call when they thought they were being discriminated against, says the NAACP’s [Rev. Ben] Scott.
The more details I learned of the first wave of my grandfather’s war on the city of Topeka, the more my heart swelled with pride for him and for our family. This was our legacy. In spite of all the vicious words spoken against us, there could be no question as to the twin evils of racial discrimination and white supremacy. There could be no question that my family had been on the noble side of that dispute. History had proved us right. That Topekans would hate us for it seemed like dispositive evidence of just how morally bankrupt our city truly was.
* * *
This glowing portrait of my family, courageously taking up arms in the battle against evil, was first called into question by my unwitting adversaries online. I was thirteen when the Internet first became part of my daily life, and one of my favorite things to do around this time was to argue Bible doctrines with strangers in the chat room on GodHatesFags—at least until I’d be unceremoniously kicked offline by our temperamental dial-up connection. The Topeka Capital Journal website was another frequent destination, as it maintained now-defunct message boards where I could pose as an objective observer and mount anonymous defenses of Westboro.
I learned early to ignore the casual insults they tossed around—“hateful,” “evil,” “monsters,” “stupid”—for the simple fact that I knew my family. Not only did these descriptors fail to capture the essence of the people I knew and loved, they were diametrically opposed to it. Nearly all of the adults in my orbit were college graduates, many with postgraduate degrees in law, business, and public administration. Whether they chose to pursue work in health care, corrections, or information technology, their careers flourished. They were natural comedians, clever and creative, and I’d often laugh myself to tears listening to outrageous stories they’d spin and parodies they’d write. My daily existence was a living testimony against the slanders hurled at my family, and made it easy to dismiss the accusers as liars who could not be trusted in any context.
Shortly after I emerged on the message boards at thirteen, references to my grandfather’s expulsion from the courts began to crop up. He hadn’t stopped practicing law because he’d retired, my opponents said; he’d been disbarred. I knew it to be true, but I’d always heard his disbarment dismissed as an unjustified punishment, because “these people hated us.” I paid the accusers no mind at first, but it made me uneasy: disbarment wasn’t a matter of unsubstantiated opinion, but a verifiable fact. They started to lay out the case that cost my grandfather his license in 1979: that he had flown into a rage when a court reporter failed to have a transcript ready for him in time; that he had sued her in a frivolous lawsuit demanding $22,000 in damages; and that he had abused her on the witness stand, badgering her for days on end. When they began quoting from the disbarment proceedings, I couldn’t ignore it any longer: “The seriousness of the present case … leads this court to the conclusion that [Fred Phelps] has little regard for the ethics of his profession.” I needed to find out the facts so that I could learn how to respond to these allegations—something more than “everyone just hates us.” I went to my mother in her capacity as the keeper of our collective history, an informal role she played in the church because of her punctilious mind, unparalleled memory, and uniquely close relationship with Gramps. She would have the answer for me.
Gramps had been disbarred, my mother told me, but it was in retaliation for his civil rights work—not for any actual transgression on his part. “Those people hated us for that work. The courts hated us, the businesses hated us, all because we won those big verdicts. We were holdin’ their feet to the fire in those discrimination cases, and they weren’t gonna get a free pass on any of their misdeeds. They could hardly be civil to us, they hated us so badly.” Yes, I pressed, but what about the court reporter? “Hon, do you think your Gramps is crazy? It wasn’t just because that woman was ‘late with a transcript.’ It was a strategic move on her part, delaying that transcript. It was an essential piece of evidence in a case, and her deliberate refusal to produce it on