When I listened to someone with as much authority as the pastor, I tried to justify to myself why something made sense, even when it didn’t. Hearing his desperation was scary, and I was very scared for him. I thought he had lost the grace of God. If he had, then we all had. God would no longer send us on pickets to spread His Word, because He did not love us. All of us fasted and prayed that something so dire would not happen. We lay on the floor praying for God to grant us forgiveness and direction.
We also held a church meeting with the pastor to discuss his behavior. We followed up with him a couple of times, although nothing helped. He still acted oddly, but he did want to be proactive and keep thinking about the future of the congregation. “I am going to start another church in Texas,” he told us. “I am so tired of all this.” Then, he would come full circle and threaten to stop preaching altogether. It was such an emotional, traumatic time for me. He was the pastor, and I loved him as our leader, the one who was guiding us and leading us to salvation. Having to question if he was doing the right thing was really difficult for me. However, if we didn’t deal with it, we wouldn’t be going to heaven, either. I talked about it a lot with Jael, trying to find a positive way to handle it. “What do you think about thanking God that we are being sued?” I suggested.
Right in the middle of this chaos, a British journalist and documentarian by the name of Louis Theroux came to film us for three weeks, and Shirley welcomed him warmly into our midst. He was very funny and charming, with a great British accent. He went by the informal pronunciation of his first name, “Louie.” Although we found him really ignorant of the Bible and religion in general, we really liked him, so we didn’t mind when he’d ask us loaded questions that he thought would make us slip up. He hoped his documentary, which he had already titled The Most Hated Family in America, would reach an international audience.
Although Louis was staying at a hotel in Topeka, he and his crew practically lived with us during waking hours. Louis went to all the pickets and Bible studies and followed us around anywhere we went. He could go to Sunday sermons, interact with us on pickets, eat meals with us, and film anything he wanted. One afternoon, he even went on an outing with us at a local bowling alley. The only thing he couldn’t do was shadow the pastor, although on a couple of occasions, he managed to ask him a few questions about scripture. The pastor was dismissive, and referred to Louis’s questions as “stupidity in spades.”
Shirley and her children loved the whole concept of such grand media exposure, as though Louis’s interest in the Phelpses meant that they were precious. Everyone became so caught up in Louis and the cameras that they started competing with one another for the fame the film would generate. It was like a Phelps family reality TV show. Libby was practically obsessed with Louis, and Megan treated him like he was her pet project, inviting him with her everywhere to give him interviews. Shirley and Megan even bought Louis and his crew expensive gifts at the end of their stay. I didn’t understand it at all. I liked Louis being there, but my fellow church members’ competition for male attention was, for lack of a better word, shocking.
The pastor, on the other hand, was extremely anxious about the whole thing. He did not want to get exposed to the world during his moment of weakness. His behavior appeared to be irrational, and his confidence shaken. He stayed away from Louis as much as he could.
We knew Louis was a journalist and respected that, even though we thought he intended to offer a more objective opinion about us, rather than the gonzo-style comic piece that he ended up creating. But we were fine with the result, in any case. He was going to hell either way, and sadly for him, he was now going to a hotter part. He was not nearly as insidious as the journalist Margie thought was out there in cyberspace. She went so far as to say the spy was from a Boston newspaper, and she fed the pastor’s paranoia by telling him that she thought I could possibly be an unsuspecting part of a media trap set up by my new Internet friend Scott. She wanted to see every correspondence between us. Even though she never saw anything that supported her mole theory, she told me I could ruin the church by talking to imposters.
Everything started to spin out of control when Taylor started to notice that I was on my computer a lot. “Are you playing a game?” she’d ask. “Let me see.” I’d tell her to go away, but she kept snooping and saw that I was on a chat site she’d never seen before.
“I’m telling Mom and Dad,” she threatened.
“What is there to tell?” I replied, convinced that she was just bluffing. Taylor and I were pretty close, so I didn’t think she would try to get me in trouble. I had never communicated socially online with anyone I didn’t know before, and I thought I was going about it the right way.
