DAVID (@Jewlicious): Ultimate frisbee in the park today against Christian team. Told an Israeli, “Dude, it’s okay to hit them, because they HAVE to turn the other cheek…”
MEGAN (@meganphelps): You give them too much credit! They don’t follow any other teachings of Jesus; what makes you think they’d follow that one? =)
DAVID: Aw c’mon, Megan! These were nice Christians! Just because they don’t go picketing all over the place with signs that say “God Hates Fags…”
MEGAN: I’m a tad skeptical of their niceness; after all, what’s nice about encouraging people on their way to Hell?
Plus, I’m a little suspicious of anyone who plays ultimate frisbee. =D
DAVID: You know, for an evil something something, you sure do crack me up …
When David started asking me questions about our picket signs, it gave me a kind of permission to ask him questions about Jewish theology. In those days, the only thing I knew about Jews for sure was that they had killed Jesus and were thus cursed by God.… Jews: Who both killed the Lord Jesus, and their own prophets, and have persecuted us; and they please not God, and are contrary to all men. But I didn’t know what Jews actually believed. I wanted to understand so that I would be better prepared to argue against those beliefs, to show them from the Bible that Jewish ideas were wrong. I tried to read books to help me—including The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Understanding Judaism—but I found greater clarity in speaking with a flesh-and-blood person. Thanks to Twitter, the distance between Kansas and Israel was no obstacle.
At first, I had used passages from the New Testament to argue against David’s doctrinal positions. When he said he didn’t believe in the divinity of New Testament books, I started limiting my references to the Old Testament. “That’s not actually what those verses say,” he would tell me. “Your translation is off. You would know that if you spoke Hebrew!” In response, I bought all three levels of coursework from Rosetta Stone and signed up for webinars on biblical Hebrew so that I could learn the language. David started sending me tips, teaching me new words, and saying laila tov—good night—when he signed off. The dynamic between us was strange—never charged in the way that my friendship with Chad would be later, but still conflicting. David was an enemy of Christ. There was no confusion about the fact that we were at odds with each other, and I was certain that his understanding of the Bible was wrong—but as with C.G. and so many others on Twitter, I found myself liking him anyway.
My conversations with David had continued for more than a year, during which time I twice protested events at which he was speaking—first at the Jewlicious Festival in California, and then at a conference in Louisiana. David came out to talk with me both times, and though I continued to warn him that he was on the path to Hell, our banter had an ease to it that was unusual on the picket line. In New Orleans, we even exchanged gifts. He brought me a Middle Eastern dessert from the market near his home in Jerusalem, and I brought him some of my favorite peppermint chocolate. He flipped the bar over and started teaching me about the kosher symbols on the packaging, while I listened earnestly and held a GOD HATES JEWS sign.
The temporary end of my communication with David came shortly after the picket in New Orleans, following a debate about Westboro’s DEATH PENALTY FOR FAGS sign. He had pointed out that our sign contradicted Jesus’s own instruction about the death penalty—He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her—but he had also connected it to an issue that was far more personal. “Didn’t your mom have your oldest brother out of wedlock?” David had asked me. “That’s another sin that deserves the death penalty, isn’t it?” Until that moment, I had never thought through that fact that if my mother had been killed for her sin, she wouldn’t have had the opportunity to repent and be forgiven.
That without mercy, my beloved family would not exist.
Pacing around the inn’s dining room table, I finished explaining to David why I had suddenly stopped speaking to him two years earlier.
“I was terrified. The points you made about the DEATH PENALTY FOR FAGS sign—that was the first time I consciously rejected one of the church’s doctrines. It was the first time I believed that I could be right about something, and that the rest of the church could be wrong. It gave me some little bit of confidence in my own thoughts, and helped me not to just blindly trust the elders. It might seem like such a small point, but it was huge for me—a loose thread of contradiction in our tightly woven arguments. I doubt I would have ever had the confidence to challenge other Westboro doctrines without that.”
