#974 - Megan Phelps-Roper

[0] Three, two, one.

[1] Yes.

[2] Are we live?

[3] Not yet.

[4] Pause.

[5] Hold.

[6] Some sort of a struggle.

[7] Yeah, we're live.

[8] How are you?

[9] You're Wheeler Walker Jr. fan, I see.

[10] Maybe I will be.

[11] You never heard of them before?

[12] I hadn't.

[13] I confess.

[14] That's okay.

[15] So first of all, thank you.

[16] doing this appreciate it yeah no problem what is it like i mean i guess this is the best way to get this started what is it like being a person that grew up in the westboro baptist church for a person on the outside for me i when i think of that i think of like this crazy hateful angry environment filled with like really mean people that say horrible things about gay people and all sorts of other folks but i meet you and you're super nice you seem so normal That is the conundrum.

[17] So, I mean, a lot of the things, the words that you just used to describe the church, that's definitely not how I experienced it growing up, for the most part.

[18] I mean, my family, outside of when they're not on the picket line, they're, I mean, incredibly kind and gentle and compassionate.

[19] And I think the biggest misconception about the church is that they're motivated by hatred.

[20] And in their eyes, it's the definition of loving what we thought we were doing.

[21] what we were doing was loving our neighbor.

[22] So the first time that phrase appears in the Bible, it's in the context of when you see your neighbor sinning, you have to rebuke him, not just like watch him wander off on this way to hell.

[23] So that was how we saw it.

[24] We thought we were warning people and giving them the only hopeful message that could save them from eternity and how.

[25] Was there ever any dissent amongst the people that were in the church about like how the message is being distributed?

[26] Like if you're holding up a sign that says God hates fags.

[27] and a gay guy was being buried at a funeral, and you guys were there protesting with those signs.

[28] Like, was ever anyone inside the organization that was like, hey, this is not the way to do it.

[29] These people are suffering and mourning.

[30] Not really.

[31] I mean, once my grandfather, he was the one who kind of developed that strategy, he thought.

[32] So, you know, the examples are for funerals.

[33] If somebody, if they're burying somebody, so a soldier, say, or a gay person, it's an example of the curses of God.

[34] So God says, if you obey me, I'll bless you, and if you disobey me, I'll curse you.

[35] So why soldiers?

[36] So several times in the scriptures, it's this connection between the sins of the nation and the punishments.

[37] So, for instance, in the book of judges, it says they chose new gods, then was war in their gates.

[38] and then in the books of the kings it says they there fell down many slain because the war was of God and then in the book of Josea it says they have deeply corrupted themselves therefore I will remember their iniquity and I will visit their sins though they bring up their children yet will I bereave them there shall not be a man left so it's these these threatenings these warnings from God that if you disobey me I'm going to curse you so we would go to these soldiers These soldiers' funerals to warn the living to say that if you don't want to be likewise punished, you have to repent.

[39] You have to change your ways and obey God.

[40] Now, people that are also hardcore Christians that also follow the word of God very closely, but still would see like what you guys were doing at these funerals holding up these signs protesting where a soldier who supposedly gave his life for our freedom, right?

[41] supposedly they're over there fighting so that we could be safe here and that you guys are out there with these signs.

[42] Like there had to be a lot of people that have like -minded views in Christianity, but still we're furious of you people.

[43] Yeah, absolutely.

[44] And from our perspective, we thought that they were substituting their righteousness for the righteousness of God.

[45] So they were upset that we were out there giving this message that was 100 % biblical from our point of you.

[46] And they, God calls that compassion when he sends his servants with his message.

[47] So we thought even though they call themselves Christians, they're ignoring these, you know, vast swaths of the Bible that, that support what we were saying and how we were saying it.

[48] So, I mean, there was definitely a lot of, a lot of pushback from people on all sides, but, and especially from other Christians, but we just thought they're not really Christian because they're not following this like we understand it.

[49] So you guys were pretty much, solidified in your opinion it was a consensus it was like everybody thought you were doing the right thing right so i mean so that when the soldiers funerals when those protesting it was in june of 2005 that we started protesting soldiers funerals how was it brought up so my grandfather had been so it's 2005 so the wars in iraq and afghanistan you know he'd been you see these things on the news and he he was i mean the funerals like what was going on at the funerals and he said these aren't funerals these are patriotic pep rallies and they're a sex saying all these things about God bless America.

[50] Well, God isn't blessing America.

[51] God is cursing America.

[52] So we have to go and give a different message.

[53] So that's how it came up initially.

[54] So I went to my first soldier's funeral protest the following month in July of 2005.

[55] And before I went, so every time we would go to these things, I was protesting from the time I was five years old.

[56] So when you go out to these protests, a lot of times there would be media there.

[57] people asking questions, and I wasn't sure how I would answer, if somebody asked me, why are you at this funeral?

[58] I didn't, I wasn't sure how I would answer it.

[59] So like I felt very, when I found out I was going, I thought, I need to, I need to understand this.

[60] So I went to my mother and she brings forth those verses that I just quoted to you and several others.

[61] We sat down as a family, as we did every night, you know, to read the Bible and to talk about world events and, you know, the church's interpretation of these.

[62] events in light of their understanding of the scriptures.

[63] So, you know, she goes through and explains this, you know, very carefully.

[64] And because her answers came from the Bible, I was, that was my foundation was that the Bible is the infallible word of God and that it's true no matter what any human thinks and that we have a duty to obey it 100 % no matter, no matter what I think or feel otherwise.

[65] I have to bring my thoughts and opinions in line with this.

