Joe Rogan - Megan Phelps-Roper on Why She Left the Westboro Baptist Church

Hello freak bitches. It makes me cringe and... and... but... but it became like this game of trying to like show that we were going to get our message across no matter what any human being wanted. Because we knew, we were so sure that this was what God wanted. Wow. What made you leave? A lot of things. It started, my very first sort of conscious doubts came from conversations on Twitter. So I... Wow. Yeah. Something good got done through Twitter? Yeah, lots of good things. I also met my husband there. Oh, there you go. While I was still at the church. Oh. It's kind of nuts. Is he an atheist? Uh... I don't know that he would use that word to describe himself. Actually, I was just talking to Sam about this and I was like, when people... the problem with the word is when people... when you say atheist, people think jerk. Really? Well, so many people do. So many people think that, oh, you're absolutely certain that there is no God. And so it's a word that I hesitate to use to describe myself too. But I'm not a believer. I don't even like to say I'm not a believer because I love people. I believe in people and that there is so much hope for people and that we can... I don't know. Anyway, so... So conversations that you had on Twitter did what to you? Right. What was the worst that they opened in your mind? Right. So I got on Twitter and it was like an extension of the picket line, right? Right. So we'd go out there with these picket signs and people would come up to us and ask us questions. And so it was a constant conversation. And so I got on Twitter to take that to the internet to reach more people. And so one of the first things I did when I got on Twitter was to attack this Jewish man named David Abbott Ball who ran a blog called Julicious. He's listed as the second most influential Jew on Twitter on this... Who's number one? I actually can't remember. Not memorable. Not part of my story, I guess. That's all right. But you can check it. It's the GTA's list if you want to. Okay. But anyway, so he was listed as number two. And so he responded initially with sarcasm and hostility. But pretty quickly he sort of changed tactics and started... Instead of mocking me, although he still did do that to some too, he was asking questions about our picket signs. And I started asking him questions about Jewish theology because I wanted to better know how to counter it from the scriptures. I was sure that they were wrong. Jews killed Jesus and they reject him as the Messiah and so all of these things. So we're having this back and forth. And this goes on for about a year. And during that year, I actually met him twice. I protested him twice. So you went to his functions or was he giving speeches? Yeah. Like where was he? So in Long Beach actually at the Julicious Festival. They had this Jewish cultural festival. What a great name. Yeah, it's great. He's great. So he... Right. So he was going to be there and I went and I was protesting him. And he came out to the picket line and it was one of those very rowdy pickets. There was a bunch of counter protesters. And it was... I don't know, guys dressed as the Easter Bunny and Jesus and it actually got pretty violent. So I was actually super... It got violent. Well, yeah. And the cops... I told you we called the cops. The cops were just standing there watching people actively assaulting us, hitting us. So we're walking around trying to not be hit because we're not going to hit back. Like I said, the church is very against violence. Like they're not going to be violent to people or defend themselves just to... So I was actually really glad when David came out because he became like a buffer between me and the rest of the counter protesters because everybody could tell that he was wearing his Jewish shirt and whatever. Anyway, so the conversation continued there and then also at another protest six or seven months later. And not long after that second protest, we're talking again and he was asking about one of our signs that said death penalty for fags. And of course I'm reiterating why the church believes that because in the book of Leviticus, God calls for the death penalty for gays and then in Romans one and the New Testament, it's reiterated that they commit such things are worthy of death. And so I'm telling David these things and he says, it's like, yeah, but didn't Jesus say, let he who is without sin cast the first stone? And I said, well, we always said to that, which was, we're not casting stones. We're preaching words. And he said, yeah, but you're advocating that the government cast stones. And I remember, you know, this is all through Twitter. So I see this message and I kind of gasped and I was like, I had never connected that Jesus there. Of course he was talking about the death penalty, specifically about the death penalty. And we were advocating it. And so I wasn't sure how to respond, but he, David kept, kept going. He said, and what about this member of your church who had a child out of wedlock? And I said, what about it? Like that's, this is another point, you know, people, it was, you know, common knowledge. People knew about this and would throw this in our face. And we would say the standard of God isn't sinlessness, it's repentance. So she doesn't deserve that punishment because she repented. She stopped, you know, she wasn't having premarital sex anymore and she knows that it's wrong. And she changed her mind and she changed her conduct, which is what repentance is. And he said, yeah, but she would have been killed if you had instituted