Banished: Surviving My Years in the Westboro Baptist Church (16 page)

"These people are uneducated." The pastor groomed us to come across as reasonable, sensible, and intellectual. We were expected to maintain a very smart and professional demeanor, and then if anyone dared to say anything bad about us, we were always above them.

We were also very diligent about abiding by the school's code of conduct.

We were always on time to school. We never cut class or broke other rules.

We weren't drinkers, smokers, back-talkers, or delinquents. We certainly couldn't be criticized for being lazy or underachieving, because we were hard-working and studious, and proud of it. There really wasn't much about us that could make teachers mad, except for our religion.

Being with my girlfriends helped me start high school with confidence. I was smart, I had friends, and by virtue of being in the good graces of God and the Phelps family, I was entitled. Whenever I could forget my insecurities, I felt very blessed.

I knew I wanted to stay with the church. I felt superior and righteous by being involved, and so many people showed me support. The kids in my grade who flipped me off didn't have any of the focus or understanding that I had. I was using my passion and energy to promote something grand and purposeful, something spiritual. I discounted anyone who said we were a cult. I knew about real cults and how they operated, quashing the free will of converts through brainwashing and isolation. But that didn't apply to us.

Plenty of people had strong religious convictions, and that didn't mean they were part of a cult. I took my beliefs very seriously and was offended by mindless insults that used the word
cult
.

The teenagers in the WBC were not sheltered from the modern world. If anything, the older church members wanted us to be regular citizens of Topeka. We could hang out at the malls after school, go out to eat at restaurants, or go to the movies at night once in a while on a rare splurge.

We were not forbidden to watch TV shows. In fact, when it came to the media, my parents probably did less censoring than more conventional parents, who were often afraid of the language and content in the network shows. My girlfriends and I enjoyed watching
South Park
on Comedy Central. We loved the show's crudeness and its parodies of other religions, especially the episode that lampooned Scientology. I thought that the fact that we were teens who were out in the world and not tempted by evil proved to everyone that we were truly God's example.

Sleepovers at Megan and Bekah's house were the perfect times for us to follow our favorite sitcoms together. When we tired of television, sometimes we'd look through the latest
Chevalier
, Topeka West's yearbook. Since I was so new there, it was even more exciting to see the kids I would be in class with. We loved looking at the cute boys and would pick out the one we thought was the cutest. Sometimes, we'd watch a movie and comment about the cute boys in the film, too. I didn't like to share my opinion about who I thought was cute, though. I felt awkward when I did. I knew Megan and Bekah had the same urges that I had, even though we didn't use terms that suggested anything about sex. We'd just giggle. I figured we were suppressing our hormones mostly for our parents, so that they wouldn't look down on us if they ever found out.

It was a little bit confusing for me, though. I knew they were aware that my interest in boys was a gnawing, obsessive concern of my father's. Yet here we were, fantasizing about boys. I desperately wanted to get it right, not talking too much about boys, but not scoffing over the idea that I was interested, either. I still wasn't sure if Shirley's daughters were hanging out with me as friends, or if they were spies; if they liked me, or they were just pretending to like me. I was paranoid about it. On occasion, things I told them privately came back to me through Shirley.
Oh, my God,
I would think.

They're telling on me.
I never dared bring it up. I just wanted them to like me.

The craziest part was, I was only doing the same things my friends were. All I really wanted was genuine approval from them.

It seemed no matter how pleased I was with my efforts and

accomplishments, I wasn't able to rid myself of my anxiety about my acceptance. I was truly enjoying reading the Bible and learning about the WBC's beliefs. I had positive conversations with the pastor, Shirley, and my dad, and I felt like they were all proud of me. Yet, lying in my bed at night, I'd think about what else I could do to make myself perfect in the eyes of all those who judged me: my peers, my parents, and my God.

Or those eighteen, upon whom the tower in Siloam fell, and slew them, think
ye that they were sinners above all men that dwelt in Jerusalem? I tell you,
Nay: but, except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish.

