- Do you think that God hurts people
when they don't do what he says?
- I don't think God's that bad of a person.
(upbeat music)
- Hello.
Nice to meet you, I'm Megan. - Nice to meet you, I'm Cadia.
- Thanks for coming.
- I'm Fletcher.
- Hi, Fletcher, nice to meet you.
- Nice to meet you too.
Why are we here again?
(Megan laughs) I know we're here to talk, but
- Yes. - about what?
- That's a good question, do you have any ideas?
- No.
- We're here to talk about, belief.
Are you religious at all?
Is your family and religious?
- Not really.
- So my family, we were part of this church called,
the Westboro Baptist Church.
- Mm, I've heard of that.
- You have?
What you know about them?
- I've mostly heard that it's a pretty anti-LGBTQ church.
- Yep, that's exactly right.
So, the church was started by my grandfather,
is about 70 to 80 people,
and it's almost entirely my family.
- What did you guys do there?
- Every night, my family would gather
in the living room, and we would study the Bible.
Are you religious at all?
- Yeah.
- What did your church teach you about love?
- Love is pretty much somebody that you can't live without.
- Right, and you show love by being kind to people,
and helping them when they need help.
So, my family taught me that love
is to obey God, and to tell other people
that they have to obey God too.
Because, if you don't obey God,
bad things will happen to you.
Right? (Fletcher blows her mind)
(Megan laughs)
Do you believe in God?
- I believe in science and God.
- And do you think that God hurts people
when they don't do what He says?
- I don't think God's that bad of a person.
- (laughs) Right.
- What did your parents teach you?
- When I was five, we started protesting.
So, we would go out and stand on public sidewalks,
with signs that said things
that most people thought were extremely hateful.
- What did the sign say?
- They said that God hated gay people,
and then, gay people deserved the death penalty.
So they literally see being gay as something
that is as egregious as murdering someone.
- I myself actually identify as a lesbian.
I don't find it especially hurtful,
but I think it's really interesting
to see the mindset of these other people
that I consider to be equals,
and how they view the world.
- That's amazing to me, meeting people like you,
who are willing to talk to me about this,
and to not see me as just an evil person
for the things that I did.
So thank you for that.
- Why did you hate those targets?
- We didn't think that we hated people, right?
So we thought that what we were doing was--
- Good! - Exactly.
- Do you regret anything you did?
- The thing that I regret the most
is that we would go and protest funerals.
So, we would go and tell people who were going
to bury their loved ones, God had killed that person
and that he is punishing them for their sins,
and that they needed to repent.
And we did it in these really callous ways.
So we would be out there singing songs,
(blows out) sorry, (sniffs)
chanting and being really happy
about the fact that this person has died.
(Megan sniffs)
Oh.
- It's just hard to hear
that you've been doing so wrong,
and then just realize that was not right.
- It was really painful for me to realize, too.
- I'm just mostly surprised
that you started doing that at age five.
'Cause you probably didn't even understand that.
- Yeah, I mean, they taught it to us every day,
but of course at age five, I only understood
that God has a rule, and these people broke that rule,
and therefore bad things are happening to them.
- What inspired you to leave the church?
- I got on Twitter, my goal was to spread
the church's message, and I started meeting people there,
there were a lot of people who were hostile,
who were angry and mean, but there were also
these people who were really kind,
who started asking questions,
and who found inconsistencies in our beliefs.
And then that started to make me ask bigger questions,
like, "How do I know that what they're telling me is true?"
And that eventually led me to leave the church.
- Would you have left if it weren't for Twitter?
- I don't think so.
- Hmm.
- I don't think-- - So Twitter made you leave.
- Yeah. (laughs)
- That's kind of funny to say. - Twitter saved my life.
- So, right now at this point, what do you believe?
- I'm not religious anymore,
but I believe really strongly in humanity.
The fact that people were willing to be kind to me,
and compassionate, and to show me empathy,
even when I was doing terrible things,
that changed my life.
- Is there any part of you that misses being
in that type of church?
- I have seven of my siblings who are still at the church,
and my youngest brother just turned 17 a few months ago,
and it kills me to have missed all the years
of his growing up, the last seven years.
And of course I miss my parents,
I miss my mom every day.
But I still believe that leaving was the right thing,
once I understood that we were hurting people.
- I know you mentioned earlier
that they compared being gay to murder.
So, if a child had come out to them,
how do you think they would react?
- Man, they would bring out all the Bible versus
in trying to show them how evil they are.
- I think that all parents should be supportive
of their kids, I think it's a horrible thing
to treat your kid differently because of their sexuality.
- This is something I think about all the time,
I can't not think about it.
It was extremely painful
to realize what we had contributed to,
the pain that we'd contributed
to so many other people's lives.
- Do you think that the world,
the community around them,
would be better off if they weren't there?
- That is an interesting question,
and it's definitely hard to think about,
because they're my family.
It's hard to think of them not existing,
but I believe and I hope that there is reason
to keep trying to reach them,
to convince them that what they're doing
is not the right thing.
And, so that's what I do.
(upbeat music) - Thank you so much.
- Thank you to, take care.
- You too. - Perfect.
- [Cadia] Thank you.
- [Megan] Thank you so much.
Hi, I'm Megan Phelps-Roper.
Thanks so much for watching this episode of "Kids Meet".
If you wanna learn more about me or my book,
link's down below.
Thank you!