children to be idle at home, watching television and playing video games while their parents were off at work. Instead she would lead us in an hour or two of maintenance work in the morning, pickets before lunch, and then we’d regroup in the Phelps-Roper basement. The big room was mostly used for church gatherings, like the parties we’d throw to celebrate all the birthdays that fell during that month. In the summer, we would rearrange the tables for a group Bible study my mother would lead, with Margie and other Westboro members pinch-hitting on occasion.
But on this July morning, I needed my mother’s attention. She had just announced that our family would travel to Omaha, Nebraska, in the next day or two: we were going to protest the funeral of a soldier who had been killed in Iraq. At my grandfather’s behest, Westboro had begun this crusade just a few weeks before, and I had struggled to make sense of the logic behind it.
“What is it, hon?” my mother pulled in close to hear me over the chattering kids.
“I’ve been listening to Gramps and everyone, but I just don’t get it. I need to understand why we’re doing this. If someone comes up to me and asks me why we’re picketing soldiers’ funerals, I’m not going to have an answer!” At nineteen, I was disturbed by the fact that I couldn’t articulate the Scriptural support for our new position. I’d been picketing for fourteen years by that point. I had memorized countless Bible verses and was always working on more. One of my grandfather’s favorite refrains was that “The key to memorization is attention; and the key to attention is interest.” His implication was that the only cause of a failure to memorize was a failure to care—and I cared. I could answer the toughest questions slung at me whether they came from a gentle stranger or an angry reporter with a microphone and a huge camera stuck in my face. Be ready always to give an answer to every man that asketh you a reason of the hope that is in you with meekness and fear.
“Well, we better go talk about it. This is an important subject, and it’s gonna keep coming up. And if you’ve got this question, I’m sure these other kids do, too.”
A while later, my siblings and I were seated in our usual places around the living room, Bibles open and ready to listen. “Okay, children,” our mother began, “we are going to connect the dots here!” And that’s what she proceeded to do for the next half hour.
The dots, my mother explained, were (A) sin, and (B) punishment. These two were inextricably connected, and the former was the proximate cause of the latter. (This was the actual vocabulary my mother used when she spoke to us; as an admirer of beautiful words, I found it a sincere joy.) Moses had once given the children of Israel an ultimatum: Behold, I set before you this day a blessing and a curse; A blessing, if ye obey the commandments of the Lord your God … And a curse, if ye will not obey the commandments of the Lord your God.
So far, so good. This had been part of our reasoning for protesting all along: warning the world that their sin would bring the curses of God upon them.
“I think we understand that part,” I told my mother. “But why soldiers’ funerals specifically?”
“Well, can we all agree that a dead child is a curse from God, and not a blessing?” she asked. We all nodded. She’d begun to use the word “child” to describe the dying soldiers, because a significant portion of them were exceedingly young. Many were around my age and even younger.
“Okay, now flip over to Hosea chapter nine,” my mother instructed. I read along with her and began to memorize: They have deeply corrupted themselves … therefore [God] will remember their iniquity, he will visit their sins. Though they bring up their children, yet will [he] bereave them, that there shall not be a man left.
“America has deeply corrupted themselves! Adultery, fornication, fags, and so forth. They worship those sins, and now the Lord is visiting them for it—and one of the weapons in His arsenal is killing their soldiers in battle!”
They chose new gods; then was war in the gates.
For there fell down many slain, because the war was of God.
If thou wilt not hearken unto the voice of the Lord, he