I suddenly remembered that even my cousin Jael had realized the significant role that David had played in my departure from Westboro. I read him the text message she had sent me the day after I left, specifically alluding to both David (“Jewlicious”) and C.G. (“FKA”).
I think over some years you turned aside to try to persuade Satan through clever argument on Twitter, etc. Speaking to Jewlicious, FKA, & others—you let Satan nibble on your ear and flatter your vanity—during long and continual conversations. Whether that was with one or many Satan-inspired minions, it has caused you to dig for doctrinal fallacy—when you know better.
I had rejected my cousin’s accusations the instant I read them. Being influenced by outsiders was a moral failing, and I couldn’t bring myself to acknowledge that I had allowed it to happen—and on Twitter, no less. But as I considered Jael’s assertions, I stopped seeing my change of mind as a sign of weakness or vulnerability. At the root of my shame was the assumption that I had nothing to learn from people like David and C.G.—a premise that had so clearly proved false. Bit by bit, my shame was being replaced by profound gratitude to Twitter for its commitment to being “the free speech wing of the free speech party.” Instead of booting me from the platform for “hate speech,” as many had demanded, it had put me in conversation with people and ideas that effectively challenged beliefs that had been hammered into me since I was a child—and that conversation had been far more illuminating than decades’ worth of rage, isolation, and efforts to shame and silence. It struck me as ironic that this very idea had been repeatedly referenced by church members when they spoke of the First Amendment, a quote from 1920s-era Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis: “If there be time to expose through discussion the falsehood and fallacies, to avert the evil by the processes of education, the remedy to be applied is more speech, not enforced silence.”
“Listen,” David said, after listening to all this, “you have to come to Jewlicious next month. You should meet some of the people you protested here three years ago. You can come and see what Judaism is really about.”
I chose my words carefully. “Uh, I don’t … think that’s a good idea.” In fact, it specifically went against the plan that Grace and I had concocted, to wit, disappear into the ether forever.
“I’m sure it’s a good idea,” David countered. “And listen, I know you’re afraid to talk about this stuff. I know the wounds are still fresh and that we were ‘the enemy’ and all of that … but I think this will help you, and I know it will help others. It could bring a lot of healing to a lot of people. If you can bring yourself to do it, you absolutely should.”
I told him I didn’t think I could do it.
“If it would make you feel better, we’ll do it on Saturday. It’ll be Shabbat, so there won’t be any recording—no photos or videos. Just a conversation. Just you and us.”
Everything inside me screamed no. Enemy territory. Betraying my family. Making myself vulnerable to people I had hurt, and who had hurt me. Who had every reason to hate me. How could I possibly?
I closed my eyes and the line went silent again.
“Megan?” David asked.
“Let me talk to Grace.”
* * *
Three weeks later, my sister and I found ourselves in Los Angeles at the Museum of Tolerance, a modern, multilevel complex whose purpose was to encourage visitors to challenge their prejudices and assumptions. I couldn�
�t help feeling a bit wounded by David’s suggestion that we visit—wasn’t I already doing so much to challenge my prejudices?—but I recognized in my resistance more of Westboro’s teachings: our derision of the whole concept of “tolerance.” Ideas that contradicted our own were inherently morally bankrupt. Why, in the name of God, should we tolerate them?
Standing just outside the entrance to the first exhibit with David and Grace, I listened as the docent expounded on the museum and its history. She was a stately woman, midsixties, I guessed, with silver hair cropped short. The purpose of this museum wasn’t just to tell the stories of human rights atrocities, she explained, but to remind us to act when we saw things going awry. To encourage us to be more than passive bystanders. I had a sinking feeling listening to her descriptions of the exhibits. There was going to be something about Westboro in here.
Sure enough, immediately after passing through the entrance, I spotted a photo on the wall. “Hey, look,” I said to David. “There’s Bekah and Gran.” It was a photo of my sister and grandmother protesting during the trial of one of Matthew Shepard’s killers. Bekah had always been tiny as a girl, and in the photo she looked much younger than her twelve years.