Scott, who lived in Connecticut, had seen some of our song parody videos on the websites. Dad had been taking advantage of YouTube’s huge following and had started putting some of the shorts on that website, probably hoping his controversial little numbers would go viral. Scott had seen my “Big Fibbin,” a parody of Jay-Z’s “Big Pimpin’” written by Megan and rapped by five of us: Megan, Libby, Jael, Bekah, and me. Scott had liked it enough to get in touch with us. He said he appreciated our message, and wanted to know more.
At first, we only exchanged e-mails, but eventually we started talking in a chat room. He asked me lots of questions about the church, our religion, and our beliefs. He said he wanted to join the church one day, and asked me if I thought the pastor would let him come visit. These kinds of exchanges went on for several weeks until he started flirting with me, telling me I was beautiful and sexy. I started flirting back. I was lonely, it was fun for me, and I thought it safer to flirt with someone who was fifteen hundred miles away than doing it in person. I never thought I would actually meet Scott, and if I did, it would only be because he had come to Topeka to join the church. I thought the situation was really harmless.
Taylor figured out I was chatting with a guy online using YouTube channels and Yahoo Instant Messenger. I would hide my screen when she came around, and she told Mom and Dad. She had been baptized one year after I had, and she took her commitment to the church very seriously. Dad checked my computer when I wasn’t around and found a cache of e-mails. That afternoon when they both came storming into our room, I knew something serious was up. Dad did all the yelling, while Mom stood silently by.
“Listen, Lauren,” my father warned me. “You need to stop talking to this guy.”
He had found a picture that Scott had e-mailed me, a shot of his face snapped from his cell phone. “You want to marry this douche bag? This loser with a beard?” he raged. “Let me e-mail him and rip him a new one.”
Dad did e-mail him once, and Scott replied with something like “Oh, hi, Mr. Drain. I had written a couple of questions to the church about a video I saw on YouTube, and I didn’t get any responses until Lauren e-mailed me, but she told me I needed to have your permission to talk to me.”
My father didn’t like the response at all. “I don’t trust this guy,” Dad said after he read it to me. “He reminds me of me when I was a kid. He reminds me of a guy who just wants to get in your pants.” He told me Scott was not coming into the church, and said if I ever talked to him again he would be really upset. I had stayed away from every guy I had come across in college to make sure no one could call me a whore. I wanted to do everything the right way, but in all honesty, I did want to meet someone who already knew that I was a member of the WBC and accepted my convictions. When I had been in college, I had other boys ask me out who hated my religion and what it preached. They were interested in me only, not the church. Chatting with Scott online was playful and fun. I didn’t have a long-term plan in mind, but I was Internet-flirting with someone I thought could share my beliefs.
All of us flirted because we liked a little positive reinforcement once in a while, despite or maybe because of the fact that we were never going to be with anyone. For whatever reason, I always seemed to be held to a higher standard than the other girls. I was twenty-one
years old and had never had a boyfriend, or even kissed a guy except for Brian. I tried to defend myself by explaining to Shirley that I thought corresponding with Scott was safe, because I wasn’t the only one doing it. I had found out that Scott was also in contact with Libby. He had seen YouTube messages from Libby and me, and he began talking to both of us privately. I didn’t want to tell on Libby, but I had no recourse. After all, Scott was supposedly a danger to our church and a covert media spy.
When I told Shirley about Libby, she didn’t believe me. None of the elders did. Libby somehow had more credibility than me, although I didn’t know why. She was afforded a lot of independence. She was allowed to go by herself to the University of Kansas’s satellite campus in Kansas City, an hour and a half away, for her physical therapy degree, where she’d spend hours hanging out with people who weren’t in the church. She joined the volleyball team there, which took her away from pickets. When she finished her degree, she worked at a physical therapy place in Kansas City and went out with people after work. She did lots of things that were questionable, like carry boys’ phone numbers in her cell phone. Megan and Jael thought it was pretty risky for her to do those things, but nobody ever called her out. I was infuriated that everyone was coming down on me, but nobody was checking Libby’s computer to see if I was telling the truth. Finally, Megan believed me enough to grill her, and Libby admitted that she had been corresponding with Scott, too. Shirley told her to stop, and supposedly she did, although I had my doubts. I promised to stop, too, but Dad wanted to showcase how hard he was willing to be.