--Luke 13:4-5

I had been in school for less than a month when one morning in class I heard that two planes had crashed into the World Trade Center in New York City, another had attacked the Pentagon, and a fourth plane had fallen into a field in Pennsylvania. The news seemed so surreal that nobody at school even reacted right away.

When the pastor saw the fire raining down from the sky after the attack on the World Trade Center, he saw the light about God's true message. He was thoroughly convinced that God was sending a fair warning to sinners.

Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda's catastrophic attack on U.S. soil was really a message from Him. "Look what God did," he said triumphantly. The September 11 attacks were God's punishment for America's tolerance of homosexuality. Gays were the reason God was so angry. His judgment against them was evident everywhere, even if the ignorant couldn't connect the dots.

The pastor wanted to get to Ground Zero as fast as he could to share God's message, and he assembled a group of five or six adults to fly to New York.

My father went along as the videographer. When everyone got back to Kansas, he told me that the protests had been a huge success. He had captured great footage of the group standing in front of a row of police barriers and holding some of the church's newest creations: THANK GOD

FOR 9/11; TOWERS CRASH, GOD LAUGHS; NYPD FAGS; and FDNY

SIN. The bottom of the last two signs had stick-figure pictograms of two men having anal sex. My father seemed so proud that the church had let the rescuers know that those who had been killed in the attacks had died because of God's will. The church also planned to protest at the funeral of David Charlebois, a copilot on American Airlines Flight 77, which had crashed into the Pentagon. The pastor believed he was homosexual, and picketing homosexual funerals was a standard practice for the church. The military got word we were coming and kept Charlebois's funeral plans under wraps just to keep us away.

The pastor's hatred of homosexuality was long-simmering. He considered it to be the basis for all of God's judgments against mankind. Of course God did horrible things to people on earth. Everybody was either a fag or a fag enabler, and homosexuality was the worst of all sins, the furthest a sinner could go from His grace. There was no hope for salvation for this population.

They would burn in hell through eternity. The pastor often said he thought homosexuality should be a capital crime, often quoting Leviticus to demonstrate his point. In Leviticus 20:13, God said homosexuals "shall surely be put to death; their blood shall be upon them."

The day of the attacks, my father sat in the printing room making picket signs that read THANK GOD FOR 9/11, and we started protesting in Topeka with our new signs the very next day. People hated the THANK GOD FOR 9/11

sign more than any other we had ever displayed. They hated that we were celebrating the deaths of ordinary Americans and delighting in their pain.

The pastor, however, thought it was about time the nation opened its eyes.

Standing on the street corner on September 12, I didn't realize how much raw pain our message was causing. I hadn't had a chance to step back and look at the big picture. I was so anxious to be accepted by everybody in the church that I focused on what they thought of me rather than how outsiders saw me. I was still trying to earn my father's recognition and pride, as well. I didn't think I had it yet, and if I couldn't make him proud, I thought he would disown me. At the time, I was too young and childish to care about and consider the feelings of people I didn't know.

That Friday, our church, like so many others across America, held a special program for September 11. The only difference was the other services around the country were held to mourn the dead, and ours was convened to praise God for his judgments. In the pastor's sermon, he said, "Those calamities last Tuesday are none other than the wrath of God, smiting fag America.... How many do you suppose of those hundred and thirty soldiers died [
sic
] in the Pentagon last Tuesday were fags and dykes? And how many do you suppose were working in that massively composed building structure called those two World Trade Center buildings, Twin Towers?

There were five thousand or ten thousand killed and, counting all those passengers in those airplanes, it's very likely that every last single one of them was a fag or dyke or a fag enabler, and that the minute he died, he split hell wide open, and the way to analyze the situation is that the Lord God Almighty, pursuant to His threatenings and warnings, killed him, looked him in the face, laughed and mocked at each one of them as He cast each one of them into Hell!...

