Megan Phelps-Roper: Leaving 'America's most obnoxious hate group'
The Interview
BBC
4.3 • 538 Ratings
🗓️ 9 December 2019
⏱️ 24 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Holding placards outside the funerals of dead soldiers, celebrating the death of children after school massacres: Westboro Baptist Church has been called the "most obnoxious and rabid hate group in America". From the age of 5, Megan Phelps-Roper had stood on the picket lines, and carried those hate-filled signs. But as an adult firing off tweets to her online critics, Megan began to doubt. Shaun Ley speaks to Megan Phelps-Roper in London. Can Megan really still regard those who abused her mind, teaching her to hate and to pray for more deaths, as Mum and Dad?
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | You're listening to a podcast from the BBC World Service. This is Hard Talk with me, Sean Lay. |
| 0:06.1 | Thanks for downloading this edition of the programme, and I hope you enjoy it. |
| 0:09.7 | Welcome to Hard Talk on the BBC World Service with me, Sean Lay. They gave America to the fags and they came home in body bags. |
| 0:16.5 | That's typical of the crude hate-filled rhetoric propagated by Fred Phelps and his Westborough Baptist Church. |
| 0:23.0 | Megan, Fred's granddaughter, enthusiastically joined his picket lines and carried placards plastered with his hate. |
| 0:29.8 | Having to defend the church on social media, though, she began to doubt and eventually left. |
| 0:35.3 | She hates its message, but can't bring herself to blame those she loved |
| 0:39.2 | the most. Can Megan really still regard those who abused her mind, taught her to pray for more |
| 0:44.9 | deaths, taught her to hate as my wonderful beloved mum and dad? Megan Phelps Roper, welcome to hard talk. |
| 0:52.1 | From the age of five in 1991, you were involved in your family's demonstrations, |
| 0:57.0 | later taking part in pickets of the funerals of dead soldiers in the United States. |
| 1:03.0 | Can you just give us a sense of what these events meant to describe kind of a typical day of protest for you? |
| 1:09.0 | We organized our entire lives around what Westboro Westboro calls, it's picketing ministry. |
| 1:13.5 | So we saw it as the fulfillment of our duty to love thy neighbor, to go out and warn people |
| 1:18.9 | of the consequences of their sins. Their sins included homosexuality, fornication, adultery, |
| 1:26.6 | divorce and remarriage, idolatry. The list of sins was |
| 1:29.1 | endless. And the understanding that I grew up with was that everyone outside of Westboro |
| 1:34.0 | was hellbound and that our duty was to go and preach to them. We were offering them a message of life |
| 1:40.0 | and hope. Our understanding was that this was the only path for people to go to heaven and to |
| 1:45.6 | avoid the curses of God in this life. As a child, kind of describe your sense then of what it was |
| 1:51.7 | like. It was exciting getting ready for these. Yeah. I mean, we, again, I was very happy because I thought |
| 1:58.0 | we were doing good. I thought what we were doing was we were the good |
... |
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