Were organized around a picketing ministry from the age of five i would protest gay people originally and then from there to everyone outside of the church was headed for hell and we had a duty to go with them of the consequences of their sins and our whole lives were organized around the ministry. Host how does that begin if you talk about this loving family that you have and a normal childhood when did the god hates fags signs calm. When i was five years old and incident occurred at a local park where my grandfather thought he saw my older brother who was that about four or five being approached by two men trying to lure him into the bushes. He found out that parkland is a place for gay men. So he went to start to get the city to clean up the park it was called the park decency drive but even from the first protest it said gays are worthy of death romans one 32 and almost immediately the response was outrage from the community. Local churches would counter protest so the response to the westborough ministry was always negative and i was taught that was a good thing. Jesus said blessed are you when men hate you that all men revile you they hate you and anybody that speaks the word of god will be hated. I learned from a very young age that everyone else was the bad guys and we have a duty to tell them what god required of them. Host what was fred phelps like as a grandfather . He was the fire and brimstone preacher you could hear in the sermon and see it in the interviews. He was a very passionate and zealous believer with everything he preach. But also a loving grandfather who i absolutely adored. I missed him terribly after i left. Host what was the Phelps Family reputation in topeka . You talk about playing video games did other parents say stay away from megan phelps . Yes. Our parents raised us to be polite and friendly and help others with their homework and Good Students and we had acquaintances so i started protesting before kindergarten so i grew up with a cohort of classmates who knew i would be outside of their churches and the Performing Arts Center when they had the nutcracker so we were protesting the same people i went to school with then in high school i would leave class during lunch and cross the street and get my high school during lunch as my classmates were driving by screaming or throwing things so there was always a sense of us versus them. We might be required to sit in class together and played nice but i understood i could not trust them and keep them at arms length paraguay had to work very hard to do that for the most part people did not want to be close to us. Host did you revel in your otherness . Yes. For the most part but i thought for the most part as inevitable if i was going to serve god to do my duty than i would be hated because i was raised in that environment it seemed like another fact of life. The numbers are on the screen if you want to participate this afternoon with Megan Phelps Roper formally of the Westborough Baptist church. November 2012 what happened quex. I left. I had gotten on twitter a few years before that and started to have conversations. Host you are basically the social media director. Not a formal position i read an article about it and thought it was a place to go to spread our message to another audience and i ended up being changed far more than the people i was trying to preach to. There was that same kind of hostility i experienced on the picket line but also a group of individuals started to ask me questions and having real conversations with me. Even if they started off with the instinct to shame me and isolate me to make me think it was a bad person they realized i was sincere to the value of what i was doing and the goodness in the righteousness. And starting these conversations with the indepth questions to understand westborough theology and with those inconsistencies of the doctrine that the first time i could see that we could be wrong that Westborough Baptist church does not have the monopoly on truth. The truth is god. So then that eventually unraveled. Did you raise those questions to your grandfather . I did to my mother more than anyone and the problem was the whole lives are organized around that ministry because publicly they took a position so the idea of changing their mind even if they do they almost never talk about it publicly because it would cow casted out on the rest of the message. But to acknowledge about something you were wrong that you are so passionately preaching for so long. But in a cautious way it was so visceral and negative it terrified me. So i compartmentalized it so then those doubts and then when i persisted i stopped holding them so i thought it just these few issues with the rest of what they are preaching is right. But then i came to realize why do i just accept the rest of it is true then that open the door to the bigger questions of the ideology. Host how many members of westborough have left the membership has stayed largely the same between 70 and 80 people, less than 100. A few dozen at this point have left but they have had a few converts from the outside and also Young Children being born into it so now its my generation having children raising in that environment. Host lets hear from our viewers. From georgia you are on. Unfollow is the name of the book. Caller. And want to ask you what is that moment if it is remorse . Host just a reminder to viewers speak clearly into your phone. What catalyzed you to leave . It started with a question that somebody on twitter david addled mom asked me a picket sign that said Death Penalty for fags calling for the Death Penalty because of a passage in leviticus and he pointed to two situations. First with jesus didnt jesus say he who has sin not cast the first stone . I gave the response we had always learned we are not casting stones. We are preaching words he gave the very obvious response that you are advocating the government cast stones. That was the first time that quote from jesus wasnt a general call to humility humility was specifically the Death Penalty. Than that set me back and say didnt your mom have your oldest brother out of wedlock . Thats another sin that deserves the Death Penalty. That was the first time i thought through that we said she didnt deserve that punishment because she had repented. If you kill them you cut up the opportunity to repent so these two points that he raised i could not acknowledge at the time or even in my own mind that we could be wrong about something. That started me down the path of questioning. Then the church started to do things i believed were not scriptural a group of men took over the decisionmaking process that was contrary from the bible and they started to lie and photo shopping themselves and to protest that they were not actually been at. That was part of it so the realization and ultimately the questions became bigger. I knew before i left i came upon a passage we were praying for people to die based on things king david pray for the enemys children to be father listed why i ams to be widowed celebrating death and tragedy that i come to realize there are passages in the new testament where jesus is love your enemy. Dont persecute you that apostle paul says that we were doing things that i believe are unscriptural and protesting funerals