Now we learn today that two
members of the church have left. And
given that most of them are related to each other, that is a pretty big
thing. Via the Guardian:
One of the most
prominent members of the Westboro Baptist church has left it after spending her
life as part of the fervently anti-gay movement.
Megan Phelps-Roper,
who looked after social media for the church best known for its slogan
"God hates fags", announced her departure in a post on the blogging
platform Medium in which she also revealed her younger sister Grace, 19, was
also leaving.
In the post, called
Head Full of Doubt/Road Full of Promise, the 27-year-old explained how she had
become disillusioned with the teaching of Westboro, which is widely considered
one of the most detested church groups in America for its "God hates
fags" campaign.
Phelps-Roper writes:
"We know that we've done and said things that hurt people. Inflicting pain
on others wasn't the goal, but it was one of the outcomes. We wish it weren't
so, and regret that hurt.
Read
the whole thing. Look don’t hope for
too much, there. They aren’t suddenly going to
march in any gay pride parade. But she
has recognized the very point I was hammering home to Shirley Phelps-Roper the other
day, that if your religion involves telling a person a heartbroken parent in
Newtown, Connecticut, that their children are burning in hell, something has gone horribly wrong in your supposed Christianity. It is simply inexcusably cruel to say that to
a grieving parent and, by the way, not terribly constructive.
And further you can read in her own words about
her departure:
Where do you go from
there?
I don't know,
exactly. My sister Grace is with me, though. We’re trying to figure it out
together.
There are some
things we do know.
We know that we’ve
done and said things that hurt people. Inflicting pain on others wasn’t the
goal, but it was one of the outcomes. We wish it weren’t so, and regret that
hurt.
We know that we
dearly love our family. They now consider us betrayers, and we are cut off from
their lives, but we know they are well-intentioned. We will never not love
them.
We know that we
can’t undo our whole lives. We can’t even say we’d want to if we could; we are
who we are because of all the experiences that brought us to this point. What
we can do is try to find a better way to live from here on. That’s our focus.
Up until now, our
names have been synonymous with “God Hates Fags.” Any twelve-year-old with a
cell phone could find out what we did. We hope [Selena] Kyle [in the Dark Knight Rises] was right about the
other part, too, though – that everything sticks – and that the changes we make
in our lives will speak for themselves.
You can sense from reading that the
guilt she is racked with for what that church had done, as well as how painful it
must be to not only leave the church but her family as well. And if you read this piece by
Jeff Chu where he talks about their journey you see that it is very much about
her belief that there has to be redemption that drove this wedge between her
and the church:
“My doubts started
with a conversation I had with David Abitbol,” she says. Megan met David, an
Israeli web developer who’s part of the team behind the blog Jewlicious, on
Twitter. “I would ask him questions about Judaism, and he would ask me
questions about church doctrine. One day, he asked a specific question about
one of our signs—‘Death Penalty for Fags’—and I was arguing for the church’s
position, that it was a Levitical punishment and as completely appropriate now
as it was then. He said, ‘But Jesus said’—and I thought it was funny he was
quoting Jesus—‘Let he who is without sin cast the first stone.’ And then he
connected it to another member of the church who had done something that,
according to the Old Testament, was also punishable by death. I realized that
if the death penalty was instituted for any sin, you completely cut off the
opportunity to repent. And that’s what Jesus was talking about.”
To some, this story
might seem simple—even overly so. But we all have moments of epiphany, when
things that are plate-glass clear to others but opaque to us suddenly become
apparent. This was, for Megan, one of those moments, and this window led to
another and another and another. Over the subsequent weeks and months, “I tried
to put it aside. I decided I wasn’t going to hold that sign, ‘Death Penalty for
Fags.’” (She had, for the most part, preferred the gentler, much less offensive
“Mourn for Your Sins” or “God Hates Your Idols” anyway.)
What “seemed like a
small thing at the time,” she says, snowballed. She started to question another
Westboro sign, “Fags can’t repent.” “It seemed misleading and dishonest.
Anybody can repent if God gives them repentance, according to the church. But
this one thing—it gives the impression that homosexuality is an unforgivable
sin,” she says. “It didn’t make sense. It seemed a wrong message for us to be
sending. It’s like saying, ‘You’re doomed! Bye!’ and gives no hope for
salvation.”
Yes, that is right, a Jewish
person taught her to be a better Christian.
But then again, Martin Luther King Jr. credits Gandhi, a follower of the
Hindu faith, with teaching him to be a better Christian, too. Sometimes you have to look outside of your “house”
to find better examples that you should live up to.
But what seems to be key in her
thinking is opening the door to redemption, or salvation as she put it. It is a concrete example of Jesus’ love for
us, that although each of us falls each of us has the opportunity to repent.
