of things I was writing about at Gawker \u2014 explaining things that seemed really horrible”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6184,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"topics":[],"authors":[9],"issue":[],"class_list":["post-1468","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-annotation-tuesday","authors-katia-savchuk"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nAnnotation Tuesday! 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