But this time, to her grateful surprise, she was simply Megan Phelps-Roper, author. The new appellation comes with the publication of Phelps-Roper's insightful memoir, Unfollow , which details how she grew up in, and grew out of, Westboro.
In , Phelps-Roper was just shy of kindergarten when she joined the church's earliest picket at Gage Park in Topeka, Kansas, where members held signs declaring, "Watch your kids! Gays in restrooms". Her grandfather, pastor Fred Phelps , a dis-barred civil rights lawyer, launched a campaign against the city after he discovered the park was considered a popular location for gay sex. He had founded Westboro in as an offshoot of the town's East Side Baptist Church, but they split ties as he became increasingly righteous and radical.
The signs Westboro held during their first pickets are subdued compared to the invective that would emerge over the next two decades as Westboro developed its reputation for hate — signs such as "Gays are worthy of death" and "Thank God for dead soldiers". The aggressively anti-gay, anti-semitic church has celebrated and mocked mass tragedies, school shootings, natural disasters and the deaths of public figures and servicemen and women, claiming such events are God's way of punishing non-believers for their sins.
The followers preach predestination — that everything is God's will — and as Phelps-Roper writes, "we were a law unto ourselves, and all bets were off as long as our words were justified by the Bible". Westboro followers mainly consist of Fred Phelp's children, grandchildren and now great-grandchildren. The families live on the same street, their houses encircled by a tall fence, and share a backyard.
On the one hand Phelps-Roper, one of 11, experienced many elements of a conventional childhood — games nights, family barbecues and pool days, chores and loving parents. But obedience and discipline reigned supreme and rule-breakers were condemned and punished harshly. Meaningful relationships with outsiders were banned. Phelps-Roper picketed her own public school during lunch breaks; her year-old brother left the church in the middle of the night and was hardly spoken of again; and she shared her dinner table with an endless stream of journalists.
It was engagement with her "enemies" and their kindness that gradually revealed to her the "logical blindness" in Westboro's beliefs. Once she started to see the contradictions within the church's doctrine, she couldn't look away. To her, the most grievous was the church's use of hate, a revelation compounded by the church's harsh disciplinary treatment of her mother, sister and cousin, the introduction of restrictive new rules and a change in leadership.
Because they have created an atmosphere in this world where people believe the lie that God loves everybody. This soul-damning lie is the reason that fags are so out-spoken today.
Fag priests and dyke nuns is the order of the day for Kansas Catholics. They deserve the sick, perverted leadership that now dooms and damns them.
Botton [sic] line in approximations: one-third are gay, one-third are womanizers, and -- with important exceptions -- the other third mostly covers, pimps and enables the lust-driven two-thirds. Catherine's Catholic Churches in Emporia in religious protest and warning. Mexican idolaters worship bloody rectums These Satanic evangelists from Hell They are not true churches of Jesus Christ. Must be a comfort to you sodomite Episcopalians, that your Catamite church was founded by a faggot king butt - buddy to Rev.
Erasmus of Rotterdam Episcopalians hate God. The Sovereign Horseman rides in New Orleans Get Right with God! You are pouring gasoline on the raging infernos of God's wrath in Iraq and New Orleans Nothing less will do.
Otherwise, we warn you again: Expect worse and more of it from that Outraged God your sins have mightily offended. The Tsunami is a curse! Your children shooting each other in the schools is a curse! A child coming home dead from the battle is a curse! Katrina the whirlwind is a curse! The US Supreme Court, blindly demanding that the people of this nation give respect to filthy beasts, when God has said they are an abomination, is a curse!
This nation is cursed by God and we are doing out duty to warn you that if you will repent and turn from your evil ways — from worshiping the words of your own hands and worshiping that flag and the military and dead bodies A sodomite nation of flag-worshiping idolaters. Many States — and now Congress — are moving in a frenzied orgy of lawless, unconstitutional legislation to criminalize WBC's Gospel preaching.
Worse and more of it is coming Military funerals are pagan orgies of idolatrous blasphemy where they pray to the dunghill gods of Sodom and play taps to a fallen fool. Thank God for 4 more dead troops. We wish it were 4, Your Military is filled with fags and dykes. Clinton and Bush did it with executive orders. Don't ask don't tell is a farce. They turned America over to fags; they're coming home in body bags.
The curse of God is upon America. This war had to happen; Bush has to be persuaded to stay in this war; America had to become Babylon. This is the means by which, God is punishing America, and nothing is going to change that fact. We're going to stay on message You don't define us; our duty to God does. Whether it's by hurricane, IED, terrorists, or other means, God is punishing this nation. He has become an active enemy fighting against America.
That is our message Thank God for 3, dead Americans! Thank God for Sept. God sent the Muslim planes to destroy fag New York's twin towers and hurl 3, vile Americans into Hell. Alas, the United States no longer allows the Gospel to be freely and openly preached on the streets, because militant sodomites now control our government, and they violently object to the Bible message The same majoritarian sodomite tyranny that now guides the Clinton administration's repressive policies toward Gospel preaching on America's streets, is apparently responsible -- at least in part -- for the merciless slaughter by starvation of innocent Iraqi babies each day in your country.
If our government and laws will allow it, and at the invitation of your government, we would like to send a delegation from Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka, Kansas, to preach the Gospel on the streets of Baghdad for one week in the near future. Thus, only those churches that support and promote the militant homosexual agenda enjoy religious freedom. Any church in America that dares to preach what the Bible says about soul-damning, nation-destroying moral filth of the vile homosexual beasts among us, loses all Constitutional guarantees of religious freedom and speech rights.
For example, when two sets of twin girls drowned in Massachusetts in separate incidents in July and August , the WBC blamed their deaths on the state's legalization of same-sex marriage. The church held its first service on Nov. Fred Phelps raised his family near the church and many members of the Phelps family live in houses on the WBC compound. These houses are arranged in a box formation and share a large backyard. In , Fred founded Phelps-Chartered, a law firm that has come to represent the church in its civil suits.
All five of the firms' attorneys are his children. The Kansas Supreme Court disbarred Phelps in , stating that Phelps showed "little regard for the ethics of his profession. The WBC came to public attention when it began its "picketing ministry," meaning their practice of holding controversial protests to raise awareness of the church and its beliefs. In line with their belief in predestination, the pickets are not aimed at winning followers, but only at warning them of their coming damnation.
They began picketing in June , and claim to have picketed more than 40, times since then. Though this works out to nearly six protests a day, the church regularly schedules that many or more daily protests on an ongoing basis, although it doesn't hold every protest it advertises. The church has used its right to protest to harass local businesses and individuals in Topeka, Kan.
They reportedly picketed a local restaurant every day for three years because its owner knowingly employed a lesbian. Many of the group's targets seem chosen at random: the church picketed a concert by young Canadian pop star Justin Bieber because he was not using his fame to promote God. Shirley Phelps-Roper, who is a frequent protester and one of Fred Phelps' children, will sometimes wear American flags hanging from her pants while protesting, so that they scrape against the ground as she walks.
She has allowed her children to step on an American flag during protests. The WBC uses tactics like these to win media attention and spread its message. Children in the Phelps family are raised in the church's beliefs, and their upbringing offers them few opportunities to integrate into mainstream society.
It is common to see young children from the Phelps family at WBC pickets, often holding the group's hateful signs. These children casually use the words "f--" and "dyke" in interviews, and the older children report having no close friends at school.
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