Banished : Surviving My Years in the Westboro Baptist Church (9781455518470) Read online

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  This book is dedicated to:

  Taylor Simone Drain

  Boaz Abel Drain

  Faith Marie Drain

  PROLOGUE

  January 20, 2005

  A particularly large crowd was packing the National Mall in Washington, D.C., on the third Thursday in January for the second inauguration of President George W. Bush. This big day for our country was a perfect opportunity for us to spread the Word of God, and I was proud to be a part of it. At only nineteen years old, I was going to be sharing my beliefs with the world, showing the sin-loving masses a better, righteous way. Anticipating huge crowds, my fellow church members and I had gotten there especially early that winter morning.

  The energy around the capital was unlike anything I had ever experienced, and my adrenaline was pumping. The intermittent freezing rain had not deterred hundreds of thousands of people from swarming into the city. Even though the inauguration didn’t begin until noon, the streets around the Mall were already jammed five hours before. There were twenty of us in our group, which made it one of our larger assemblies of picketers. Shirley Phelps-Roper, the daughter of our pastor, Fred Phelps, was in charge of the protest. She had set the minimum age at sixteen, so my best friends and I were eligible. She had contacted the National Park Service, the authority for the event, months earlier, enough in advance to secure the church a high-visibility position right by one of the Mall entrances. With the pastor getting older, Shirley and her sister Margie had become two of the church’s bigwigs, and they were both along for this picket.

  I was happy to be with my three closest friends, Megan, Rebekah, and Jael, who were a few of the pastor’s many grandchildren and the only girls around my age in our community. We had all packed what we called our “picketing clothes”—apparel that was practical and warm. Since we were accustomed to hours in the freezing cold, these outfits included many layers to protect us from the elements, like Columbia ski jackets, plenty of gloves, glove liners, hats, scarves, and thin thermal underwear.

  We had flown into Washington from Topeka the night before, concealing our signs in our carry-on bags. We were scattered throughout the plane, and our fellow passengers had no idea we were associated with the group many of them had seen on TV. I had been saving up for the $400 airplane ticket for a few weeks, working part-time as a front-desk receptionist at St. Francis Hospital in Topeka and as an assistant in the church office. It was an expensive ticket for a twenty-four-hour trip, but the opportunity to represent my family and my church on the national stage made it worth the cost. All of us who had been selected were thrilled.

  We had spent the night at a local Super 8, our hotel chain of choice. They were reliable, clean, and inexpensive. Shirley had booked the rooms early enough to guarantee all of us a bed. We still didn’t get much sleep, because we were up before dawn to get dressed and organized. By 7 a.m., five hours before the event was scheduled to start, we were at the Mall.

  We made our way to the protester registration area, where huge numbers of people had gathered to voice their objections to any number of issues. We knew from watching the news that the event was going to be drawing plenty of Bush detractors, and sure enough, the counterinaugural groups were there in force. Most of the opposition was angry over the Iraq War—one such group carried one thousand coffins representing dead soldiers. Turn Your Back on Bush was a group encouraging everybody to turn his back when the president’s motorcade came down the street, and Not One Damn Dime Day protesters urged people not to spend any money on Inauguration Day. Others were the mouthpieces for civil rights, abortion rights, environmental issues, health care, voting rights, and the evils of corporate influence.

  Because this was the first inauguration since the terrorist events of September 11, 2001, the level of security was unprecedented. None of the registered groups was threatening violence, only civil disobedience, but the event organizers weren’t taking any chances. Every protester from every group had to go through airport-type scanners before they could enter the protest area. Despite our early arrival, we still had to wait more than two hours to get through the checkpoint. We had no intention of trying to get anywhere near Bush. We only wanted our message to be seen by the thousands of people walking by and by the media, who with any luck might put us on national television.

  We kept our signs, shirts, and caps hidden from view so that we wouldn’t be harassed as we made our way through thousands of heavily armed security and military agents to our assigned protest site. Finally, almost in position, some of us started announcing our message. “God Hates You!” I declared, as we pushed forward. The high we got from picketing took over. “You are going to hell! You are all fag enablers!” we hollered over one another. “We are the only true patriots,” I added. “If you people were really patriotic and religious, you would be standing with us holding signs.” I told them that God mocked their calamities, and good Christians were supposed to warn nations against sin. “Thank God for September 11!” I yelled, the strongest insult to the sinners and the one most certain to get a rise out of the people within earshot.

  I looked at Megan, Shirley’s oldest daughter. She had the same fiendishly excited look on her face that I did. All of us were brimming with passion. We quickly became the center of attention, and we reveled in it. Our objective was to stir up as much controversy and animosity as we could in the four hours our permit allowed us. We were succeeding before we even reached our positions. Finally, when we were at our site, we pulled off our sweatshirts and jackets to expose our godhatesfags.com T-shirts. We held our picket signs high in the cold air; mine was a big poster with the words GOD HATES FAG ENABLERS printed in bold, straight lettering.