One evening, I came home from babysitting at the day-care center when he announced that he, Mom, and I were going over to Shirley’s to “talk.” I didn’t bother to change out of my shorts and T-shirt, assuming the “talk” would be just the four of us. When we arrived, I found about twenty people from the block assembled in Shirley’s office, including Shirley’s sisters, Margie, Abby, and Becky, and most of her kids. Dad directed me to a chair that had been placed for me in the corner, across from Shirley’s desk. No one else had a seat. My parents stood on my left-hand side—my father next to me, and Mom on the other side of him—but it soon became clear they weren’t there to defend me.
My father was the one who had called the meeting for the sole purpose of chastising me in front of everyone. “I am losing hope in my daughter,” he addressed the group. “I don’t want to put up with her anymore.”
I was in total shock. At this moment, I realized my father had lost all human emotions for me. He was not talking to me; he was talking about me like I was some type of exhibit on display. “This is the disobedient daughter who never listens. She won’t stop talking to boys. I thought I would bring it to everyone’s attention,” he bellowed.
I had gone through so much with everyone in the church. I had seen how they intimidated people, including my father. When they had chastised him, I had felt so bad for him. When Shirley, Margie, and Sam had told me not to be so close with him, I never could pull myself away. But clearly, he did not hold the same level of allegiance to me. Sitting and listening to him speak about me in the third person made it clear that the church was now more important to him than his own daughter.
My mom didn’t say much. I could barely see her, but she would interject a few words here and there. “We have been talking to her about this, but she does not seem to listen,” she said in a soft voice. I knew she wouldn’t stick up for me. Sometimes I felt sorry for her, but at this moment, I thought she was pathetic. I understood that she wasn’t allowed to have independent thoughts. I could sense her struggle with what was happening at the meeting and how my father was attacking me. I also knew that sacrificing me was her way of elevating the family’s status, but I still wanted her to say something in my defense.
The meeting lasted almost an hour. One at a time, the other people in the room got to ask me questions and say a few things to me. One person called me a whore. Another said I was always causing problems for the church. “Poor Luci and Steve, they have to put up with a daughter like you,” someone yelled out.
When the floor was turned over to Abby Phelps, she held nothing back. “She is just a stupid bitch,” she sniped. “I don’t know why we are even talking to her.”
“I saw this coming,” her sister Margie added. “I have been warning everybody about this.”
Bekah didn’t say anything. She looked worried and on the verge of tears. Megan wasn’t mean, like so many of the others in the room. She asked me, “Is there a chance you will stop?”
I told her I would, but my father cut me off with a dismissive comment. “There is no hope,” he told Megan. “I am done with her!”
Shirley was the gentlest of all. I could tell she was upset about the situation. She was almost in tears when it was her turn to ask me questions. “Is there any hope for you?” she wanted to know.
“Yes,” I said, holding back my own tears. I was very apologetic in all my answers. I loved Shirley. She was more motherly than my own mom, and she didn’t like to lose members, especially those she was close with. She turned the agenda from an attack on me to a plan that would keep Scott from contacting me.
“Can we make sure this guy can never contact her again?” she asked the group.
Dad told Shirley he had changed my e-mail.
“Have you ever talked to him on the cell phone?” she asked me.
I told her that I hadn’t.
“Does he have your cell phone number?” she continued.
Again, I told her no.
“Okay, so he should have no way of contacting you, correct?”
“That is correct,” I told her honestly. “I have cut off all forms of communication. Dad changed my e-mail, and I told Scott to leave me alone. I don’t want to lose my family and my life. A random guy is not worth it.”
