by Libby Phelps
Right before taping, a producer took me aside and told me there was a woman in the audience whose son was a fallen soldier. Westboro had picketed his funeral, she told me, and she wanted to confront me about it. Was that OK? I panicked; nobody had warned me this would happen. But what could I say? I agreed reluctantly, and when the woman told me how much the church had hurt her and her husband, we both broke down in tears. I hadn’t been at that picket; it had happened after I’d left the church. But I’d been to a hundred just like it. And I knew exactly how it had gone down.
“I’m sorry,” I told her helplessly. “I thought I was doing the right thing. But I look back now and I see that we were hurting people.” I couldn’t bring back that woman’s son, but I could maybe help her a little bit by showing her we all had the potential to change.
CHAPTER SEVEN
LIFE BEYOND WESTBORO
NEAR THE END OF 2016, I WENT TO A PROTEST AT THE KANSAS State House. There I was, in a small throng of chanting people holding signs. It all felt deeply familiar, with one glaring difference: These placards said things like LOVE TRUMPS HATE and NOT MY PRESIDENT, and, my personal favorite, YOU CAN’T COMB OVER RACISM.
At Davis’s invitation, I had shown up for an anti-Trump rally. Davis was scheduled to speak, and even though only about thirty people were there, they were an enthusiastic and loud bunch. I had met some of them through Equality House events, and others seemed to know who I was already. I often still worried that strangers would yell things at me for being a Phelps, but the reaction always seemed to be that they were glad to have me around, and curious about my life after Westboro.
I took a good look at the signs people were holding, noting how paper-thin they were; the cold wind was going to make short work of them. Some had too many words crowded into a small space—I remembered Gramps saying a sign had to be pithy and get people’s attention. A short sound bite to make onlookers take notice. Maybe, in the future, I could lend my sign-making abilities to this group or others like it. That was a thought that would once have been so heretical I’d have hated myself for even entertaining it.
IT’S BEEN EIGHT YEARS SINCE I LEFT MY FAMILY AND THE church, and I still feel like I’m in a constant process of adjusting to life on the outside. There is always another new experience that everyone else seems to have had decades earlier than me.
For years, it felt incredibly difficult for me to even have a normal conversation, because most of my answers pointed directly back to my upbringing—for instance, the time my now-husband’s mother asked me if I worked throughout college. I said I did, and she asked where. I had worked at a law library and a law office—my family’s, obviously, which made for an uncomfortable situation.
It was more than a year after I left before I finally felt comfortable just telling people who I was and where I’d come from. Before that, I always felt I’d somehow get in trouble for being who I had been, so I tried to talk around it when people asked about my family. As I’m a practicing physical therapist close to Topeka, a good percentage of my patients ask me what my maiden name is then ask if I’m related to Fred Phelps. Becoming comfortable talking about it has taken time. One day a couple of years ago, a patient asked me, as many had, if I was associated with WBC. I said, as I had done since leaving the church, that I wasn’t, but that I had grown up there. Even though I was no longer a member of the church, it was difficult for me to have the conversation. But I needed to have it in order to move forward with my life. “Good,” she said, “because I wouldn’t want you to be my physical therapist if you were.”
The year after that, I had a huge increase in patients talking about Gramps and Westboro, because my family had announced plans to picket the high school graduation in Eudora, the small town in which I worked. I had a couple of high school students as patients at the time, and they asked me if I knew who Fred Phelps was. I admitted to them he was my grandfather. They felt awkward, I’m sure—but for the first time, I didn’t. I explained to them that I didn’t live there anymore or practice their faith or their extracurricular activities. The mother of one of my patients would always come back and watch her son go through his exercises, and she was shocked when I told her who my grandfather was. Still, she was friendly. I could tell she didn’t want to make me uncomfortable, and I felt the same way.
