and me. To tell us that we could never be forgiven. People from across the country and all over the world offered my sister and me friendship, places to sleep, and invitations to church by the hundreds. Dozens of newspapers and blogs around the world picked up the story, and even Gawker—notorious for its lack of scruples—had kind things to say.
… good for them for escaping what is essentially a cult and defying its wrath by going public about it. As far as the deprogramming process goes, Megan says, “I don’t know what I believe,” but she claims that she wants to determine how she can be “an influence for good.” And she has the rest of her life to atone.
Happy coming out day, girls.
Particularly moving were the messages from those with whom I had sparred on Twitter over the years—people I had come to know and like, people who had seen me regularly sling around condescension, condemnation, and words like “fag” and “whore.” Chad Darnell was one such person, a gay man living in Los Angeles. Our exchanges had been full of Bible verses, friendly sarcasm, and sincerity—but as with all outsiders, I had been suspicious of his kindness and concern. His response to my post about leaving Westboro was an open letter, which read in part:
Dear Megan:
Hey, girl, hey.
When I woke up to messages from family and friends that you had left the church, I literally burst into tears. I sat in bed for 20 minutes reading your letter with ugly tears (like bad Oprah crying) streaming down my face and I couldn’t stop.
I am so proud of you.
I am so happy for you.
I (we) never felt hate in our hearts toward YOU. Sure, we didn’t like you that much, but the action of you physically removing yourself from that situation is a strength that most humans will never know. That was your family and your main source of interaction with people. We get it. Trust me, we ALL get it.
Megan, it would be the great honor of my church, my people to have you as a guest. We just want you to come and breathe and feel what a community trying to make the world a better place should be. We feel a special bond to you after all your tweeting over the years.
And know that we all, everyone at our church, forgive you. And we wish you support and kindness and love.
Love,
Chad (and everyone at Hollywood United Methodist Church)
With each new kindness, I understood with ever greater clarity the depths of my ignorance about the world. Clearly, the people writing these words were not the demons I had been warned about. They didn’t hate Grace and me, and they didn’t expect us to hate our family. They understood that the same people who taught us to curse Westboro’s enemies were the ones who had kissed our cheeks and tucked us in at night. Though we had shown these people hostility and contempt in their most vulnerable moments, they extended generosity and compassion to us in ours. They empathized with us in our pain and wanted good things for our future. Dustin and Laura, Newbery and C.G., Cora the bartender and Ryan the dealer—I had seen them as exceptions, but it was starting to occur to me that there might be a lot more goodness in the world than I had believed. I’d been so sure that it was filled with hateful, selfish, vindictive people, and I had never found so much hope in being proved wrong.
For their part, Westboro members responded exactly as I expected—which didn’t stop my heart from racing or my insides from twisting in anguish. It was everything they had said about ex-members before, but I couldn’t grasp that they were saying such things about me. How could they? Knowing everything that had happened, how could my parents? The church issued a statement with one assumption at its heart: that the church was blameless in the departure of any member, because there could be no legitimate reason to leave Westboro. I read the words of an elder in several newspapers with growing bitterness, the same self-serving position we had always assumed when church members departed. “She just decided that she didn’t want to obey God,” Steve said. “They wanted to serve themselves.” Years would pass and the lies would continue unabated. Steve seemed to have no compunction about publicly denying every fact that revealed the church as flawed, hypocritical. He denied the takeover