  Our picket spot was only a hundred yards from the entrance to the arena in which the inauguration would be held. We wanted to get people riled up and angry as they came in, all the while remaining calm and controlled ourselves. That way the people scoffing and cursing at us would come off as the hostile ones. I tried to think of powerful and jarring things to yell, hoping to connect with someone in the crowd and engage him in a match he couldn’t win. I desperately wanted to share my beliefs and insights from my four years with the Westboro Baptist Church with a hell-bound, ignorant sinner. Finding the right words to express our dogma to an outsider was one of the most fulfilling parts of being so faithful and obedient. Of course, my insecurity was also at work. I was equally eager to assert myself at pickets for the praise, and maybe even a little respect, from church leaders. My family was one of the only ones not related to the Phelpses by blood or marriage, so it was important for me to show that I was worthy.

  Since my family’s move to Topeka, the Westboro Baptist Church’s hometown, I had worked hard to learn the Bible stories and the church’s interpretations of them. Now I was trying to reinforce that I was a faithful follower. The pastor judged us by our fervency and knowledge of the scripture, and a weak or unenthusiastic performance would be reported back to him. On our
return to Kansas, we’d be admonished in church to the point of embarrassment. I knew it was my duty and obligation to let the sinners at the inauguration know what God thought of them, and I was more than up to the task.

  The Washington crowd that day reacted strongly to us, which reinforced our sense of success. The more enraged they became, the more we felt we were making our message known. If they had thought we were just a bunch of crazies, they would have simply ignored us, but their heated interest in us obviously meant that our words were making an impact. We were delivering the message of the Holy Ghost, making us superior and perhaps even omniscient. In a sea of heathens, we were the messengers.

  I was in a very supernatural and spiritual community, guided by the Holy Spirit. A member would feel the Holy Ghost upon him, and then we would know how to act. The Holy Ghost would come over us to picket one place rather than another, or send us to be a guest on a program such as The Tyra Banks Show. The Holy Ghost would come over us to bring someone into the church. That was how my family got in. God put it into the Phelpses’ hearts to invite us in. The Holy Ghost was the real source of the power.

  At first, people walked past without stopping, but as the morning wore on, a group began to form in front of our picket. People were hovering and trying to intimidate us by yelling angry taunts. It began to get heated and dangerous when about a hundred inauguration-goers started to close in on us. One man was screaming at each of us individually, challenging our picket signs. Usually, we would answer back, but with a crowd this big Shirley and Margie decided to silence him by leading us in song. “O Wicked Land of Sodomites,” they cued us, before we all enthusiastically joined in the parody of “America the Beautiful.” We relied on a repertoire of mockeries of patriotic songs and popular music, many of them written by my father. Twenty of us singing in unison was loud enough to drown out the angry mob yelling at us. The wall of sound it created was our favorite tactic when we needed to counterintimidate our detractors.

  Despite our audience’s sense that we were nothing but hatemongers, our real objective was to enlighten sinners before Judgment Day. We were telling them that they needed to obey God if they wanted to save their souls, even though we didn’t really believe their souls were salvageable. We were the chosen ones, and we were going to heaven to live in the presence of God. From our heavenly perch, we’d be able to mock the sinners burning in the Lake of Fire below us in their place of eternal punishment and torture.

  I had never seen so many people get as violent toward us as they did that day. Our signs were sturdily constructed and designed to endure weather and abuse at our hundreds of annual pickets, but as people in the crowd started grabbing them, stomping on them, and ripping them, they couldn’t hold up. Others were yelling and cursing at us. The Christian types were telling us God loved everybody—a retort we’d heard plenty of times before. The more politically minded people were telling us God was reasonable. The others, who seemed especially offended by our September 11 comments, told us we shouldn’t be in this country and should all be locked up.

  The physical attacks caught me by surprise. Some of the people were so worked up that they tried to push and punch us. Others got up into our faces to yell, and some even spat at us. There was a small crowd pushing toward our police barricade, so we moved back a couple of feet to keep people from stampeding and crushing us.

  Police nearby tried to defuse the venom being aimed at us. “They’re not worth it. Move along,” they’d say over and over to the protesters around us. The cops knew we had a constitutional right to be there, so even though they most likely didn’t agree with us, they were obligated to protect us. However, hearing ourselves called “not worth it” made me feel disrespected.

  As much as we loved the anger, in this case we were worried about the mob mentality. People were becoming so aggressive that we had to stand on overturned trash cans behind the barricades to protect ourselves. These perches also gave us more visibility, and kept our remaining signs from being seized. Still, the crowd kept pushing forward. It was always such a strange experience to see grown men and women, seemingly intelligent and well-mannered, shouting, cursing, spitting, giving us the finger, and throwing drinks at us as they walked by. As seasoned a picketer as I was, I still felt overwhelming fear and intimidation. For the most part, I didn’t even wait for the end of an insult before I reacted with a response I knew by heart.

