There's a rich history at Westboro of parodying pop culture. The thing about pop culture is that it gives us a shared language. We were constantly trying to co-opt things that were popular to deliver our own message.
I had never experienced the death of someone close to me until my grandfather passed away.
I no longer believe that the Bible is the literal and infallible word of God. And I don't believe in God as a figure in the sky listening to your prayers, things like that.
Growing up in Westboro, there was a culture of celebrating death and tragedy... a very calloused way of seeing other people's pain. After I left, it took me a while to be able to really empathize with what it must have been like for the loved ones of people whose funerals we protested.
If you look at who you were a year ago and aren't somewhat embarrassed, you're not growing as a person.
It's important to see people as being on a journey.
There's so much power in seeing the possibility of change.
If you can see these people... as human beings and capable of change, there is hope. We should be willing to reach out. Imagine what could happen if we kept reaching out to people like Westboro members?
My first memories are of picketing ex-servicemen's funerals and telling their families they were going to burn in hell.
We believed it was a Good vs Evil situation: that the WBC was right and everybody else was wrong, so there was no questioning. It was a very public war we were waging against the 'sinners.'
I remember feeling like we at WBC were a persecuted minority, triumphant in the face of evil people 'worshipping the dead' as we picketed funerals or rejoiced at the destruction of the Twin Towers.
I miss my family every single day.
I wanted to do everything right. I wanted to be good, and I wanted to be obedient, and I wanted to be the object of my parents' pride. I wanted to go to Heaven.
Arguing is fun when you think you have all the answers.
We did lots of fun normal-kids stuff.
If organizations like Westboro were universally bad, they wouldn't exist. There had to be some draw, and at Westboro, there was a lot of draw. The church was almost entirely made up of my extended family, and everyone in the church felt like family.
At Westboro, the depictions of hell are extremely vivid. The only thing that changes in hell, according to the church, is your capacity to feel pain. As the capacity to feel pain increases, so does the pain. It's absolutely terrifying. I believed God was going to curse me for having left this group of people.
There are aspects of Westboro that are, of course, more extreme in the way that certain religious practices manifest. But the idea that the Bible is the infallible word of God, that it's unquestionable - this is common.
Some people cannot believe there is an alternative interpretation of the Bible aside from their own.
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.
