Girl on a Wire

by Libby Phelps

  I picketed both graduations, making sure I held FAG BODS, a play on the school’s mascot, the Ichabod.

  Going to graduate school was a tougher sell to my family. We were encouraged to get a bachelor’s degree, because the family prided itself on being well educated and articulate, able to debate issues with anyone who might throw an argument our way. But when someone wanted to get a higher degree, some of the church members suspected they harbored interests other than the church’s.

  Nearing the end of my bachelor’s degree, I applied to just one school—the only one within driving distance from my home, the University of Kansas Medical Center. To my delight and surprise, I was accepted; it’s a tough school to get into. Shortly after my acceptance letter came, Megan’s oldest brother Sam approached me while we were picketing the Topeka Jewish synagogue and asked if I really needed to get my doctorate. Why, he asked, was I doing it? I knew I couldn’t say I wanted to do it for myself. Everything—our occupation, our talent, our time, our energy, everything—had to be done for the good of the church, to keep the church alive and going. We were supposed to use whatever we did for a living to “help the saints”—i.e., the elders in the church. My talent was manual therapy and prescribing an exercise program for church members—massage, joint mobilizations, stretching, and making more money, so more would be tithed to the church and so I could pay for myself to go on out-of-town picket trips. I could make significantly more money if I got my doctorate, so that’s what I told him. That was good enough for Sam.

  He also told me that my brother had gotten his master’s degree in computer science only to meet a wife. That ticked me off. How would Sam know my brother’s intention in wanting to get a higher degree? Maybe Ben was like me. I had absolutely no desire to go to school to meet a spouse (indeed, I knew I was never allowed to get married, so what was the point of thinking about it?). I was going because I liked school, and wanted the highest degree possible in my profession.

  DURING MY TIME IN UNDERGRAD AND AT KUMED, I PLAYED ON recreational volleyball teams once a week, reasoning that Gramps’s focus on physical fitness would surely mean that my playing a sport would be acceptable to Shirl, who tended to frown on any extracurricular activities that would take us away from the church.

  In undergrad, while Megan and I were playing at the university’s rec center one day, a male student asked if he could join us. He said his name was Blake, and he was studying diagnostic medical sonography. I knew almost immediately that he was gay; I could just tell. He was also nice and funny and smart, and able to keep up with us on the court. We hit it off, and I hoped we’d be friends. Later, he told me, other people in the workout facility asked him if he knew who we were and why he was playing with us. He told them he didn’t care, because he thought we were nice. He and I started a long-lasting friendship that day—though we wouldn’t actually talk about his being gay until after I’d left the church.

  SHIRL EVENTUALLY MADE ME DROP VOLLEYBALL WHILE AT KUMed because, as she said, I was “doing things I shouldn’t.” I wondered if she knew about my friendship with Blake and thought I was making similar ones in graduate school. I mostly got the feeling she thought I was carrying on torrid affairs or going out partying. Nothing could have been further from the truth. Even as a young adult, I behaved as I had my entire life. I wanted to be a good girl and make my parents proud of me, but this was not—and had never been—enough to make Shirl like me. So I had to quit and let my teammates down. It ruined a couple of friendships, because I was seen as unreliable. It’s hard to explain to normal people in their twenties that you’re still not allowed to make your own decisions about your life.

  IN SEPTEMBER OF 2001, I WAS IN MY CAR ON THE WAY TO Gran and Gramps’s place when a deejay broke into the song on the radio to announce that there had been an attack in New York and that two planes had been flown into the World Trade Centers. I felt a profound sense of shock and dread. As I pulled into the driveway at Gramps’s place, I braced myself for what I was about to walk into.

  Sure enough, family members were already gathered there, chatting about the news from New York. The tone was upbeat—elated, even. I quickly changed my facial expression to match what was going on in the room. Shirl and my uncle Jon were in the living room, literally dancing around together. “I’m so happy, it makes me want to dance a little jig!” Jon chortled.

