I grew up in the Westboro Baptist Church. Here's why I left

I was a blue-eyed,
chubby-cheeked five-year-old

when I joined my family
on the picket line for the first time.

My mom made me leave
my dolls in the minivan.

I'd stand on a street corner
in the heavy Kansas humidity

surrounded by a few dozen relatives

with my tiny fists clutching
a sign that I couldn't read yet:

"Gays are worthy of death."

This was the beginning.

Our protest soon became a daily occurance
and an international phenomenon,

and as a member
of Westboro Baptist Church,

I became a fixture on picket lines
across the country.

The end of my anti-gay picketing career,

and life as I knew it,

came 20 years later,

triggered in part by strangers on Twitter

who showed me the power
of engaging the other.

In my home,

life was framed as an epic spiritual
battle between good and evil.

The good was my church and its members,

and the evil was everyone else.

My church's antics were such that we
were constantly at odds with the world,

and that reinforced our
otherness on a daily basis.

"Make a difference between
the unclean and the clean,"

the verse says.

And so we did,

from baseball games to military funerals,

we trecked across the country
with neon protest signs in hand

to tell others exactly
how unclean they were

and exactly why they were
headed for damnation.

This was the focus of our whole lives.

This was the only way for me to do good
in a world that sits in satan's lap.

And like the rest of my 10 siblings,

I believed what I was taught
with all my heart,

and I pursued Westboro's agenda
with a special sort of zeal.

In 2009, that zeal brought me to Twitter.

Initially, the people
I encountered on the platform

were just as hostile as I expected.

They were the digital version
of the screaming hoards

I'd been seeing at protests
since I was a kid,

but in the midst of that digital brawl,

a strange pattern developed.

Someone would arrive at my profile
with the usual rage and scorn,

I would respond with a custom mix
of bible verses, pop culture references

and smiley faces,

they would be understandably confused
and caught off-guard,

but then a conversation would ensue,

and it was civil --

full of genuine curiosity on both sides.

How had the other come to such
outrageous conclusions about the world?

Sometimes the conversation
even bled into real life.

People I'd sparred with on Twitter would
come out to the picket line to see me

when I protested in their city.

A man named David was one such person.

He ran a blog called "Jewlicious,"

and after several months of heated
but friendly arguments online,

he came out to see me
at a picket in New Orleans.

He brought me a Middle Eastern
dessert from Jerusalem,

where he lives,

and I brought him Kosher chocolate,

and held a "God hates Jews" sign.

(Laughter)

There was no confusion
about our positions,

but the line between friend
and foe was becoming blurred.

We'd started to see each other
as human beings,

and it changed the way
we spoke to one another.

It took time,

but eventually these conversations
planted seeds of doubt in me.

My friends on Twitter took the time
to understand Westboro's doctrines,

and in doing so,

they were able to find inconsistencies
I'd missed my entire life.

Why did we advocate
the death penalty for gays

when Jesus said, "Let he who is without
sin cast the first stone?"

How could we claim to love our neighbor

while at the same time praying
for god to destroy them?

The truth is that the care shown to me
by these strangers on the Internet

was itself a contradiction.

It was growing evidence

that people on the other side were not
the demons I'd been led to believe.

These realizations were life-altering.

Once I saw that we were not
the ultimate arbiters of divine truth

but flawed human beings,

I couldn't pretend otherwise.

I couldn't justify our actions --

especially our cruel practice
of protesting funerals,

and celebrating human tragedy.

These shifts in my perspective

contributed to a larger erosion
of my trust in my church,

and eventually it made it
impossible for me to stay.

In spite of overwhelming grief and terror,

I left Westboro in 2012.

In those days just after I left,

the instinct to hide
was almost paralyzing.

I wanted to hide from
the judgement of my family,

who I knew would never
speak to me again --

people whose thoughts and opinions
had meant everything to me.

And I wanted to hide from the world
I'd rejected for so long.

People who had no reason at all
to give me a second chance

after a lifetime of antagonism,

and yet,

unbelievably,

they did.

The world had access to my past
because it was all over the Internet --

thousands of tweets
and hundreds of interviews,

everything from local TV news
to the Howard Stern show --

but so many embraced me
with open arms anyway.

I wrote an apology
for the harm I'd caused,

but I also knew that an apology
could never undo any of it.

All I could do was
try to build a new life,

and find a way somehow
to repair some of the damage.

People had every reason
to doubt my sincerity,

but most of them didn't.

And giving my history,

it was more than I could've hoped for --

forgiveness and the benefit of the doubt.

It still amazes me.

I spent my first year away from home
adrift with my younger sister,

who had chosen to leave with me.

We walked into an abyss,

but we were shocked to find
the light and a way forward

in the same communities
we'd targeted for so long.

David,

my "Jewlicious" friend from Twitter,

invited us to spend time among
a Jewish community in Los Angeles.

We slept on couches in the home
of a Hasidic Rabbi, his wife

and their four kids.

The same rabbi that I'd protested
three years earlier

with a sign that said,

"Your Rabbi is a whore."

(Laughter)

We spent long hours talking about
theology and Judaism and life

while we washed dishes
in their Kosher kitchen,

and chopped vegetables for dinner.

They treated us like family.

They held nothing against us.

And again I was astonished.