Sunday, February 10, 2013

It's Sunday

One of the most prominent members of the Westboro Baptist church has left it after spending her life as part of the fervently anti-gay movement.

Megan Phelps-Roper, who looked after social media for the church best known for its slogan “God hates fags”, announced her departure in a post on the blogging platform Medium in which she also revealed her younger sister Grace, 19, was also leaving.

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Phelps-Roper writes: “We know that we’ve done and said things that hurt people. Inflicting pain on others wasn’t the goal, but it was one of the outcomes. We wish it weren’t so, and regret that hurt.

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“We know that we can’t undo our whole lives. We can’t even say we’d want to if we could; we are who we are because of all the experiences that brought us to this point. What we can do is try to find a better way to live from here on. That’s our focus.”

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The church has a small congregation, largely made up of the extended family of the Reverend Fred Phelps, the grandfather of Megan and Grace Phelps-Roper. Their mother, Shirley Lynn Phelps-Roper, is one of its most outspoken representatives.

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As well as picketing military funerals, the church also pickets sporting events, concerts and other occasions in the apparent hope of publicity. As well as being anti-gay, it is also anti-Jewish, anti-Catholic and anti-Chinese.

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In an accompanying Medium piece, Damsel, Arise: A Westboro Scion Leaves Her Church, Jeff Chu describes what led Megan, who was named by the Kansas City Star as “the future leader” of the church, to leave in November.

Chu writes that her ephiphany over Westborough’s hateful dogma began with a Twitter discussion with Jewish blog Jewlicious’s David Abitbol.

  Raw Story

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