GRADUALLY, I’VE MADE A GOOD LIFE FOR MYSELF BEYOND Westboro. Most importantly, I have a loving husband and two wonderful children. Having kids with Logan has shown me the best kind of love; the bond between all of us is amazing. I give my kids lots of hugs and kisses; I’m affectionate in a way that my parents never were with me. (I still have reservations about public displays of affection with Logan, though! I’ve worked up to being OK with him holding my hand in public.) I want to raise my kids to treat people decently and to be accepting of everyone’s differences. Nobody should be ashamed of how they live their life. Nobody should live in fear. Rather, they should be supported, accepted, and respected. I want my kids to be accepting of others regardless of any differences, including race, religion, or sexual orientation. I want them to see that classmate crying at school and stick up for him or her. I want my children to be happy, and to make others happy by how they treat them. I want them to have the confidence to stand up to bullies, at school and in life. I have to lead by example, of course, and I can only hope I’m doing a good job of teaching them how to treat people well.
ON JUNE 12, 2016, THE ORLANDO PULSE NIGHTCLUB MASSACRE happened. One of my first horrified thoughts, upon hearing the news, was about how the WBC members must be reacting. I knew exactly what the mood would be—celebratory. Dancing a little jig. I felt sick. How could I ever allow myself to be anything but sad, astonished and just plain disgusted by this despicable act? How had I spent so many years thinking I was doing God’s work by acting jubilant when innocents were killed?
The Monday after the massacre, I took my son, Paxton, with me to a community workout group I’d joined not long before, and we had a moment of silence for the victims at the beginning of the hour. Those were two things I would have never done in my previous life: gather with others from my community, and stop to think about those killed and injured—in terms other than that they deserved it, that God was punishing them and America for their acceptance of homosexuality.
A slew of emotions ran through me. I felt sad and mad and terrified for my own children. I also felt thankful that I was even able to allow myself to have these emotions and not feel bad about it, or like I was reacting inappropriately to the situation.
It’s not as easy as that, of course. There are still times, at the end of the day, when it’s just me and my thoughts. I still nurse doubts about what will happen to my immortal soul when I die. I’m not sure I’ll ever completely get rid of those. Fortunately, I have people I can talk with about this. People who know where I’m coming from. The younger church members are leaving more and more frequently, and it seems like every year I have another cousin on the outside.
IT’S A FUNNY THING ABOUT DECIDING TO LEAVE THE CHURCH, though: You would think that we would all be brought closer together by making the leap into the outside world, by knowing we didn’t want to be a part of the Westboro mindset anymore. But the opposite seems to happen, more often than not. Becoming friendly with one another on the outside happens slowly, if at all. For many years, my sister Sharon and I barely talked, though we are now becoming closer and spending more time together. My sister Sara, to whom I was so close growing up, is now more of an acquaintance. She’s had a difficult time since leaving, and doesn’t seem to want a closer relationship at this time, which I had to learn to respect. When she initially came to visit me after leaving, it wasn’t the happy reunion I’d hoped it would be.
Sara has had a baby herself in recent years and I’ve reached out to her with offers of baby clothes, but overall we see the world very differently. She doesn’t approve of many of the new friends I’ve made, like Davis and Aaron at Equality House. She initially considered me a bad
influence and she even told me at one point she didn’t want me around her son, which broke my heart. But our relationship is also getting better, and I’m happy when our kids are able to get together and play now and then.
When Megan and her sister Grace left the church in 2014, I assumed Megan and I would resume our friendship and pick up where we left off. Instead, we’ve grown apart. Or maybe we grew apart when I left, and there was never any real chance to grow back together in our new, separate lives. Maybe that’s what’s necessary for many of us to make our own way in the world, after having been raised in such a small, codependent environment for so long.
MEGAN AND I WERE BRIEFLY BROUGHT CLOSE BY SOME SAD news. A little over two weeks after my firstborn, Paxton, came into the world, my grandfather died on March 19, 2014. My phone buzzed with a text from my cousin Josh, relaying the news, as I sat in the pediatrician’s office with my infant in my arms.