the death penalty for that sin. And it was the first time again that I connected that if you kill somebody, as soon as they sin, they, you lose the opportunity to repent and be forgiven. And so again, so I'm just sort of staring at my phone and, you know, in Topeka, Kansas, he's in Jerusalem. And I really quickly ended the conversation. I don't even remember quite how, but it was just sort of this, like I hadn't, I didn't know how to handle this because, like I said, the church is full of lawyers. They're very intelligent and their arguments and their theology for the most part is very well constructed and super consistent. And so for there to be this, you know, this, this hypocrisy, this contradiction, I didn't like my brain was felt like I was exploding. So I went to a couple of people in the church, including my mother. And the response was, feel free to stop me at any time, by the way. I feel like I'm a filibuster here. So she reiterated the same verses that I had told David that supported our position, but she didn't address the contradiction. And when I seemed unsatisfied with it, she said I was getting wrapped around an axle and just sort of push it aside. And the response was so just to shut me down and then to move on to the next thing, which is a very human thing. Right. When somebody puts something in your face that that is this contradiction that you're not ready to deal with or that you can't. You know what I mean? You kind of sort of push it aside and try not to. So the way that I dealt with it was to stop holding the sign because I knew that if somebody asked me about it, I couldn't defend it because I didn't I didn't believe it. But there was nothing else I could do at that point. And but the importance of that conversation, this is obviously just one small contradiction, one small inconsistency and a vast, you know, we still I still believed that everybody outside the church was basically a conundrum. And that they said completely wrong and and evil and or delusional and that the church was basically right. Except this one point. It's a culture of tattletales, not out of bad intention, but because they believe that they're trying to help you. Right. They don't want you to go down a bad path. So so, you know, when I was it was the I first thought of leaving on July 4th and I was with my sister at the time. And when it first occurred to me that I might that I might have to leave the church or that the church might be wrong. I thought I had to leave like that second, because if it even occurred to me, that meant I didn't belong there and that God was going to punish me and that I I just felt like immediately so much guilt. And like I was a betrayer. But was all your social life connected still to the church? Yeah. And was this where had you already known your husband by then? I had. Yeah, he corrupted you. He was definitely part of it. So but like it wasn't like that. It's like the beginning like so. So he was just another person on Twitter at first. And it was it was like friendly conversation. And this went over for the course of several months, I don't know, eight, eight or eight months or so, seven or eight months. And then it was never and there was never anything about feelings or relationships or all that stuff is totally. No, nothing like that. Like not even like not even anything like nothing. Like it's just that my mind didn't work that way. And there is there can be no relationship like that with outsiders. But outsiders, outsiders. So, you know, and I actually thought I was never going to get married because most of the people in the church, about 80 percent or so of the people in the church, there's only 80 people or so anyway, were my immediate and extended family. So no, there's no way that I'm going to I'm just not going to get married. She just accepted that. It was it wasn't it wasn't like an like an easy thing at first, but it was just it was just the facts on the ground. You know, like I. So the facts on the ground where you had to date someone inside the church. There was only 80 people in the church. They're all your family. You can't date your family. Fuck. Yeah. Wow. I mean, I should say there were a couple of people my age and they can't. They had just joined the church like, you know, that. But I had no like I had no interest in any of them. And no slim pickings and not. Wow. But yeah, it's it's it was kind of strange. But I so I actually had a dream about meeting. And I should say also my husband at the time, I didn't know he was totally anonymous on Twitter. Like it's just his words. I didn't know what it looked like. I didn't know his name or where he lived or anything about him except except these words. And he was he was just curious and kind and and that sort of. And he loved people. And so he would sort of always be pushing pushing the conversation back to like I'm giving it. Like I've told you all those verses about protesting funerals and why we have to go and do this and the importance of it and why we have to thank God for these tragedies because God is sovereign and he's in control. So I'm I'm talking about the scripturally like the justifying all these things. And he kept pushing it back to because he's not super well versed in the Bible. So he didn't know how to. He's like I see that the Bible says these things. But what about the family? Like I just cannot imagine going and doing these things to two people. And so this is all happening like on as I'm also still having conversations on Twitter with so many other people. So it's like Twitter became this like empathy machine for me. So it's not just like on a