"God hates America, and God demonstrated that hatred to some modest degree only last Tuesday--sent in those bombers, those hellacious 767

Boeing bombers, and it was a glorious sight. What you need to do is see in those flames--those sickening, twisting, burning, life-destroying flames, brightly shining from every television set around the world! You need to see in those flames a little preview of the flames of Hell that are going to soon engulf you, my friend. Burn your soul forever."

The September 11 attacks didn't change our message, but they did become our symbol of God's wrath, and from that point on, we really ramped up our message and our pickets. When we held our signs THANK GOD FOR 9/11, GOD HATES YOUR TEARS, BUSH KILLED THEM, and GOD SENT THE

PLANES, we always provoked really angry reactions. People would swear, throw things at us, cry, tell us we were horrible, say that we were going to hell, and call us communists who needed to leave the country. I had already developed a sort of tough exterior to get through any aggression that might flare up at a picket, but things were definitely starting to heat up after September 11. Even at our weekly local pickets, we noticed an increasingly violent reaction to us. But I had such a strong sense of entitlement and protection that I quickly overcame any sense of fear. I was also told that it was good to have the whole world hate you. It made you a better Christian.

Because the attack was a sign of God's wrath for a nation that tolerated homosexuality, we had to remind everyone that God hated fags, and anything supporting or enabling them. The country was corrupted by evil.

Anyone who supported a country that supported homosexuals was a sinner.

The pastor believed there was no longer a fundamental religious community in America, which was why it had strayed so far. According to him, the country had started out right, as a melting pot for citizens from many nations who were escaping religious persecution in their own homelands. He said it used to be the best place in the world, founded on godly principles and guided by a Constitution with a lot of protections for religion. No other country had freedom as we had established it here. Freedom of speech and freedom of religion were the cornerstones of our liberty.

The pastor didn't think that God had always hated America. He said for three hundred years, from the time the Pilgrims landed forward, the population had been God-fearing and had lived obedient lives, until the tolerance of homosexuality became its undoing. He liked to cite Alexis de Tocqueville's book
Democracy in America
. In it, Tocqueville referred to homosexuality as the worm in the American apple. The pastor agreed, believing when homosexuality ran rampant in our country, the fruit of America would go bad.

The pastor said that when you had God at the center, evil was kept at bay.

But now, Americans either didn't care about God anymore or practiced a fake religion, one in which a distorted God loved everybody. When prophets like us, who spoke only for God, were persecuted, our country was doomed.

God was punishing it with various catastrophes. God was also willing to punish anyone who lived in a country where His prophets were vilified or attacked. Sodom was the pastor's ideal example of retribution. In the time of Abraham, Sodom had become so overrun with sin and sinners that God chose to eliminate the city entirely by raining down fire. The word
sodomy
, the sin of deviant sex and homosexuality, was derived from Sodom. God's destruction of the evil city was a precursor of what he had planned for the modern world.

Despite the fact that God hated America, the church used to celebrate traditional patriotic holidays along with the rest of the country. The pastor thought that there were still enough good Christian leaders preaching against homosexuality that God still had hope. Our family had moved to Topeka a few days before the church's annual Fourth of July celebration, when everybody had gathered together in the churchyard for a communal picnic of fried chicken, potato salad, coleslaw, watermelon, cookies, and pies. Kids had been diving in and out of the pool and jumping on the trampoline until evening, when the older ones had mischievously set off small firecrackers and Roman candles. After September 11, 2001, however, the pastor realized just how angry God was. He canceled future Fourth of July celebrations and any other holiday that celebrated America, like Memorial Day, Veterans' Day, and Labor Day. In fact, the Fourth of July became a major day to picket Gage Park and a few large parades. The Thanksgiving holiday was celebrated for a year or two more, but eventually it was canceled, too. The pastor said it was a pagan feast that had been created to allow the governor of Massachusetts a chance to "lust after the semi-naked bodies of the Indians he invited." Also, we thanked God every day for our blessings, so we thought it was disingenuous to do it once a year.