  “Awesome!” Megan exclaimed when I clustered with her and the other cousins in the hallway, discussing the news. “Yeah,” I said, laughing along with her, though I couldn’t help thinking it felt disrespectful to be so jubilant about so many people getting killed. I knew none of them were “innocent” in our book, but the images on the TV screens were scary and sad and I felt like I was pretending to be happy about it when I wasn’t.

  All day long it was an outright party, with Shirl leading the family in celebrating a particularly large-scale demonstration of God’s wrath. I knew I was expected to feel the same way, and so, eventually, I did. People ask me how it’s possible to be joyful about such a horrific event, but it’s so easy when you’ve lived your whole life this way. You trust your parents and the people around you to give you the right ideas, so it becomes easy to change your mindset to match theirs. There was always some kind of logical explanation they’d have for our stance: “God did this because he’s destroying the nation for disobeying him.” We didn’t worry about our own safety, because God was protecting us. As far as Westboro was concerned, 9/11 was our biggest I-told-you-so moment yet—and Gramps intended to use it to its full potential.

  The following spring, we organized a picket of the New York firefighters. Fire department chaplain Mychal Judge, who had been the first casualty announced in the twin towers attack, had been gay. Among our signs for the occasion was FDNY SIN, complete with Gramps’s stick-figure drawing we’d come to refer to as the “butt buddies”—one bent over and the other standing behind. THANK GOD FOR SEPTEMBER 11, was another, as well as UNITED YOU’LL FALL. Mayor Giuliani was at the center of another, with FAG ENABLER surrounding his image. It was tough to choose between them—which would make New Yorkers the angriest? That was what we wanted to go for.

  It wasn’t hard to make them angry when it came to 9/11. Mostly, though, they reacted with sadness and shock, which surprised me—I had been expecting (and kind of hoping for) outright fury, which is easier to handle than tears. “How can you say these things about men who gave their lives to protect people?” someone asked as we picketed outside a Tribeca fire station that had lost many of its firefighters in the collapse. “They’re not heroes,” Shirl would snap. “They were just doing their jobs. They were working to protect a fag nation that supports sin.” And so it would go. We spent an hour or so in front of the station, then moved up into midtown to protest HBO, which was airing The L Word. I spotted Marc Summers, the host of one of my favorite childhood shows, Double Dare, and snapped a picture of him. He quickly walked away from me.

  THE CHURCH’S FIXATION ON ARMAGEDDON INTENSIFIED AFTER the 9/11 attacks. Along with the extra prayers and chaotic picketing demonstrations, another extreme view was growing in popularity among the church—that the end times prophesied in the Book of Revelation were near. The church elders were elated to witness what they believed to be the work of a wrathful God doing divine justice unto a sinful world. Every school shooting, mass murder, or natural disaster, here or abroad, was also cause for celebration. Though this behavior seemed unnaturally cruel to me at first, I was still impressionable enough to be swept up in the excitement.

  As the pickets progressed and became more extreme, so did the fundamentals of the church itself. For me, the most disconcerting change was in the way we prayed. Growing up, we did it solely in church services. The only people allowed to lead the prayers were the men, and Gramps or another man in the church would start with, “Let us pray.” We would all bow our heads and whomever was called upon to pray would give a prayer. This seemed fairly normal to me.

  Gradually everyone began pr
aying outside of church services, too. And when we were in church, instead of merely bowing our heads, we had to sprawl out on the floor—like child’s pose in yoga, or the Muslim prayer position (a religion abhorred by WBC, but mostly for the mere fact that Muslims are not WBC members, like everyone else). Even more disturbing was how the content of the prayers evolved. We actually started praying for people to die. This chilling development further chipped away at my faith and made me physically uncomfortable. I would sit quietly, hoping my face wouldn’t turn red or that my breathing would become quick and noticeable. When Gramps said things that didn’t sit well with me, I would try to slow down my breathing and relax my body by depressing my shoulders so it wasn’t obvious to anyone that I was having a negative or anxious reaction to what he was talking about.