I had known he would pass someday soon, because he’d been in hospice care for weeks. But it still came as a shock. I tried my hardest to hold back the tears as I waited for the doctor to come in. Still trying to not show emotion, like I’d always been taught. But when he came into the examination room, I fell apart. I turned to the doctor and said, “I’m crying.” Obviously, because there were tears running down my cheeks. He asked me why. I told him it was because I just learned my grandpa had died. He said I had every right to cry. I told him I was upset because I didn’t get to see him before he died. I apologized for crying and turned my attention to Paxton—a happy distraction. After discussing the baby for a few minutes, the doctor looked at me with sad eyes and said he was sorry about my loss. I said thank you.
When I got back to my car, I immediately called Megan. We both started crying. I thanked her for visiting Gramps, and for talking about me to him. She had gone to see him two days after Paxton was born, and I couldn’t join her because I was too physically exhausted. She brought her iPhone in and recorded their conversation for me. She told him I’d had a baby, and showed him a photo. He said, “I remember her as a sweet little baby. Just a little baby. And now she’s a mother.” This is a quote I will forever cherish, and it’s the way I want to remember him.
That was the last time Megan saw Gramps. After the family had found out she had visited him, they informed the nurses that no one was to be allowed in without my aunt Lizz’s permission. As usual, they were capable of being so casually cruel—even to the person who was responsible for the church’s very existence.
From what I had heard from Megan and others, it seems very likely that Gramps had dementia in the final days and weeks before he died—maybe longer. Because I wasn’t able to see him, I don’t exactly know how that affected him. But I wonder if perhaps it gave him a window into a different perspective. I heard that in his last days he told one of my cousins that he thought the Equality House folks were good people. Was it the dementia talking? Was it his normal Southern hospitality coming through? Or was he having a change of heart? I’ll never know.
I loved Gramps. He was always kind to me. He was the first person I was close to who passed away. His death made me think more intently about the church and how it molded me growing up. I thought about how the world saw him—the only way it could have seen him—and I wished that I could show everyone the side of him that I knew, the kind and gentle side. The outside world saw Gramps as a vicious, vile, mean-tempered maniac, and I can understand why. His expressions that journalists would capture—glaring out from under his cowboy hat with his furrowed brow, and his deeply set eyes, coupled with the ruthless comments and endless Bible quotes—it all made him the perfect hate-speech icon in an era where gay civil rights were part of America’s daily debate. But he was also incredibly smart and could come up with the best one-liners to grab people’s attention—he really knew how to get his point across. Those were qualities that the gay community tried for in their own protests. If Gramps had only been on the other side of the issues, as he’d been when he was a civil rights lawyer. Think of what good he could have done for equality!
I know very few people will be able to see him like I did, or wonder about his potential, and I’ve mostly given up trying to explain myself. But I continue to believe that he meant it when he said he thought he was doing the right thing by terrorizing people on the streets day in and day out. He came from a bygone era, the Jonathan Edwards school of religion, where you showed your love for your neighbor by telling them the truth of God’s word as you understood it.
The most common question that protestors would ask us, and Gramps himself, was, “How can you possibly attack these people and consider yourself a man of God? What have they ever done to you?” Time and again, he would tell them, “I’m the only one that loves you, because I’m telling you the truth. Your never-dying soul depends on this.” I can’t possibly defend what he did, and I know that he hurt countless people with his actions and the actions of his church, but I still believe that he saw himself as a righteous crusader, and that he loved his family. Even as I work to undo the legacy of hate that Westboro created, I hold a place in my heart for Gramps. I don’t expect anyone to understand it or to sympathize, but that’s my truth.
I HEARD, DAYS LATER, THAT WESTBORO LEADERS PUBLICLY thanked God for Gramps’s death. I wasn’t surprised. It seems to have moved into a more and more extreme position than even the days when I was a young adult there. Much of Shirl’s power has been taken from her—which makes me wonder whether she, too, has undergone any change of heart. Davis told me that he texted Shirl that he was sorry for her loss when Gramps died. He was shocked when she texted back, “Thank you.”