  The threats rattled me, but I believed that God would protect us in all circumstances, as long as we obeyed His Word and held up our signs. I was taught that it was a good test to endure affliction for His sake and rise above it; it was my demonstration of God’s love. This deep belief kept me extremely calm despite the danger of the situation, and I could even invite threats and assaults with a Christian heart.

  My friend Rebekah once told me, her eyes welling up with tears as she spoke, that she hoped she would be able to die for God one day. I considered myself to be a martyr as I shouted and taunted my audience with the true message from God. The bravery of staring down evil in the name of God was inspirational, fanaticism was just, martyrdom was worthy, and God was on our side. The passion was truly empowering.

  Our allotted picket time ended before the actual start time of the inauguration. With such a hostile crowd around us, Shirley advised us to pack up our signs and cover up our T-shirts. She wanted us to be stealthy and quick, so that as soon as we started to move, no one would recognize us in the crowd. One or two people cheered our exit, yelling at us, “Yeah, go home!”

  The rental minivan was parked a good ten blocks away, but with most of the people already at the Mall, the crowd around it was thinning. We had never intended to stay for the swearing-in. Our mission had been to incite the guests in attendance, and everyone agreed we had been highly successful. When we reached the van, I climbed in next to Rebekah and Megan. We all pulled out our cell phones and started calling home to Kansas to report back on the protest. Dad answered the phone at my house. He was always so proud of me for representing the Drains at an important event, and no event had been more important than this one. I told him I had never been in the middle of so many angry people, but I had delivered God’s Word and been a respectable Christian martyr.

  “I love you,” he told me. “You are my little prophetess.”

  CHAPTER ONE

  Lo, children are a heritage of the Lord: and the fruit of the womb is his reward.

  —Psalm 127:3

  I was five years old when I was uprooted for the first time. I was just beginning school, but having skipped kindergarten, I was already in first grade. My parents had taught me how to read and write at home, and they knew I was capable, even though I was one of the youngest in the class. My mother had recently given birth to my baby sister, Taylor, so I was also getting used to sharing my parents with her when my father suddenly announced that we were moving from our home near Tampa, Florida, to Kansas. He had been accepted into the master’s program in philosophy at the University of Kansas in Lawrence. Not only that, he was going to be paid to teach a course in Western Civilization while he pursued his degree.

  I could tell Mom didn’t want to go to Kansas at all, but Dad was insistent that this was best for us. She told me she hated the idea of leaving her family, who lived near us, but she tended to be more passive and was willing to do things just to please my father. Dad was very dominant, and he didn’t like her family very much, which may have played a role in his decision to move us out of state and out from under their influence. Even at the time, I had the vague impression that my father wanted to control my mother by isolating her from the people who supported her.

  I was in the middle of the school year when we packed up and moved to Olathe, a small city about thirty miles east of Lawrence, where Mom found a dental hygienist job, and Dad went to class, studied at home, and worked as a teaching assistant at the university. Taylor went to a university-​​sponsored day care, where I joined her when I was done with my school day. Sometimes one of Dad�
��s students would pitch in and babysit. Our first week there, Dad took me on a bike ride around the campus and showed me the different buildings that meant something to him—the humanities building where he taught, the film school, the law school, and the building that housed his office. I thought it was so cool, seeing all the students walking and biking around the campus. I quickly became an avid KU fan, and Dad encouraged my interest by taking me to all of the home basketball games. When we were at the sports hall, we’d see the players, who were like celebrities to me, working out or doing physical therapy. Even Dad got kind of giddy when we saw them. He embraced our new life, and I think he wanted me to be as excited about Kansas as he was. He loved it when we expanded our horizons and our minds, especially on his terms.

  From my earliest memories, everything I did, from dance recitals to fishing trips, was with my parents. The two, Steve and Luci Drain, had been together for what seemed like forever. They met in junior high school in Florida when they were both thirteen, and dated through all of high school. My mother, a beautiful and slender blue-eyed blonde, loved my father, and as a good Catholic she married him so she wouldn’t have to feel guilty about having sex out of wedlock. They tied the knot on May 5, 1983, as soon as they both turned eighteen.

  My father rarely spoke about his early childhood with me, and when he did, he sounded quite bitter about his parents. Based on this and his strained relationships with his family, I guessed that it must have been a very unhappy childhood. He had been born in Tampa, Florida, in 1965, and named after his father, Steven Sr. His mother, Joy, was an aspiring actress who had appeared in several small roles in feature films and television commercials. She was dramatic, flamboyant, and a bit of a narcissist. From what I understood, she paid very little attention to my dad because she was obsessively focused on her acting career. She had already been married several times and had given birth to two daughters before she married my grandfather, and she remained married to him for only a short time. I had no idea how old my father was when his parents divorced or what their reasons were, but he told me he had been very angry when his parents split, and he blamed it on his mother. He said he would never forgive her. Whether or not this was true, it was clear to me that he deeply resented her.