  IN 2006 CAME AN EPIC LAWSUIT AGAINST THE WBC, FILED BY Albert Snyder, the father of a US Marine killed in Iraq in March 2006. Snyder was accusing WBC of defamation, invasion of privacy, and intentional infliction of emotional distress after the church picketed his son’s funeral in Maryland. The case eventually reached the Supreme Court in 2010, with Snyder arguing, “There is a civilized way to express an opinion in America, but it does not involve intentionally inflicting emotional distress on others.”

  Naturally, all church members were expected to rally around the cause. And this time we were rallying with a death wish. Though I could never bring myself to do it, most members literally began praying for Snyder to die. Although the church knew they had acted within the bounds of all local laws, church leaders reasoned that if Snyder died, the case would cease to exist. It bothered me that the church believed it held such power over another person’s life or death.

  “How do you pray for your enemy? Let’s look at the scripture again,” preached Gramps in one sermon. “We pray that we should ‘be delivered from unreasonable and wicked men: for all men have not faith.’ 2 Thessalonians 3:2. We pray that God’s will should be done to our enemies. We pray that they should be ‘anathema maranatha’ (i.e., damned in hell for all eternity, and that Jesus speedily throw them into hell). 1 Corinthians 16:22. We thank God, just as Jesus did, for blinding their eyes. Matthew 11:25. We do not pray for them to be saved, just as Jesus did in John 17. Verse 9: ‘I pray for them: I pray not for the world, but for them, which thou hast given me; for they are thine.’ We thank God for the persecutions that we receive at their hands for His sake, because that is evidence that we have been blessed of God. Matthew 5:11.”

  Praying for people to die would be combined with our new all-out prayer position, spread out kneeling on the floor with our heads down. Meanwhile, when we were on an out-of-town picket and there wasn’t room to pray properly, we passed a walkie-talkie so each member of the church would have a chance for their prayer to be heard.

  My first attempt at praying out loud happened when I was twenty-three, on the way to a picket in Arkansas. There were six of us riding in Shirl’s spotless minivan. Ben sat in the passenger seat next to Shirl. I sat in the pilot seat immediately behind her, next to Megan. A couple of Shirl’s younger kids sat in the row behind us, snacking and doodling. Megan and I were talking about volleyball and discussing plans to try to beat our record of 107 volleyball bumps in a row at the next rest stop when Shirl made a sudden announcement.

  “Put your snacks and your Bibles down, kids. It’s prayer time!” She held up the small black device for all to see.

  I immediately felt sick to my stomach.

  Without further hesitation, Shirl smoothed back her long, salt-and-pepper hair and began, speaking with theatrical enthusiasm as if to demonstrate the strength of her faith and set an example for the next generation.

  “Blessed Heavenly Father, we thank Thee for calling us to love and obey Thy laws and for calling us out from among this corrupt, perverted, and sinful generation. We thank Thee for each other, to exhort one another while it is called today. We thank Thee for keeping us strong and for giving us bright and shining minds so we know what we ought to do and how to present ourselves daily as we go into these mean streets. We thank Thee for opening our eyes and ears so we can see and hear what is going on around us and we thank Thee for blinding the heathen around us. We thank Thee for Thy daily displays of wrath and pray for more. We pray that Thou wilt not forget the iniquities done against this small church.”

  As Shirl spoke, I got more and more apprehensive, knowing it would soon be my turn to speak. My palms began to sweat and I suddenly felt the stuffy heat of the van. My feelings of claustrophobia and anxiety amplified as Shirl handed the walkie-talkie to my brother—I was next.

  Ben cleared his throat before picking up where Shirl left off. “We pray that Thou will heal those who are sick among us and give us the strength, wisdom, and knowledge to get through these final days. We pray for our vile bodies to be changed into new bodies. We pray for Thy quick return when we shall meet Thee in the sky with our new bodies and rule and reign with Thee forever.”

  It was my turn. I took the walkie-talkie from Ben and fumbled it for a moment, trying to remember which button to press. I found the talk button, pushed it, and started my prayer with a weak voice.

  “We pray that Thou will be with us as we go out into the battlefield.” I stopped suddenly, choking on the word “battlefield.” My face flushed with embarrassment as I lifted my finger off the talk button. The absurdity of the situation—being trapped in this van and forced to pray for the downfall of humanity into this little walkie-talkie—hit me all at once. I looked over to Megan, desperate to tell her how I felt. But although she was my best friend, she was also Shirl’s daughter, and always played the part of faithful, obedient servant. She smiled at me encouragingly.