“If that is the case, very good,” Shirley said, giving me confidence. My father was still saying he was done with me, and he let everyone know he didn’t think the plan was going to work. He would have been just as happy to cut me loose right then and there, but luckily Shirley believed in me.
Sam brought the meeting to a close. He was usually pretty focused on procedure, so he recapped what had been accomplished and how we would go forward. “What are we going to do after this? Are we going to let her continue to be a member?” he asked. “Was this meeting just a warning?” Nobody really answered. But the consensus was that the meeting was my ultimate warning.
After the meeting, I e-mailed Scott one last time and told him to stay away from me, and that if he didn’t stop contacting me, I would face dire consequences. Two weeks went by with no communication with him, and I was feeling really good. I didn’t have anyone mad at me, and I wasn’t thinking about him anymore.
One afternoon at work, my cell phone rang. All the nurses in our unit carried individual cell phones given to us by the hospital. We were in a forty-bed unit so our patients could call us directly when they needed us right away. I answered my phone, shocked to hear Scott’s voice on the other end. “How did you get my number?” I asked him. I had never actually spoken to him on the phone, so this was the first time I was hearing his voice.
“I called the hospital and asked them to transfer me to your line,” he told me. “I can’t believe you are actually going to stop talking to me. I miss you.”
I was really flattered that Scott had gone to all that trouble to track me down. I didn’t even know he knew where I worked. The call was awkward, not only because I wasn’t allowed to have personal calls on duty, but I was forbidden from talking to him. I looked around to make sure Jael wasn’t in the vicinity.
“What’s going on?” I said. “I told you I couldn’t talk to you anymore.”
He said he just wanted to hear my voice, but I hung up when my supervisor rounded the corner. He called me at work a couple of more times later that week, begging me to find a way to stay in touch. It took a week or so, but he finally convinced me to communicate with him again
. “We have to be very careful,” I warned him. The plan was I would e-mail him only when I knew that nobody would catch me. Soon, he wanted to start chatting again, and I gave in. My dad searched my laptop and found out what I was doing online. He was angry, and told me for the second time to stop communicating with Scott. That was the last I heard from anyone in the church regarding our online exchanges.
In October 2007, a jury hearing Snyder v. Phelps at the U.S. District Court in Baltimore ruled against the church. It also awarded more than $10 million to the Snyder family—$2.9 million in compensatory damages, $6 million in punitive damages, and $2 million for emotional distress. Although the ruling was certainly disheartening, Margie said their appeal would be filed immediately. She said it would be based on the judge’s fatal error to allow a jury to decide the scope of the First Amendment. Juries were unilaterally instructed to assess fact, not law. The American Civil Liberties Union was squarely behind the church on this one, saying the WBC’s protected right to free speech trumped any objectionable message.
Our daily pickets continued in Topeka, with occasional pickets out of town for important events. In early December 2007, the church staged a high-profile picket in Omaha, Nebraska, the location of a mall shooting with many casualties. God’s wrath had shown itself in the actions of a lone gunman who methodically shot and killed eight people, critically injured five more, and then killed himself in the upper level of the Von Maur department store at the Westroads Mall, Omaha’s most popular shopping center. I did not attend the picket, but the picket pamphlet brought out our standard, highly provocative rhetoric: “Hey, Omaha Ogres! Your Public Crocodile Tears Change Nothing! Like The Rest of Doomed America, Your Highly Honed Public Mourning Does Nothing But Enrage The Lord Your God!”
While the families of the murdered mall victims were mourning their relatives in Omaha, my fate was being determined through intuition and in underground discussions in Topeka that I knew nothing about. The very same group of people who were my friends, my family, my mentors, and my spiritual support were in the process of banishing me. I had been present for many meetings with banishment on the agenda, so I thought I knew the procedure. For every person I had seen get kicked out of the church, every member had to be present, to witness, and to raise his hand if he didn’t agree. I still don’t know if such a meeting took place to discuss me. All I know is that I wasn’t there.
Banished : Surviving My Years in the Westboro Baptist Church (9781455518470) Page 23
