- 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!
Woah that hit strongly.
Her visit on joe rogans podcast was amazing.