  “I get nervous!” I said apologetically. Ben turned back to look at me and began to laugh. I knew what they wanted me to say. They wanted me to pray for evil to befall all of mankind and for God’s love and grace to be with us and His hatred and anger to be poured down onto the rest of the world. But as fearful as I was of Shirl’s temper, and as much as I wanted to please my family in order to just get it over with, I couldn’t bring myself to do it. I didn’t feel it and I couldn’t say it. Noticing Shirl’s furious expression, Ben stopped laughing. My eyes swelled with tears as I passed the walkie-talkie to Megan.

  “We pray for …” she dutifully continued the prayer.

  I sat quietly, my head reeling from the humiliation of what had just happened, and it wasn’t until we made our next stop in southwest Missouri twenty minutes later that I was able to really cry and catch my breath.

  While Shirl and the others were in the bathroom, Megan found me sobbing in the parking lot. She gently put her hand on my shoulder as she had so many times growing up. “Praying out loud is new to everyone. You’ll get used to it.” She gave me her sweet, toothy smile. A gust of cold wind blew in from the highway, tossing a strand of brown hair loose from her braided ponytail. With her light blue eyes and long curly hair, she could, at times, look just like her mother—only not terrifying.

  I shoved my hands in the front pouch of my pink hoodie, still shivering, though the breeze had passed. I looked down at Megan’s long, bare legs. Also like her mother, Megan chose to wear shorts when most people would find them inappropriate or, at the very least, unseasonable. “I just don’t know what to say,” I told her, which was only half true.

  “All you need to do is listen to what others are saying and you’ll get it,” she said. “Don’t worry too much about it.”

  I knew Megan didn’t understand the real problem I had with the prayers, but she so devoutly followed the practices of the church that I couldn’t bring myself to tell her the truth. Even so, talking to Megan made me feel better. We hugged and joked about trying for the bump record at the next stop.

  But I never got used to the new prayers. There was something wrong with me, something different—I couldn’t find it in my heart to pray for these horrible things to happen. Despite my constant inner turmoil, I did eventually manage to force m
yself through a public prayer. But I chose my words very carefully, walking the narrow line between what was expected of me and what I was willing to say. Still my blood pressure rose, my heart raced, and I broke out in a nervous sweat during every prayer I gave from then on.

  THOSE INTENSIFIED PRAYERS BOTHERED ME MORE THAN ANY of the actual pickets. I had been picketing since I was eight years old, and it had become second nature to me. Marching up and down a busy street with a GOD HATES FAGS sign and telling everyone God hated them and they were going to hell was just another Saturday afternoon for me, and I never questioned or took the time to contemplate the nature of what I was doing. As I got older, it got easier and easier to disconnect and simply go through the motions. Even though I’d been in the middle of some extremely intense picket situations, none of them were as heart-rending as having to personally deliver a prayer full of hate.

  It was around this time that church members started saying Gramps was losing faith. Church members were told to not talk to Gramps. It was the beginning of his ouster from his own congregation.

  The family made sure to hide this internal conflict from a visitor who’d shown up to do a TV documentary on the church: British reporter Louis Theroux, who shot for three weeks for a documentary called The Most Hated Family in America. He had a well-deserved reputation for getting under people’s skin through his cheerful, faux-naive demeanor. But he met his match in my family, where we had spent our entire lives being relentlessly friendly to everyone—especially people who were trying to discredit the church. In an article about the time he spent with us, Louis wrote, “I found a lot to like about the Phelps[es]. They have a strong family unit, and Gramps aside, they were open and hospitable. It was fascinating to see the power of a family to create its own bizarre ideology and pass it down through the generations. But I guess I’ll be seeing you all in hell.” Cheeky though he was, Louis had more of an impact on me than I realized in the moment; he repeatedly asked me if I didn’t yearn to get out in the world and make decisions for myself, and those questions rolled around in my head long after he and the film crew were gone.