picket line where people are butting heads and arguing and debating and yelling. And it's I'm yes having these can be kind of aggressive conversations. But I'm also seeing like photos of their cats and them exchanging joking with their friends. And so I'm seeing a side of people and sort of being immersed in this community in a way that I had never been before. And so it was really it's like I'm trying to say like when you say why did you leave like there it took it was so much sort of happening around this time. So when by the time this like pile up of things you know and I'm processing it as I'm going through this I'm also talking to my sister and she was the only and other people in the church. But she was the only person if I ever had a doubt or a question or like if I thought we're doing something wrong here she was the only person who would say yeah you're right. That doesn't make sense that I should say my sister is creative and artistic and had a like a little bit of reputation for being kind of rebellious not as like submissive as my me and our other sister. So it was this this dynamic of you know between the two of us where she was the only person I could fully articulate my thoughts and feelings to. And so when I first thought of leaving and I turned around and I thought I literally I was we were painting at a friend's house painting the walls and I turned around to set my paintbrush down I thought I had to go and leave that second and I turned around and saw my sister and I thought I can't leave without talking to her. So the next day I she came home from work over the lunch hour and we would always like go up to my room and we were talking about all these doubts we were having and I was crying and I put my head in her lap and and I couldn't even start like articulating the idea of leaving was too much like it's it's terrifying and it just seemed like impossible. And I said what if we weren't here and she said what do you mean and I said what if we were somewhere else and so that starts this conversation where you know I cannot let go of all the things that I thought that the church was doing wrong that are where our theology was wrong where we were applying it wrong. I mean in a way that that was destructive and unscriptural and she kept pushing the conversation back to we're never going to see our family again we're going to lose everyone and everything that's ever been important to us. There is no hope outside this church all the things that we had learned about outsiders that you know that they were evil and they could never truly love each other or care about care about one another. They're really just enabling one another on the path to hell. So and so this this back and forth you know goes on for about four months before we finally actually left and it was as bad or worse as I could have imagined but to get back to the well let's get to that bad or worse you could have ever imagined. So I should. So you left. How did you leave? We were talking to my parents and you know and it was another another issue had come up and I couldn't we couldn't it was a battle that we weren't going to fight again. We can't I should say in those four months I kept trying to to articulate these doubts in a way that the church would accept like trying to convince them not being as open like but as time went on I became more and more open about about these questions and doubts. And I just I couldn't we couldn't fight it anymore. I just looked at Grace and I said we have to go and because we and I should say also we had already been packing like we had we had started packing our things about a little over a month before that and we had started like taking boxes to our friend's house. And with the understanding he's actually our he was our high school English teacher that we had kept up with on Twitter. And he basically told him if something changes if the church changes and these things get better then we'll we'll take all our stuff back and just pretend like none of this ever happened. And he was just understanding and compassionate and and really supportive. But so we had done all this stuff already but we actually had to go and pack the rest of our things. So we walked out of our parents bedroom and went and started packing and people started coming my brother and some of the elders and my aunt my cousin people. I we were very close like our whole my whole life revolved around the church. And so to look these people in the face and say that you know this the you know the us them mentality it the bonds that are created in environments like that are incredibly strong at least they were in our church. And again most of these people are also my family. So it was it was awful and I'm trying to you know crying and packing and trying to explain to them why why we're leaving and I can hardly talk you know just just I was so overwhelmed but. Actually had to go back the next day with a you all to get the rest of our stuff more our parents helped us pack it's not it's not one of those like there are some groups like that where they don't want you leave they'll they'll try to stop you from leaving like I heard the Scientology the Miscavige. Yeah I can't burn us for Ron. Yeah he was talking about like this like actual obstacles to you leaving like physically like they're not going to you can't get out of the gate like nothing like that. You know my they always would say this is a volunteer army and if you don't want to be here then you don't belong here. So it's just the it's the threat of losing everything and every nation being ostracized by and just sort of expelled into this