David laughed and mocked me. “‘There’s Gran!’ Well, this is why we’re here…” The three of us spoke for a few minutes about the impact that Westboro had had on the world, the number of people who had been jarred by our message. Their message, I reminded myself. I had to stop saying we and our and us.
As the three of us spoke, another docent led a group of young people in matching hunter-green sweat suits over to the photo of Bekah and Gran, a security guard trailing behind them. The guide told the story of Matthew Shepard, a gay college student who was brutally murdered by two young men he met at a small-town bar, and the protests and counterprotests at his funeral. We listened from a few paces back, and then David said quietly, “That’s their grandmother.”
I felt panicky.
“Excuse me?” the woman said.
“They grew up in that church that protests gays. They left a few months ago.”
Fifteen confused faces stared over at Grace and me. “You hated gay people?” one girl asked.
“I didn’t hate them…” I trailed off. “I thought that God hated them. I thought that the Bible said so. I thought it was my duty to God to tell people that.”
The questions came one after another—about Westboro’s doctrines and beliefs, about what it had been like growing up there, about our family, and then finally about why we had left. What had made us change.
I pointed at David. “He helped.”
David held up his hands as if in self-defense. “I was just trying to get her to see how misguided her ideas were—how hurtful she was being to other people.”
When the kids finally fell silent, the docent stood wide-eyed for a moment, and then thanked us for sharing our experiences. “I’m sure it must have been so painful to leave your family, but this is an example for us, too. We all need to stand up. Our families might not be like yours, but when we see people being hateful or bullying others, we need to speak up.”
Back in the lobby at the end of our tour, David and Grace and I stood reflecting as groups of young students milled about.
“See?” he said. “That wasn’t so bad, was it?”
“It made me anxious,” I said. “And ashamed. It’s so hard to frame the words to admit that what I so passionately believed for so long was wrong and destructive in many ways. And I can’t help but feel like I’m betraying my family every time I open my mouth about any of it … But it could have been a lot worse. They were very kind.”
I had a brief moment of hope, thinking that maybe the Jewlicious Festival that weekend might be a similar experience—but then I flashed back to the furor that had taken place three years earlier. Each one of us picketers had been separated and surrounded by angry mobs. Counterprotesters had dressed up as Jesus and the Easter bunny, screaming and chanting and hitting us with their signs while Long Beach police officers looked on and laughed. Two old women sporting sunglasses and sneers had found their way through the boisterous crowd and planted themselves directly behind me, each whispering lurid descriptions of sex into my ears—not as Gramps had done from the pulpit, referencing gays, but with me at the center of their sick fantasies. I was repulsed, wanted to bolt, but I couldn’t move because of the throng. I strained to lift my signs up above the melee and sang at the top of my lungs just to keep the words of the old women out of my ears.
The festival, I feared, would be a different experience entirely.
* * *
The ninth annual Jewlicious Festival was to take place in Long Beach, California, aboard the RMS Queen Mary, an ocean liner from the 1930s now retired and permanently docked in Queensway Bay. It was billed as a gathering of fifteen hundred Jewish students and young adults, who would come together for a three-day celebration of Jewish culture. I spent the first two days roaming from one conversation to the next with an endless stream of questions about Jewish history, food, music, and theology, but soon ran headlong into the original catalyst for the trip.
After lunch on Saturday, David led Grace and me into a grand banquet room for our public discussion. It had been relatively easy to endure the rejection of outsiders while I was at Westboro, surrounded by people who took the heat right alongside me—and who likewise believed that we were speaking God’s words, not our own. For I have not spoken of myself; but the Father which sent me, he gave me a commandment, what I should say, and what I should speak. But this—standing on my own two feet, accountable for my own thoughts and ideas, which were still in constant flux—this was panic-inducing. David took in my blank stare and shallow breath. “I’ll be right there with you,” he reassured me. “It’ll be okay.”
