Twitter and to my complicated friendship with David—the source of my first conscious disagreement with one of Westboro’s doctrines. I had reflexively suppressed it, but it had come rushing back the day that I first considered leaving Westboro, painting in that cold basement.
David and I had met on Twitter in 2009, almost immediately after I had brought Westboro’s message to the platform. He ran a popular Jewish blog called “Jewlicious” and was active on social media, so the Jewish Telegraphic Agency had listed him second in their ranking of the “100 Most Influential Jewish Twitterers.” He had become one of my first targets. Our initial exchanges were plagued by unbridled antagonism—I told David that Jewish customs were “dead, rote rituals,” while he maintained that my grandfather was a closet case—but it didn’t take long for him to tone it down, and for me to follow his lead.
DAVID (Jewlicious): Ultimate frisbee in the park today against Christian team. Told an Israeli, “Dude, it’s okay to hit them, because they HAVE to turn the other cheek…”
MEGAN (meganphelps): You give them too much credit! They don’t follow any other teachings of Jesus; what makes you think they’d follow that one? =)
DAVID: Aw c’mon, Megan! These were nice Christians! Just because they don’t go picketing all over the place with signs that say “God Hates Fags…”
MEGAN: I’m a tad skeptical of their niceness; after all, what’s nice about encouraging people on their way to Hell?
Plus, I’m a little suspicious of anyone who plays ultimate frisbee. =D
DAVID: You know, for an evil something something, you sure do crack me up …
When David started asking me questions about our picket signs, it gave me a kind of permission to ask him questions about Jewish theology. In those days, the only thing I knew about Jews for sure was that they had killed Jesus and were thus cursed by God.… Jews: Who both killed the Lord Jesus, and their own prophets, and have persecuted us; and they please not God, and are contrary to all men. But I didn’t know what Jews actually believed. I wanted to understand so that I would be better prepared to argue against those beliefs, to show them from the Bible that Jewish ideas were wrong. I tried to read books to help me—including The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Understanding Judaism—but I found greater clarity in speaking with a flesh-and-blood person. Thanks to Twitter, the distance between Kansas and Israel was no obstacle.
At first, I had used passages from the New Testament to argue against David’s doctrinal positions. When he said he didn’t believe in the divinity of New Testament books, I started limiting my references to the Old Testament. “That’s not actually what those verses say,” he would tell me. “Your translation is off. You would know that if you spoke Hebrew!” In response, I bought all three levels of coursework from Rosetta Stone and signed up for webinars on biblical Hebrew so that I could learn the language. David started sending me tips, teaching me new words, and saying laila tov—good night—when he signed off. The dynamic between us was strange—never charged in the way that my friendship with Chad would be later, but still conflicting. David was an enemy of Christ. There was no confusion about the fact that we were at odds with each other, and I was certain that his understanding of the Bible was wrong—but as with C.G. and so many others on Twitter, I found myself liking him anyway.
My conversations with David had continued for more than a year, during which time I twice protested events at which he was speaking—first at the Jewlicious Festival in California, and then at a conference in Louisiana. David came out to talk with me both times, and though I continued to warn him that he was on the path to Hell, our banter had an ease to it that was unusual on the picket line. In New Orleans, we even exchanged gifts. He brought me a Middle Eastern dessert from the market near his home in Jerusalem, and I brought him some of my favorite peppermint chocolate. He flipped the bar over and started teaching me about the kosher symbols on the packaging, while I listened earnestly and held a GOD HATES JEWS sign.
The temporary end of my communication with David came shortly after the picket in New Orleans, following a debate about Westboro’s DEATH PENALTY FOR FAGS sign. He had pointed out that our sign contradicted Jesus’s