And so ironically she is seeking
her own repentance. Read her words
again:
We know that we
can’t undo our whole lives. We can’t even say we’d want to if we could; we are
who we are because of all the experiences that brought us to this point. What
we can do is try to find a better way to live from here on. That’s our focus.
Up until now, our
names have been synonymous with “God Hates Fags.” Any twelve-year-old with a
cell phone could find out what we did. We hope [Selena] Kyle [in the Dark Knight Rises] was right about the
other part, too, though – that everything sticks – and that the changes we make
in our lives will speak for themselves.
That’s actually a fair deep
thought hidden there. First, people are
confronted sometimes with the question: would you prefer to live your life
differently? For instance, I have spoken
openly about my experiences with disability discrimination. If I could go back and make my disabilities
disappear, so that I never suffered any of it, would I? And honestly I would say, “no.” Those experiences, good and bad, have helped
mold who I am. Now there is a question
of how much of our character is set at birth, and how much is purely a product
of our upbringing. I will say that there
are elements of my personality that have reportedly manifested itself since I was
a baby. But there is no education quite
like having your right to an education denied to you; it teaches you lessons
about the world that I don’t think you can learn in any book and, yes, I think
it changed me and for the better.
A tougher question is whether you
would change your mistakes, even your sins?
And plainly her answer is no, but she would not continue to commit them. And now after first deciding that her church
was wrong because it didn’t open up the chance for one of Jesus’ most significant
gifts of love—giving us the chance to redeem ourselves—she now finds herself in
need of redemption.
It is fitting then that one of
these girls is named Grace for it reminds one of the ultimate song of
redemption, Amazing Grace. I have said this before, but this song is far
more literal and autobiographical than you might initially think. Its author, John Newton, was literally blind
and regained his sight. He was literally
lost and was found. He worked on board a
slave ship for years on end, participating in one of the most monstrous sins
ever perpetrated and he came back from that.
He found redemption. I believe in
my heart that he found passage into heaven, by repenting of that deep sin, and
helping show us the way back to grace:
On the off chance any of the
Phelps girls are reading this today, do remember this. This man actually physically hurt people. Sharks would actually follow slave ships like
his expecting people to be occasionally cast off. I have heard estimates as high as fifteen
million people dying in this journey.
And those who made it were then sold into a lifetime of bondage cruel
enough that some might have preferred the sharks. He physically hurt people and I believe he
found redemption.
By comparison, as far as I know,
the Westboro Baptist Church has only ever hurt feelings. And while what they have done was inexcusably
cruel, the sin is comparatively slight compared to what John Newton had done. If he can find redemption, so can you.
---------------------------------------
My wife and I have lost our jobs
due to the harassment of convicted terrorist Brett Kimberlin, including an attempt
to get us killed and to frame me for a crime carrying a sentence of up to ten
years. I know that claim sounds
fantastic, but if you read starting here, you will see absolute proof of these
claims using documentary and video evidence.
If you would like to help in the fight to hold Mr. Kimberlin
accountable, please hit the Blogger’s Defense Team button on the right. And thank you.
Follow me at Twitter @aaronworthing,
mostly for snark and site updates. And
you can purchase my book (or borrow it for free if you have Amazon Prime), Archangel: A Novel of Alternate, Recent
History here.
And you can read a little more about my novel, here.
---------------------------------------
Disclaimer:
I have accused some people,
particularly Brett Kimberlin, of
reprehensible conduct. In some cases, the conduct is even
criminal. In all cases, the only justice I want is through the
appropriate legal process—such as the criminal justice system. I do not want to see vigilante violence
against any person or any threat of such violence. This kind of conduct is not only morally
wrong, but it is counter-productive.
In the particular case of Brett
Kimberlin, I do not want you to even contact him. Do not call him. Do not write him a letter. Do not write him an email. Do not text-message him. Do not engage in any kind of directed
communication. I say this in part
because under Maryland law, that can quickly become harassment and I don’t want
that to happen to him.
And for that matter, don’t go on
his property. Don’t sneak around and try
to photograph him. Frankly try not to
even be within his field of vision. Your
behavior could quickly cross the line into harassment in that way too (not to
mention trespass and other concerns).
And do not contact his
organizations, either. And most of all, leave his family alone.
The only exception to all that is
that if you are reporting on this, there is of course nothing wrong with
contacting him for things like his official response to any stories you might
report. And even then if he tells you to
stop contacting him, obey that request. That
this is a key element in making out a harassment claim under Maryland law—that
a person asks you to stop and you refuse.
And let me say something
else. In my heart of hearts, I don’t
believe that any person supporting me has done any of the above. But if any of you have, stop it, and if you
haven’t don’t start.
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