that i believe were wrong according to the bible itself. Westborough failing to live up to its own standards. That is where i eventually came to realize it isnt them a call. There is no real justification and i cannot keep doing it. Host your family is quite educated. Lot of law degree. Absolutely. Education was very important. I thought i would go to law school to follow in the family footsteps. I didnt do that because the apocalypse was coming. That educated people could believe these things that how can they be indoctrinated if they are so smart . The answer is almost everyone who is in the church was raised in the church so from a very young age they all learned to marshal all of our resource resources, intellectual fact that faculties to defend that ideology and they have an answer for everything it so important those initial doubts came from those internal inconsistencies. Host michigan go ahead. Caller thank you very much. Can you hear me . Host go ahead. Caller i was just thinking about love your enemies that is not enough to love your enemies you must also hate your friends left left but everything that is done out of love takes place beyond good and evil and i am just curious does she now think family and former friends were doing . Does she think they are evil or being evil with this hate speec speech . Or is that a different view. I do think they do things that are evil. Especially for me the funeral protest is some of the worst things we ever did celebrating the death of children praying for god to pray for more dead children. I do believe that is evil but for me the family is motivated by good intentions for the first nearly 27 years of my life i see them as good people trapped by bad ideas and some people really want me to completely condemn my family and other part of my book is a line from the great gratin gatsby reserving judgment so to me that encapsulates the idea of grace. They were willing to suspend their judgments long enough to show me empathy and compassion at a time and that is what led change and allow them to get through to me. That some of you my family now with the same grace and compassion that people showed me and i hope they can be reached as well. Host Magan Phelps Roper can you talk us through a couple of steps connecting christiana praying for the children or protesting a soldiers funeral . Those funeral protest i was 19 years old when we started protesting soldiers funerals and i asked my mothers is a change in our music ministry. We had before and i need to understand why we are doing this i need to understand why. And she took me to deuteronomy where god says i set before you a day of blessing and curse that you will obey me and a curse that you wont can we all agree if it a child is a curse from god and not a blessing we believe in predestination anything that happens is the will of god and god will this to happen it is punishment so going to protest at a funeral my mother said we were connecting point a your manner of life that is that punishment the person is dead so we need to tell the living it wasnt about the dead about the living to give them an opportunity to repent or perish is not repent or be killed in a war or repent or you will go to hell like this man. And then they see it as the definition of love and compassion because if you see somebody going down a path my mother would say curse is from god and held to that if they go down that path and dont warn them that is because you hate them in your heart. So because of that framing it taps into your desire as a human being to do good for that is what it meant to do good. Host des moines you are on go ahead. Caller you mentioned as a child you held a poster in protest of homosexuality. Is a four or five yearold what was your understanding of what homosexuality was and was westborough really an official Baptist Church or did you just claim that denomination westborough sees themselves as baptist named after john the baptist they have no affiliation with any other Baptist Church. They see that as scriptural. Completely independent and what a new Testament Church should be. So then why did i understand it was . You are right for i came to understand it was a choice a decision that god had cause these people, my grandfather say god doesnt hate you because you are gay you are gay because god hates you and has given you over to the sin. That having sex with men was hell and from the time i was very young my grandfather would stand in the pulpit to describe gay sex acts in detail. I write about this in the book so by the time i was seven or eight i could describe all of these to you because of what he taught at the pulpit to give us a sense of disgust to be that instinctive reaction when we saw gay people. Host you have been out of the church seven years what was the last conversation with your grandfather . With gramps was on his death bed i went there secretly. My sister and i secretly visit him in hospice march 2014. I found out the end of february a brother had just left and i wasnt sure before that was the day i left the church. His voice was filled with disdain as he said to my mother i thought we had a said you will this time because it was heartbreaking to look at him and realizing i was losing my community and family and home and every aspect of my life. To leave the church. And then he was incredibly kind. And those are shutting down the systems before he passed away but eventually he came back and was incredibly kind to my sister and me am so incredibly kind. Why was he voting out quex. My brother said the day my grandfather was voted out he went to the church directly across the church lgbt q group had bought the house and they put up a rainbow so my grandfather went out and called out to those people running the charity and said you are good people. So when he was voted out that he cast his law and what further proof did they need. I see that westborough has tried not to talk about that since i left for my literally saw a video where one of my uncles said that gramps is probably in hell. It is true he was voted out and its heartbreaking. Goahead topeka kansas. Caller i just came across you on tv i normally record Something Else but thank you i hope people read your book and get the truth of what is going on because a lot of people dont understand what is going on. Host being from topeka what is it like having the teethree Baptist Church in your city . Sometimes i go to church i see them in different churches around town i just drive by and ignore them. It is pretty colorful. [laughter] i have to hand it to them. . I dont know much about them. Host thank you so lets hear about the city of topeka growing up. But when people recognize you you have kept phelps in your married name. I took it for granted prick i knew we would never leave. By grandfathers saw topeka as the seat of satan like the zip code begins with six success one 666 and things like that he thought that it was the most evil place in the world. And we were put there to preach against the. But since i left the church i run into my family there but i cant help going back when im there i cant help it going back to the place i spent my life. But they are also human beings. It is complicated. I think i lost sight of your question. Host thats fine. Author of the book on follow