We took our seats at a cloth-covered table at the front of the room, which had been filled to capacity with rows of chairs lined up like a firing squad. Once those were taken, more people filled in the space at the edges of the room, crowding at the back before the doors were finally closed. The group was about 150 strong, crammed in close, waiting.
“Well!” David called out. “Welcome! Can you all hear me okay?” No amplification equipment on Shabbat, either. There were murmurs from the back. All good.
The room was impeccably silent as David directed the conversation. He returned to the earliest days of our relationship as frenemies on Twitter, offered probing questions about Westboro and its doctrines—especially as they related to Jewish people—and, finally, asked me to explain why we had left. I stared assiduously down at the white tablecloth as I spoke, at the beads of condensation dripping down the sides of my glass of ice water, at David’s face as he tried to gently coax the conversation forward. I did not dare to look across the table, which felt to me like a shield. The first row of chairs sat just on the other side of it, the closest faces only a few feet away.
Grace said little until David asked about leaving our family. I tried to be vague so as to avoid openly weeping, but she spoke up suddenly and passionately, until it felt like we were both drowning in it again.
“We’ll answer some questions in a minute,” David said, as Grace and I collected ourselves, “but the last thing I wanted to share is a revelation I had this week during my conversations with Megan and Grace. To be honest: I don’t know if I could do what they did. If I had been raised the way that they were raised, I would’ve been out there holding signs with Grandpa Phelps, too. If I was brought up in their family, would I have the strength of character and the moral fortitude to leave my family? To leave everything I’ve ever known?” He shook his head. “I want to say that I would have, but I don’t know.”
When I finally looked across the table, my eye was drawn instantly to a woman a few rows back. I recognized her as one of the counterprotesters from three years earlier. Long dark hair. Sharp brown eyes. She had been part of the group that had surrounded me, grabbing for my signs, pushing and pressing in on me. It had been
her face, twisted in disgust, that had been screaming into mine while those two old women whispered in my ears. I felt my skin crawl, my stomach clenching as fear and betrayal surfaced again. Some of these people had attacked my family. What was I doing here?
But the woman’s face wasn’t vengeful now. It was splotchy with tears. As David began to call on audience members with questions, I was moved to find similar expressions on faces all over the room. Not angry. Mournful. They framed their questions with kindness. They offered forgiveness. Again and again, they expressed the hope that if we could change, then others could, too. Many would find Grace and me later, embrace after embrace, and tell us their stories of Westboro. Students with LGBT friends driven to self-harm by an atmosphere of intolerance we had fed. A twenty-something whose parents had forced him from his home when he’d come out as gay—“I know what it feels like to lose your family,” he said as he wrapped me in a bear hug. “You’re not alone.” A U.S. Marine who had witnessed Westboro’s presence at the funeral of his friend. It had been over a year, he told me, and still he had so much rage. He couldn’t turn on a dime and let it all go, but it helped him to understand. He believed he could find peace now.
Most shocking of all would be the handful of apologies. Some had accosted me on Twitter, others outside the festival three years earlier. “I didn’t know,” they said. “I was angry. Next time, I’ll try to find a better way.”
“Just a few more questions, guys,” David said. “They’re gonna need this room for the next session soon.”
“What’s the most important thing you’ve learned since you’ve been here?” one girl asked. “And what do you hope will happen to the church?”
I had spent the week parsing Bible verses with David and Rabbi Yonah Bookstein, who ran the festival with his wife, Rachel, and I couldn’t help diving into the verse I had most fixated on. “One of the most mind-blowing things is how they understand the verse that says, ‘Love thy neighbor.’” I quoted the verses. Thou shalt not hate thy brother in thine heart: thou shalt in any wise rebuke thy neighbour, and not suffer sin upon him. Thou shalt not avenge, nor bear any grudge against the children of thy people, but thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.
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