“When I was part of Westboro, we thought we had to be out there preaching this message because it was the only good that we could do for the world. That’s kind of where I am now with my family; I have to talk about it or else nothing changes”
Photo: Michelle Wray Megan Phelps-Roper was just 5 years old when she first joined her family on the picket line. Comprised mostly of family members and led by her grandfather, Fred Phelps, the Westboro Baptist Church began protesting homosexuality at a park in Topeka, Kansas, in the early ’90s.
Unfollow depicts a sense of joy, intimacy, and righteousness when you were growing up that seems very alluring. What was it like being at the heart of a group that felt so much certainty, despite what the rest of the world thought? There are definitely cultlike aspects of Westboro. I tend not to use the word, although it is a really convenient shorthand and conveys a lot of the ideas that you just mentioned, but there are things that aren’t cultlike. My parents helped me and my sister pack [our things on] the day that we left. You hear stories about Scientology, where people are prevented from leaving, and Westboro’s not like that. If you decide that you don’t want to be there, then they will help you leave.
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. It was really effective because people like members of Westboro are generally seen as being completely out of touch, like they have these old-timey ideas, [but] Westboro members were so tuned in to everything that was happening in the culture.
It’s obviously really painful to think of the betrayal that they would feel reading it. That’s always really hard to think about, because I know they experience that feeling any time I talk about these things publicly. But I also know that not saying anything doesn’t change anything. When I was part of Westboro, we thought we had to be out there preaching this message because it was the only good that we could do for the world.
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