money on the cases he won, he couldn’t have afforded to represent those who didn’t have money. Was justice only for the rich? Defend the poor and fatherless: do justice to the afflicted and needy. Deliver the poor and needy: rid them out of the hand of the wicked. This allegation, too, was a nonstarter for me.
But there was another that nearly proved ruinous.
Rumors of extreme child abuse had filtered in and out of my awareness for almost as many years as I had memories. Their source: the two uncles whom I had never met, Mark and Nate. I knew to find them odious and repugnant from the way my mother and her siblings spoke of them, even when ostensibly paying them a compliment. “Those two boys were very smart, probably smarter than many of us who’re still here—but they thought they were smarter than God.” My aunt’s voice was loaded with derision. “They’re just rebels, and that’s all there is to it.” The dismissal was final, the door to discussion firmly shut.
Except it wasn’t. The rumors resurfaced time and again, and had even been printed in a series of articles the Capital Journal had published about my grandfather in 1994: “Hate for the Love of God.” Reporters Steve Fry and Joe Taschler had done extensive research into my grandfather’s past, looking up childhood friends and neighbors, interviewing classmates, and chronicling the evolution of the man who had laid siege to the city of Topeka with more than three years of daily protesting against all who crossed him. They had also found his estranged sons, then living in California. Mark and Nate described brutal violence: beatings that lasted for hours as my grandfather yelled and cursed them, the heavy leather straps and a mattock handle he used, bloodcurdling screams, bruises on top of bruises that would split open their skin. The eerie joy he took at their pain, grinning at the wounds he had caused. There were so many examples, so many specifics.
Publicly, my mom and her siblings always vehemently denied the stories told by their estranged brothers: no, they had not been abused—only spanked. Disciplined. Their brothers were just angry because they hated God. Because they wanted to fornicate and commit adultery and live as they pleased. Those two boys were throwing a public hissy fit because they didn’t want to obey their father or the Lord, and they didn’t want anyone to interfere with their disobedience. Incredulity would creep into the voices of reporters as they somberly repeated my uncles’ allegations for comment: Was my mother really going to suggest that every one of her brothers’ stories was entirely exaggerated? Was she going to deny that there had been any abuse at all?
She was, indeed. Her siblings would deny it, as well, though they avoided addressing it whenever possible. They’d laugh out loud at the reporter’s queries and ask rhetorical questions intended to shame him for his lack of insight: Would nine of the thirteen Phelps children have remained at Westboro if they’d been subjected to savage abuse? How was it that the loyal children were all so well-educated and professionally accomplished—meanwhile, Nathan had dropped out of school and was driving a cab for a living? My grandfather also dismissed their charges, telling the Capital Journal, “Hardly a word of truth to that stuff. Those boys didn’t want to stay in this church. It was too hard. They took up with girls they liked, and the last thing them girls was gonna do was come into this church. These boys wanted to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season. I can’t blame them. I just feel sorry for them that they’re not bound for the promised land.”
At home, other details painted a more complicated picture. My mother and her siblings dodged the word “abuse,” and always maintained that Mark and Nathan were liars—but even at thirteen, I recognized the obfuscation. I knew my uncles could be “liars” (technically, weren’t we all liars?), and still be telling the truth on this question. My grandfather had nearly always been gentle and sweet to me, and I would forever strive to earn his approval. I found such joy in being his go-to tech assistant, my phone number written on a Post-it and taped to his computer screen. At his slightest erroneous mouse click, I’d take off running through the backyard, in the church’s west door, up the stairs, and into his office. Once, when I was demonstrating the correct keystrokes