world that you believe and have always believed is is evil and without hope and doomed. So how did you do it? How did you get all your stuff back people coming in there saying yeah I mean like they're they're they're trying to convince us but. Once they understand that we're not being convinced that that you know they they walked away. So I mean that night our dad dropped us off at a hotel and then Jesus Christ. Yeah. Like it's it's so immediate that you become this you become other you become an outsider like in the next morning when we went back I rang the doorbell. I rang the doorbell to your own house and I lived in that house from the day I was born. So you felt like you had to ring the doorbell. This is not my world anymore. Yeah. Wow. Grace was like why did you ring the doorbell. And it was like there's no other there's there is nothing else like it's this is not our home. This is not so we go and you know we're packing all of our things. It was just it was awful just. I had been in those four months I had been so terrified of because I know knowing what was coming like just imagine you're going to lose everyone in your life. They're just you're just going to like you're not going to like how your parents met and fell in love or like your grandparents and family recipes and photos and memories and what did the house looks like taking photos and voice recordings and just all the time like an every. It was just it's overwhelming. It's just. So let's go back to your first job. What was it. What was the first job. I worked at a very briefly like so. I should say my sister and I we were in. It was a couple months before I actually got a job. We spent the first month with a cousin of mine who had left the church a few years earlier. She lived really close. She had left as well. Yeah. So you guys knew some people had made it out. Right. But like the thing is there's there's so many my sister calls them mind fucks. Right. So like the thing about people who leave is that they are demonized more than anybody else even more than gays or Jews or any other outsider. It's X members who get the worst. You hear the worst things about them because they knew the truth and they rejected it. Right. So I was when it came when I thought of leaving like the last thing on my mind was that I could go to an ex member. I thought you can't trust them. They're evil like so. It's just this whole intensely negative instinctive reactions to those things. But obviously I overcame it and I reached out to her a few weeks before we left and she was amazing. Like within I didn't talk to her in three and a half years and had said all kinds of terrible things about her after she left. But she was wonderful. And she said like within like 30 seconds of like when I when she understood that I was you know planning to leave I want you to come live with me. And it was it was amazing and so kind. And so I lived there for about a month. My sister was still in school. So she was we were traveling back to Canada to Topeka. Sorry. It's like so it's a half an hour from my cousin's house. And you know four days a week while she was still in school. And so we were constantly running into our family and driving by the pickets because they pick it every day in Topeka several times a day and like at the grocery store and on campus. And so it was just we needed to get away. So we ended up going to Deadwood South Dakota. My brother had been a fan of the TV show and it just seemed like a nice quiet like place. So how many people went with you? Is you your sister and your brother? No it's just just you and your sister. Yeah. Did anybody join you after a while? I have a brother who left about a year and a half after my sister and I did. And I have another brother who left about eight years before I did. Wow. So now there's seven there's 11 kids so seven are still at home and four of us are out. Do you talk to them? Yeah. The people are out. Yeah. What about the people that are in? No they won't have anything to do with us. It's just like I talked to your mom. No. No. They. The thing is like so back to Twitter like that's how I know what they are what they're up to like us. I see like they post photos like I'm watching my little brother's grow up on their photos on Twitter and you know see what my parents. How hard is that? It's awful. I mean it's it's I'm glad I'm so glad to be living now and not you know before social media where I can actually see these things and and know what they're up to and a little bit about how they want to reach out. I do. You do. Yeah. I mean I do on Twitter. You know there's just great about Twitter. Sometimes like I have they blocked me on my main account. They blocked you. Not all of them but a lot of them. Did your mom block you? She actually created she got kicked off of Twitter at one point so she had to create a new account. So she didn't block me on her new account yet. But she blocked you in a roller count. Yeah. Wow. Yeah. That's deep. Yeah. Your mom blocks you on Twitter. That's a big thing right. When you look and you see that you're blocked. What is that. What is that lump in your throat like. Just what you'd imagine like. I can't believe like it's so hard to think back to like I was incredibly close with my mom and I love her and I miss her like I used to make coffee for her every morning and like we'd go on walks together and we lost her. And you spoke to her. Well actually I saw her to pick it a little over a year ago. She didn't say anything to me. She didn't even talk to you. No she couldn't like. Baby that came from her body loved you and raised you. She can't like