I know I want to do good for people. And I want to treat people well.

Megan Phelps-Roper

I don't feel confident at all in my beliefs about God. That's definitely scary. But I don't believe anymore that God hates almost all of mankind. I don't think that, if you do everything else in your life right and you happen to be gay, you're automatically going to hell. I don't believe anymore that WBC has a monopoly on truth.

Megan Phelps-Roper

I definitely regret hurting people.

Megan Phelps-Roper

I liked 'The Sun Also Rises.'

Megan Phelps-Roper

We played video games and read books, and we went to public school. And yeah, we went to amusement parks. We did all of those things, but we also - that was all sort of organized around this nationwide picketing campaign.

Megan Phelps-Roper

How could we claim to love our neighbour while at the same time praying for God to destroy them?

Megan Phelps-Roper

Once I saw that we were not the ultimate arbiters of divine truth but flawed human beings, I couldn't pretend otherwise.

Megan Phelps-Roper

I wrote an apology for the harm I'd caused, but I also knew that an apology could never undo any of it.

Megan Phelps-Roper

Whenever people would speculate about the death of my grandfather it was always this very retributive thing. That they were going to picket his funeral after all the things that he had done to so many other people. That vindictiveness is obviously completely understandable. It would make perfect sense.

Megan Phelps-Roper

My family thought - and thinks - very seriously about words. About language and what it means and how it shapes us and how it should shape us and change us.

Megan Phelps-Roper

I always joke about how I get excited to go to the grocery store without permission.

Megan Phelps-Roper

I had grown up seeing people in school where I felt like I needed to keep them at arm's length, or on the picket line, where there was a tonne of hostility and no time to build rapport with people.

Megan Phelps-Roper

Because of the dynamics on the picket line all my life, I had these expectations of people. It was all the things that I had learned about outsiders from the time I was tiny, that they were evil, that if they were being nice to me they were trying to seduce me away from the truth.

Megan Phelps-Roper

Showing your own righteousness by pointing out someone's unrighteousness, the race to the bottom, the transgressions getting smaller and smaller and smaller but still treated with the same level of intolerance and condemnation, all of that stuff, even as I say it I am talking about Twitter but I am thinking about Westboro.

Megan Phelps-Roper

Even though I was 27 when I left, I still was largely treated like a child, because I wasn't married. My parents, my mother specifically, knew where I was and what I was doing at all times.

Megan Phelps-Roper

My friends on Twitter didn't abandon their beliefs or their principles - only their scorn. They channeled their infinitely justifiable offense and came to me with pointed questions tempered with kindness and humor. They approached me as a human being, and that was more transformative than two full decades of outrage, disdain, and violence.

Megan Phelps-Roper

Several people I had conversations with were hugely influential. People who found internal inconsistency in Westboro's ideology. It was the first thing that allowed me to recognize that Westboro was wrong.

Megan Phelps-Roper

Twitter was an alternative community for me. A different kind of community. I knew I was making people angry. But it didn't matter, they weren't my community. But the longer I was on Twitter and the more I came to know these people, to like and respect them, the more I could see the empathy and grief and sorrow they were expressing.

Megan Phelps-Roper

The things I believe in now are grace and the power of human connection to change hearts and minds and the importance of civil dialogue.

Megan Phelps-Roper

Megan Phelps-Roper Quotes

I know I want to do good for people. And I want to treat people well.

I definitely regret hurting people.

I liked 'The Sun Also Rises.'

We played video games and read books, and we went to public school. And yeah, we went to amusement parks. We did all of those things, but we also - that was all sort of organized around this nationwide picketing campaign.

How could we claim to love our neighbour while at the same time praying for God to destroy them?

Once I saw that we were not the ultimate arbiters of divine truth but flawed human beings, I couldn't pretend otherwise.

I wrote an apology for the harm I'd caused, but I also knew that an apology could never undo any of it.

My family thought - and thinks - very seriously about words. About language and what it means and how it shapes us and how it should shape us and change us.

I always joke about how I get excited to go to the grocery store without permission.

I had grown up seeing people in school where I felt like I needed to keep them at arm's length, or on the picket line, where there was a tonne of hostility and no time to build rapport with people.

Because of the dynamics on the picket line all my life, I had these expectations of people. It was all the things that I had learned about outsiders from the time I was tiny, that they were evil, that if they were being nice to me they were trying to seduce me away from the truth.

Even though I was 27 when I left, I still was largely treated like a child, because I wasn't married. My parents, my mother specifically, knew where I was and what I was doing at all times.

Several people I had conversations with were hugely influential. People who found internal inconsistency in Westboro's ideology. It was the first thing that allowed me to recognize that Westboro was wrong.

The things I believe in now are grace and the power of human connection to change hearts and minds and the importance of civil dialogue.