Banished : Surviving My Years in the Westboro Baptist Church (9781455518470)

by Drain, Lauren; Pulitzer, Lisa (CON)

  We picketed every day of the week, beginning on Sundays. Every Sunday before our own 11 a.m. service, we’d divide up into four teams, each of which would cover three churches in the area. We rotated the schedule. There were four hundred churches in Topeka, so we’d be sure to target the ones with the biggest congregations the most frequently. Some of the signs were giant, six to twelve feet high. Some of them we carried on wood sticks, but others we just held up at chest level. The messages we carried depended on our audience. For the church pickets, our signs would have messages like FALSE PROPHET, YOUR PASTOR IS LYING, YOU ARE GOING TO HELL, GOD HATES YOU, and LYING FALSE PROPHETS. We had special signs reserved just for the Catholic Church: FAG PRIESTS, ALL PRIESTS ARE PEDOPHILES, PEDOPHILE ENABLERS, and PRIESTS RAPE BOYS were the staples for those protests. The Catholic churches were the biggest and fanciest, and they were always crowded, with people of all ages, including families all dressed up, arriving at the cathedral doors in droves.

  When we picketed their churches, the Catholics would shoo us with their hands and tell us to go home so they could enjoy their holy day. Theirs were my favorite houses of worship to picket because of the Catholics’ hypocrisy. I found their disgust of us so ironic. I couldn’t believe the audacity of these people who chose to ignore widespread crimes committed by their own priests against their own children. The documentaries and news stories about the huge number of victims had been all over the media. Parents were concerned about the sex offenders in their communities, but they didn’t seem to care much about their deviant priests. To me, raping little boys was a lot more heinous than being homosexual.

  Picketing was the way the church spread the word that sinners were responsible for whatever befell them, from small-scale tragedies to outright catastrophes. Because there were so many people who wondered why God had allowed such horrible things to happen on earth—why a single tornado had killed more than a hundred people, why a dozen coal miners had died in a mine shaft collapse, why a gunman had taken several lives in a mall—the WBC provided the answer. Homosexuality was at the crux of His anger. We had gotten so far away from God’s message of obedience that we had it coming. Damnation in hell was a foregone conclusion.

  The church was not looking for converts, penitents, or salvation seekers. We were not “witnessing” in the traditional sense of spreading the word, nor were we trying to change anybody’s mind about what the Bible said. We weren’t even trying to recruit anyone to our church. Instead, we delivered a message that we knew would be hated, and we thought it was our God-given duty to do so.

  Very rarely did we encounter people who could challenge us on the specifics of the Bible, but when we did, we treated them respectfully. We all carried electronic Bibles, palm-size e-readers of the traditional King James translation, which we’d take out in order to very gently show them the verses that supported each of the points they chose to contend. Nothing anyone screamed at us shocked us in any way. We had heard every insult, projected in every tone and volume, before.

  Others questioned us about who we were really representing. “Are you communists? What are you, Muslim?” people would ask. We’d say we were children of God who chose to obey His Word.

  With freedom of speech on our side, the pastor staged pickets that were designed to generate a lot of anger. The way he saw it, whichever events would incite the most fury were the most important. Some places such as Gage Park, the Capitol, the city newspaper, and the courthouse had been picketed weekly for decades. Other situations called for a onetime rally, or maybe an anniversary picket, depending on the occasion. On St. Patrick’s Day, we’d picket the annual downtown parade. On the Fourth of July, we’d head to Gage Park. On Christmas morning we’d picket the tons of churches that had made Shirley’s list of worthy targets, based primarily on when we had last paid them a visit.

  Shirley made sure we all understood that not following the rules at public protests could have legal implications against us. For example, when we were actively protesting, we were told to not step outside of our barricaded zone, stay longer than our permit allowed, or get into any physical altercations. Some cops were more contentious than others and seemed as if they would love to arrest us if they could find lawful grounds. They would act outside of their authority, telling us to put our signs away or we would be arrested. Sometimes, they would tell us not to speak at all or they would arrest us for “fighting words.”

  “What’s the reason?” one of us would ask.

  “Just do it, or I will arrest you!” would be the curt reply.

  Because every picket had an attorney present, our lawyer would step forward and confront the officer. “We have the permit, we have already contacted you, and you are violating your duties,” our representative would say, trying to be reasonable.

  A lot of times our signs would target fag-enabling cops, and the officers wouldn’t be able to control themselves, causing them to abuse their authority. If it became apparent that they were not going to back down, we’d have to pack up our signs and leave, but we’d use legal means to address their unconstitutional treatment of us later. One of our attorneys would inevitably file a lawsuit on our behalf.

  Sometimes we would get support from cops at a protest, who would thank us and even express an interest in our religion. “I have never seen such a strong church who knows the Bible like you do,” some of them might comment. Other people would also say things that would confirm we were legitimate and not crazy, that we had intelligence and Bible knowledge.

