ONTD

10:04 am - 02/07/2013

megan phelps has left the westboro batshit "church"



“There's no fresh start in today's world. Any twelve-year-old with a cell phone could find out what you did. Everything we do is collated and quantified. Everything sticks.”

Don’t act surprised that I’m quoting Batman. At WBC, reciting lines from pop culture is par for the course. And why not? The sentiments they express are readily identifiable by the masses – and shifting their meaning is as easy as giving them new context. So put Selina Kyle’s words in a different framework:

In a city in a state in the center of a country lives a group of people who believe they are the center of the universe; they know Right and Wrong, and they are Right. They work hard and go to school and get married and have kids who they take to church and teach that continually protesting the lives, deaths, and daily activities of The World is the only genuine statement of compassion that a God-loving human can sincerely make. As parents, they are attentive and engaged, and the children learn their lessons well.

This is my framework.

Until very recently, this is what I lived, breathed, studied, believed, preached – loudly, daily, and for nearly 27 years.

I never thought it would change. I never wanted it to.

Then suddenly: it did.

And I left.

Where do you go from there?

I don't know, exactly. My sister Grace is with me, though. We’re trying to figure it out together.

There are some things we do know.

We know that we’ve done and said things that hurt people. Inflicting pain on others wasn’t the goal, but it was one of the outcomes. We wish it weren’t so, and regret that hurt.

We know that we dearly love our family. They now consider us betrayers, and we are cut off from their lives, but we know they are well-intentioned. We will never not love them.

We know that we can’t undo our whole lives. We can’t even say we’d want to if we could; we are who we are because of all the experiences that brought us to this point. What we can do is try to find a better way to live from here on. That’s our focus.

Up until now, our names have been synonymous with “God Hates Fags.” Any twelve-year-old with a cell phone could find out what we did. We hope Ms. Kyle was right about the other part, too, though – that everything sticks – and that the changes we make in our lives will speak for themselves.

Megan and Grace

source: https://medium.com/turning-points/83d2ef8ba4f5

good for her, hopefully this is a sign of the end.
theotherqueen 7th-Feb-2013 12:51 am (UTC)
When somebody is truly brainwashed, though, it doesn't matter the amount of information out there. They won't believe it.
bittermunchkin 7th-Feb-2013 12:58 am (UTC)
Yeah, and there are a lot of rather sound theories related to heuristics that state that people, brainwashed or not, can be just as poorly informed when a lot of info is available as they are when info is scarce. An example off the top of my head -- a recent study found that people who follow the news on TV from stations like Fox, CNN, and MSNBC can actually be less educated about facts surrounding news issues than those who do not.
arrowtoes 7th-Feb-2013 01:29 am (UTC)
do you mean those who do not follow the news by those means in general, or those who do so in print only?
bittermunchkin 7th-Feb-2013 01:43 am (UTC)
Here is the link to the study:

http://publicmind.fdu.edu/2011/knowless/

I believe people were compared across a wide range of media viewing habits, but I don't recall whether print sources were accounted for.

Edited at 2013-02-07 01:49 am (UTC)
arrowtoes 7th-Feb-2013 02:25 am (UTC)
thanks!

Viewers of cable news on MSNBC are the most likely to think the protestors are Republicans.

:O What would Rachel Maddow think of you hooligans
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