From what I’ve heard from people who have left, Steve Drain is trying to take over the leadership of the church—a shocking discovery that I learned from my cousins. Who in their right mind would let this egotistical, power-hungry tyrant take control over anything? Under his reign, the church is becoming more and more controlling, especially regarding women. The men are almost exclusively the ones allowed to appear in the media, and have declared themselves “elders,” so only they can make the rules. Women aren’t allow to wear shorts anymore unless they go down to the knees. Shirts have to be high; swimming suits have to be wetsuits. I can only imagine how furious Shirl is about being sidelined this way. I feel bad for her, in a way; I definitely feel bad for the other women in the church, especially my mom.
MY COUSINS JOSH AND TIMMY LEFT THE CHURCH A LITTLE over a year before I did. They wrote me a letter, after I’d gone, saying they wanted to stay in contact with me because, they wrote, I was “awesome.” I was proud to get that letter. They both seem to have been able to make the transition to regular life more quickly and more easily than I did, and we’ve kept in pretty close touch.
Other cousins have left in recent months: twenty-three-year-old Lydia, Becky’s daughter, left in 2015 and went to stay with Joe and his wife, Michelle, in Topeka. From what I’ve heared from her in the few conversations we’ve had, she seems to be adjusting to normal life really well. Another cousin, Danielle, left a year earlier. She recently joined the Marines, something Westboro would definitely not approve of.
I DON’T THINK TWICE ABOUT PEOPLE BEING GAY ANYMORE. One of my best friends is gay—Blake, who was my friend even when I was in the church. Transgender people will reach out to me on social media and I’ll write back to them. I don’t care what anyone is, really. If you were born a woman and you want to be a man, that’s what I’ll call you. If my friend Chantelle wants to be called Chaun, that’s what I’ll do. Because that’s what makes him feel comfortable. My feelings toward gay people and transgender people are the same as toward a straight person or any other person. If they’re good people, and kind, then I would love to talk to them and be friends with them. Classifications don’t mean anything to me anymore. No one is better than anyone else.
If I could talk to my younger self, I would tell her to be more accepting of people, and to try to understand where they’re coming from. Everybody isn�
�t the same, and they’re not going to think the same, and that’s OK. WBC wants everyone to be exactly the same, to conform to their cookie-cutter version of what’s acceptable, of what they say God allows. I would also tell her to listen to the inner voice telling her it’s not OK to laugh at other people’s misery, even when your family is instructing you to do exactly that.
SOMETIMES I SEE TRACES OF GRAMPS IN MY OWN BEHAVIOR. My husband is the most easygoing guy; he’s always supportive of me and has my back. But sometimes I’ll get into a state where I want to have an argument. And he won’t do it. “Why won’t you argue with me?” I’ll yell. I feel like Gramps at those times. I definitely have a strong personality.
When I get mad at Paxton after a long day of his not listening to me—or when he’s about to do something that might hurt his baby sister, Zea—I’ll raise my voice, and the look on his face always makes me sad. He looks like he’s trying to figure out how he’s supposed to react to me, and reminds me of my own experience as a child, trying to figure out my family’s irrational reactions and what I was supposed to do to please them. It definitely makes me stop and think before I raise my voice any more.
Often, when I feel my patience running thin, I think of Gran and my mom and I’m able to chill out. I also remind myself of the high expectations placed on me growing up, ones that Logan didn’t have, so I have to recognize that and not get so worked up.
I still miss Gran and remember all the love she gave me and my siblings and cousins. When I watch The Sound of Music or The King and I with Paxton and Zea, I think of Gran—I was so happy to share these movies with my kids the way she shared them with me. We sing along with the songs, and I remember what a great singing voice Gran had.