  Despite the fact that our picketing often had risks, most of us weren’t afraid. Mothers with new babies would go to the local pickets, bringing their toddlers strapped into strollers with them. Little kids held the smaller, lighter signs. Old men and ladies, midlifers, teenagers, and younger kids often shared the same small piece of sidewalk. It was not unheard of to see nine- or ten-year-olds on the edge of the sidewalk next to a street of high-density traffic holding up one large sign. Sometimes, people driving by would scream out “child abusers,” referring to the little ones so close to traffic. One time, Shirley’s six-year-old son, Gabe, was struck in the head by a fast food restaurant drink hurled from a passing car during a picket we were staging along a busy road in Topeka. Shirley cleaned him off, hugged him, and made sure he was okay, but the picket continued.

  I truly loved picketing with my friends. We thrived on being productive, upstanding kids who used our time and money to make a difference, and who made our parents proud. If there was an early morning coffee run on a picket, we’d be the first to volunteer. I never felt obligated or pressured to be on the picket line. I thoroughly enjoyed participating and did so freely and willingly. The enthusiasm and intensity on the line provided us all with an uneasy thrill. We actually flourished as the sentiment against us grew. When we were on the picket line, we were so empowered that we became almost possessed. It was as though God was with us, and His presence manifested itself in a passion that was visible in our eyes.

  As I became more acclimated to the church culture, I was eligible to attend out-of-state pickets. In time, I went to WBC protests in nearly every state, from New York to Florida and from Alaska to Massachusetts. Picketing at all these locations was very expensive. I had to pay my own way to get to them, but that was part of the responsibility of earning my place. I was able to make some money working off the books babysitting the kids in the church and helping Shirley at the law office. Our travel budget was huge. Shirley told any reporters who asked that the WBC spent almost a quarter of a million dollars a year.

  To get to a picket, we would prefer to drive to save both money and hassle. We’d usually send one van full of church members. Almost every family had an eight-passenger Honda Odyssey minivan with a drop-down DVD player for entertainment. Whether we were driving or flying, there was rarely time for sightseeing or exploring. When we did fly, sometimes we’d stay on the ground only long enough to stage the scheduled picket, then fly home the same evening, which cost us as much as $400 each
for a round-trip ticket. Sometimes, we’d stay overnight, which was fabulous. In the motels, my girlfriends and I would share our own room. We were now too old for the conventional childhood sleepover, so our picket nights on the road were our new teenage version of that social event. During the day, we were single-mindedly picketing, with all the procedures that entailed. When we’d get to our destination, we’d unpack our signs, picket, stir up the audience, which gave us great satisfaction, videotape the event from start to finish, pack our signs, and move to the next destination.

  I was too young to attend one picket we staged in Canada—only people eighteen and older were invited—but I heard about it later. The picketers were attacked shortly after they crossed over the border into Canada, and all their signs were ruined or ripped to shreds. Everybody had to make improvised signs out of cardboard or poster board, which they bought at a local CVS. When the group returned to Kansas, the pastor was very inflamed about the treatment they had received. “I think we are done in Canada. We have already told them so many times and they don’t get it. So we won’t give them any more warnings,” he told us in the next sermon he delivered. However, he later changed his mind and went on to stage more pickets in Canada, despite the Canadian border patrol’s attempts to confiscate our signs at the border.

  On the church’s godhatestheworld.com website, the pastor talked about another incident, in which members had been arrested at the International Airport in Ottawa on their way to picket Canada’s Parliament, which was passing legislation in favor of homosexuality. At another picket in Alberta, Royal Canadian Mounted Police ordered picketers to put away their GOD HATES FAGS signs, saying it was against Canada’s law to incite violence against an identifiable group. Still, the WBC members managed to burn the Canadian flag in protest of the country’s approval of same-sex marriage. Back in Topeka, the pastor raised the Canadian flag in the upside-down position, where it joined the American flag on the pole outside the church. Canada was now an equally doomed nation.

  The pastor believed that we, as God’s representatives, were doing a community service by spreading our message there. The places that we selected to be picketed were going to be graced with a visit from God’s messengers. The people we were picketing didn’t necessarily see it that way. We were taking the time, money, and effort to go there with a very important warning, but they looked at us as the enemy. We didn’t care. Our primary motivation was to let people know God hated them, but we weren’t trying to convince them we were right. Time was running out, so even if we had traveled a long distance so that only one person in the crowd might change his heart, it was worth it. We weren’t inviting anyone to join us. We were encouraging everybody to see God’s truth. Someone who we would never see again might come away from an encounter with us with a new awareness of the wrath of God. However, if we were done with you and weren’t coming to your city or your country anymore, then there was no more hope for your city, nation, or continent. You were even more doomed than you had been before.

  Lots of times, people would stage counterprotests, some of which I actually found really funny. GOD HATES FIGS was one sign we would see at college campuses. People holding those signs said the message was also from scripture—in Matthew 21:18–21, Jesus cursed a fig tree, which made it wither and die. Other times, homosexual counterprotesters would engage in simulated sex acts right in front of us. They’d tongue-kiss and embrace, and practically have sex within inches of us. We were trained to be really unflappable about it, and sometimes we’d joke around right with them. On occasion, we’d put false notices about future pickets on our website, ones that we had no intention of staging, just to get counterprotesters to use their resources going somewhere we wouldn’t be.