it. It's so like when I think about like when I was at the church and this is one of the hardest things to articulate. I mean to that the feeling of like when somebody leaves like. There is no interaction. So some people would ask like well what if you saw her at such a place you know wherever at the grocery store whatever like what would you say they would ask me this while I was still at the church and it's so it's like I don't think compared to it's like it's like dividing by zero like the situation does not exist like there's nothing there the idea of trying to talk to her. It is impossible right and so crazy. That's the cult. Yeah exactly. Yeah. That's that like in Jehovah's Witnesses they call it a disfellowshipping right. Yeah they all have it. It's a technology has it. They all have it. Yeah. It's one of the ways they control people the fear of alienation and becoming like them. Yes. So they'll talk to gay people. They'll talk to people with rainbow shirts on. They'll talk to ex-soldiers. They'll talk to those people. They won't talk to you. Right. That's insane. But this is your monotone acid. One of the like great things about Twitter and I just the Internet in general is that it's a thing where so like they obviously like my little brothers for instance like they are you know hearing all this bad stuff about you know my sister and me anybody who leaves they all hear bad things about us. But the good thing about the Internet is that they can go on they can go to my Twitter account and see what I'm actually saying. So I'm still I go through these phases where like I I I will tweet and then I get like I can't I just like the fear of judgment I guess for my family and I just I just choose to focus on other things and not post things on Twitter. But like I still I follow them on this other account that I created that's not blocked right and it's just WBC accounts. So like I see like things that they say and like doctrines that I now believe are unscriptural and so like I will tweet them you know versus like this contradicts you like and try to like basically doing what I was doing for them now against them like just in this right in these instances and and so there is some engagement a little bit with my family on Twitter because it's not a thing that I'm doing. Especially because of any like anything that I do publicly so maybe something about this I don't know but like when my TED talk came out there was a couple of articles and like people were tweeting it a lot and and so my uncle and my aunt both were tweeting tweeting me and tweeting about me and so I was you know we're having this repartee I guess like just you know going back and forth about these these Bible verses and and debating and so all of that stuff is it's it's I hope. Well at some point hopefully we'll have we'll have some effect and in some ways it already has so like the day that I left there was a we're gonna get to that job sometime soon. Don't worry about it. The day that I left my one of my cousins you know came into my bedroom while I was crying and packing and I was asking like just very calmly like this my best my best friend she was a year older than me is a year old than me and she's asked me why we're leaving and I'm describing a lot of things and one of the I described. Specifically two signs one of them was the death penalty for fags and another one was fags can't repent and she sent me a message the next morning and I was describing verses that I thought you know contradicted those two signs and the following morning she sent me a message a text message super early in the morning just like just chewing me out basically like that I know that the vedic kiss and Romans one like the death penalty like there's no there's you have no argument. Like so so what's your really your problem and so and then for a while after I left like those signs were like everywhere like she's holding my cousin changes her profile picture on twitter to her holding those two signs like screaming into the camera and like one of the elders like making a snow angel with those two signs and it's like so they're just like doubling down on this right and so this goes on it's like during this time like I'm talking about it in like giving a few interviews like talking about it there like on twitter a little bit like re-interviewing with the other people. And then I'm like reiterating the verses that contradict them and then like after more than two years like I wake up one morning and I check you know I'm checking their twitter's and there was a blog post and they said about that fags can't repent sign and I was like oh my god it's like open the blog post and it's for the first time ever they had publicly disavowed a sign and using the same Bible verses that I had been and I know that's like a very small point that's huge in the grand scheme of things right but that's that's reason that's critical. But but like so this is this is the goal right so like to knowing this is like do you know the story behind it I don't I don't it was after my my brother left so I don't really know nobody who's left since then I also have to do actually of my cousins have left since then also but none of them have any understanding of like of what happened so I don't know I'm not sure what happened to my cousin. I'm not trying to take credit I should also say like well it doesn't matter it doesn't matter like it just matters is that it's this idea is possible yeah this idea gets into their head that what they're doing it's this is not in any way the teachings of Christ right I mean like the thing is like some some of it is some of it.