The things I believe in now are grace and the power of human connection to change hearts and minds and the importance of civil dialogue.
We read the whole Bible, cover to cover, over and over again... It wasn't that we read selective parts of the Bible. It was that we interpreted it in this very selective way.
Because of the dynamics on the picket line all my life, I had these expectations of people. It was all the things that I had learned about outsiders from the time I was tiny, that they were evil, that if they were being nice to me they were trying to seduce me away from the truth.
Showing your own righteousness by pointing out someone's unrighteousness, the race to the bottom, the transgressions getting smaller and smaller and smaller but still treated with the same level of intolerance and condemnation, all of that stuff, even as I say it I am talking about Twitter but I am thinking about Westboro.
My friends on Twitter didn't abandon their beliefs or their principles - only their scorn. They channeled their infinitely justifiable offense and came to me with pointed questions tempered with kindness and humor. They approached me as a human being, and that was more transformative than two full decades of outrage, disdain, and violence.
We were supposed to be able to use the Bible's words to explain what we were doing, and if we couldn't do that, then we shouldn't be doing it.
We held signs that said 'Thank God For Dead Soldiers,' 'Thank God For IEDs.'
The very first soldier's funeral protest that I went to was in Omaha, Neb.
You know, I had grown up standing on public sidewalks, saying things that people, you know, were very provoked by and were upset by. And - but standing outside that first soldier's funeral, it was eerily quiet.
I'm constantly meeting people that I hurt, you know? This is not - when I go and talk about these things, this is not a theoretical - it's not a theoretical apology. It's something that I live every day.
I got on Twitter in 2009.
My family, they cannot have anything to do with us. They believe that, you know, their duty is to deliver me to Satan for the destruction of the flesh.
Loving someone whose ideas we find detestable can seem impossible, and empathizing with them isn't much easier - but it's so important to remember that listening is not agreeing.
Our duty was to declare God's standards to the world: no adultery, no fornication, no gays, no idolatry.
I will say, this is something, this praying for people to die thing, that's something that I came to believe was unscriptural. And for years, I made these arguments to my family, in writing, privately in letters that didn't get responses and in interviews. And for a while, they just doubled down. Eventually, they came to stop doing it.
Generally, people don't change their minds about fundamentally deeply held beliefs; it doesn't happen in an instant - it's a process.
When I got on Twitter, that was the first time I was able to have lasting relationships with outsiders. And even though they were limited to those 140 characters, it was the duration of the friendships and the rapport we were able to develop.
The pickets were just a fact of life. And the fact that people hated us from the time I was tiny, the fact that we were hated, I was taught, was a cause for great rejoicing.
As happy as we were in our backyard jumping on trampolines, it was the same general feeling, often euphoria, on the picket line, because we felt like the way our lives were falling on to us contorted with the people of God and the scriptures. It all felt very normal.
We thought it was our duty to go and warn people of the consequences of their sins, and I understood that to be the definition of loving our neighbour.