  We were expected to be cool and collected at all times, in any scenario. There was no official training in how to behave, but we were told it was imperative to defuse a situation that was getting out of hand. If someone wanted to talk, we knew it was okay to engage him in conversation, but if he started to argue, we were supposed to ignore him. We learned by trial and error on the picket lines. We didn’t shy away from any passersby who wanted to mix it up with us. We always tried to be friendly to the people who talked to us, because we didn’t hate them—God did. One of our attorneys was always there to guide us through a heated moment. “Don’t say anything, record everything,” he or she would remind us.

  The first time I saw a weapon was during a picket in Kansas City, Missouri. We were outside the Kemper Arena, where Cher, one of the world’s most popular singers but, more important, a celebrity mother of a lesbian, was giving a sold-out performance on her Farewell Tour. Toward the end of the picket, a woman came up to us flashing a knife and threatening us. We were only a group of five: four church members in their midtwenties and sixteen-year-old me. James Hockenbarger, who worked as a prison guard back in Topeka, was able to talk her down while the rest of us headed to our car. In that instant, I realized that the weapon had been flashed because of our message, but I felt more power than fear.

  Another time, we were at a regular weekly picket of a favorite target when a truck drove slowly by us, then circled the parking lot and came back. The driver flashed a gun, then started driving toward us fast, yelling out the window that we were Communists and Nazis. We were used to people yelling and driving fast, and our tactic was to ignore people to show them that they were not going to get a rise out of us. But when we saw he had a gun, it was a bit shocking, and someone made the executive decision to cut the picket short and pack up.

  Over the years, we had Gatorade bottles thrown at us, BB guns shot at us, and people threaten us with guns and knives. A lot of people drove their cars recklessly toward us, heading first in our direction before swerving away. But still, none of those things scared me. I believed that God would protect us in all circumstances as long as we obeyed and held those signs.

  Something did happen at a picket at Washburn University that caught me completely off guard and made me more fearful at these kinds of events. It was one of our typical pickets, where we had about thirty members spread out along the sidewalk for two or three city blocks. We were holding tall wooden signs bearing the usual messages: FAG ENABLER SCHOOL, YOU ARE GOING TO HELL, and GOD HATES FAG ENABLERS. The signs were directed mostly at the cars driving by, but there were also a few pedestrians walking along the sidewalk. I was situated in the middle of the picket near Rebekah, Jael, and Megan. Typically, the teenagers carried the largest number of signs or the really big ones.

  On this particular day, Bill Hockenbarger, one of our oldest members at almost eighty and a member of the WBC since the 1950s, was standing near his wife on the far side of the picket. Suddenly, I heard fellow members shouting my name. I was the videographer that day, and they needed me. “Lauren! Get down here and film!” they yelled. I couldn’t see what was going on, so I handed off my sign and darted down the picket line with the camcorder. I heard the church members yelling, “Call the police! Get off of him! Cowards! God will punish you for this!” But I still didn’t know the extent of the problem. All I could see were college kids, crouched over and pummeling someone on the ground.

  Soon, the men ran down the picket line to the scene, scaring off the college kids. I finally saw Bill lying on the grass with his face covered in blood and one of his eyes swollen shut. I burst into tears. How dare someone beat up an old man! He was an elderly gentleman exercising his right to freedom of religion and freedom of speech. I knew we angered people, but that didn’t mean they could physically assault someone for his beliefs. That was truly against the law and against any ethical standard. Denying one person’s right to free speech was essentially denying that right to everybody who takes that freedom for granted. We saw and heard things all the time we objected to, but we never resorted to violence. I felt knots in my stomach that somebody had dared to mess with us on such a cowardly level and that they had then run away. But I knew God would have the final judgment on these bullies. We were God’s only peopl
e.

  I was on the picket line because I wanted to please God. These people so upset at us were not Him and had no power over my soul. I didn’t take anything they said to me personally. They said horrible things: “ugly bitch,” “ugly virgin,” “jealous whore,” or “miserable lesbian.” They were just validating what I had been taught: that prophets are often abused. As the pastor said, “If you’re preaching the truth of God, people are going to hate you. Nobody has the right to think he’s preaching the truth of God unless people hate him for it. All the prophets were treated that way.”

  Closer to home, though, things were more peaceful. The neighbors on our block who weren’t in the church never harassed us, usually preferring to ignore us. They knew that our right to free speech was protected under the First Amendment. Plus, when we weren’t picketing, we didn’t seek any attention at all. Once, our signboard in front of the church was defaced with “God Hates the Phelps” in permanent paint and a couple of times people put bullet holes in it, but none of this scared me. If God wanted something to happen to any of us, then it was His will. The pastor installed security cameras and left it at that. Anyone could find us. The address of the church, as well as the addresses of the families in the congregation, was available on the Internet or in the Topeka phone directory. People strongly opposed to us even posted compiled lists of our names, addresses, and phone numbers on their own websites in order to facilitate pranks and harassment by our detractors.