had relationships and children outside of marriage. These affairs were calamitous and fearsome to behold, their devastating consequences seared into my young psyche like a white-hot brand. I listened to the hushed conversations of the adults one evening, learning they centered around an aunt of mine who’d been wonderful and close with me since I was a babe; she’d take my siblings and me on drives to the park, recounting stories that sounded fascinating even though they were several levels above anything we could really grasp while our ages numbered in the single digits. I didn’t understand all that had gone on with her, but words like “shameful,” “deliberate,” “willful,” “… with him?” and “I can’t think of anything worse” were thrown around, and I knew they meant sex.
For if we sin wilfully after that we have received the knowledge of the truth, there remaineth no more sacrifice for sins, But a certain fearful looking for of judgment and fiery indignation, which shall devour the adversaries. The ominous warning, terror, and despair of this passage were all over my aunt’s face when it came time for the church to sit in judgment of her for the intolerable sin and havoc she’d wrought among the congregation. We filed into the church sanctuary and took our places in our usual pews, the atmosphere filled with a dreadful heaviness. For what seemed an excruciatingly long period, the adults soberly and dispassionately discussed the fate of this woman, whether she should be stripped of church membership in order to keep the church pure and to drive out the evil inside her. Concerning him that hath so done this deed … deliver such an one unto Satan for the destruction of the flesh, that the spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus. To be excluded from the church was a terrifying proposition, the worst fate imaginable for a member of Westboro—a sure sign that you weren’t one of God’s elect but a reprobate destined for Hell. If an excluded person found a way to convince the church that he’d truly repented, he could be granted membership again, but there were no guarantees. As it became clear that the church was leaning toward excluding her from membership—unless and until she found a way to sufficiently demonstrate her repentance to them—anguished sobs racked her, contorting her face with shame and desperation as she begged for mercy and forgiveness. Her young son, also, not yet a teenager, pleaded through tears that they not do this terrible thing to his mother. But the church body, undeterred by their supplications, voted her out with no further discussion.
In the wake of this trauma, the behavior of my cousin became petrifying to me. Jael, my dear friend the butt-swishing first-grader, grew into a coquettish middle-schooler, and the shenanigans that resulted were cause for great concern. Abstain from fleshly lusts, which war against the soul. She seemed to be constantly in trouble because of boys she was “messing around with.” In our lingo, this could mean just about anything from simple flirting to sex. I always figured it couldn’t have been more than a kiss in Jael’s case, though that was still a sin egregious and inexcusable, a flagrant display of lust and the appearance of evil. We saw these “innocent” flirtations as the beginnings of real danger that would end with the shame of being an unwed mother and the desolation of being voted out of the church. When Jael got detention for a silly incident that involved hurling a spit wad at a boy, we were all deeply worried for her soul. Her classmates from the church—my older brother and a few other cousins—were charged with keeping an eye on her at school and reporting any suspicious behavior.
The following year, I joined the middle school crowd and that responsibility fell to me, as well. A few weeks before I was set to start at my new school, I walked across our backyard and into the church. My siblings and I would take turns having sleepovers there with Gran and Gramps, often several times a week during the summer months. Gramps’s room was the master bedroom upstairs, but Gran usually slept in a recliner in the downstairs room with the fireplace. We would always join Gran and watch marathons of I Love Lucy, Bewitched, or, if we were unlucky, Bonanza. On this night, Gran and I stayed up late watching Lucy, and when the time came, she turned