[66] So even though I had a lot of trepidation at the beginning about going to those funerals, I very quickly acclimated to it, you know, as you do when, in an environment like that where everything depends on you falling into line.

[67] Now, what was it like when you first did it?

[68] Like, what was the reaction to other people, you know, other people's reaction to you?

[69] So that very first one, it was in Omaha, Nebraska, and it was incredibly tense.

[70] So there was a bunch of cops.

[71] We always, every time we would go to protest somewhere, we would contact the police to make sure that there would be a police presence.

[72] Why?

[73] Because people were tempted to, and did, you know, would come after us physically, try to assault us.

[74] And, again, this happened with some regularity.

[75] So from the very earliest days of the protesting, we, you know, my mom and her generation had made this decision to who, I should say, many of them are lawyers.

[76] So they would, you know, write letters from, you know, as attorneys saying, we're going to be coming we're going to be protesting in your city people this is what we do you know we hold signs on public sidewalks we are not violent we so explaining what a pro what our protests looked like and then and then saying if you want to avoid you know this kind of like violence that often happens be there so this first one how old were you in 2005 I was 19 so you were a kid you know but a grown kid and you know you're with your parents and this is the first time you're protesting a veteran what was that experience like so i'm standing uh across this we're standing across the street from the church like i said it's it was very solemn very quiet there were which is not was not normal really for protest a lot of times we would be out there you know singing and chanting and and making it was a big public display um but this was uh like i said incredibly tense nobody was really talking Nobody was really moving.

[77] And, you know, the family was, you know, pulled up in a, and I think it was in a limousine across the street.

[78] And the family got out and looked around and saw us.

[79] Did they know you guys were going to be there beforehand?

[80] Because we always would publicize that.

[81] We would send out news releases.

[82] So they were aware that we were going to be there.

[83] And there were a bunch of, I think there were Marines, like in dress blues, standing there.

[84] And they looked in crazy.

[85] incredibly angry and upset, but like I said, it was, it was like, it felt like at any moment if something happened, like, that the whole situation could explode.

[86] But again, like, so the cops, having the cops standing there.

[87] And so it was, it was, it was, it was pretty, it was, it was really tense.

[88] What kind of things are they saying to you guys?

[89] They weren't saying anything.

[90] Like, none of this, which is like, what I was trying to say, it's really unusual, um, for protests like that.

[91] We, a lot of times we would be exchanging, you know, we would, we would, of course, would be yelling about Bible verses and the hatred of God and, you know, they would be talking about love and tolerance and how we're wrong and not Christian.

[92] But at this one, it was, it was very quiet.

[93] It wasn't always like this.

[94] So pretty quickly, you know, once again, once we became acclimated to do those protests.

[95] And also, have you heard of the Patriot Guard writers?

[96] It was a group of motorcyclists who decided to, and they formed like in across the country.

[97] So in every state, there was a group of these motorcyclists who, when they found out we were going to be protesting somewhere, they would go and, you know, rev their engines so that our words and songs and such wouldn't be heard by the family.

[98] And they would, you know, hold American flags and try to block, you know, it's always, it's putting a buffer between us and the family.

[99] And so when that started to happen, it became almost like a game sometimes.

[100] And, you know, in hindsight, I, this makes me cringe.

[101] And, and, but, But it became like this game of trying to, like, show that we were going to get our message across no matter what any human being wanted, because we knew we were so sure that this was what God wanted.

[102] Wow.

[103] What made you leave?

[104] A lot of things.

[105] It started, my very first sort of conscious doubts came from conversations on Twitter.

[106] Wow.

[107] Yeah.

[108] Something good got done through Twitter?

[109] Yeah, lots of good things.

[110] I also met my husband there.

[111] Oh, there you go.

[112] While I was still at the church.

[113] Oh.

[114] It's kind of nuts.

[115] Is he an atheist?

[116] I don't know that he would use that word to describe himself.

[117] Actually, I was just talking to Sam about this.

[118] And I was like, when people, the problem with the word is when people, when you say atheist, people think jerk.

[119] And like, so many people do.

[120] So many people think that, like, oh, you're absolutely certain that there is no God.

[121] And so it's a word that I hesitate to use to describe myself too.

[122] But I'm not a believer.

[123] I don't even like to say I'm not a believer.

[124] Because I love people.

[125] I believe in people and that there is so much hope for people and that we can, I don't know.

[126] Anyway.

[127] So conversations that you had on Twitter did what do you?

[128] Like what doors did they open in your mind?

[129] Right.

[130] So I got on Twitter and it was like an extension of the picket line, right?

[131] So we go out there with these picket signs and, you know, people would come up to us and ask us questions.

[132] And so it was a constant conversation.

[133] And so I got on Twitter to take that, you know, to the Internet, to reach more people.

[134] And so one of the first things I did when I got on Twitter was to attack this Jewish man named David Abbottball, who ran a blog called Jewlicious.

[135] He was listed as the second most influential Jew on Twitter on this.

[136] Who's number one?

[137] I actually can't remember.

[138] Not memorable.

[139] Not part of my story, I guess.

[140] You can check it.

[141] It's the JTA's list if you want to, June.

[142] Okay.

[143] But anyway, so he was listed as number two.

[144] And so he responded initially with, you know, sarcasm and, and hostility.

[145] But pretty quickly, he sort of changed tactics and started instead of, like, mocking me, although he still did do that some too.

[146] He was asking questions about our picket signs.

[147] And I started asking him questions about Jewish theology because I wanted to better know how to counter it, you know, from the scriptures.

[148] Because I was sure that they were wrong.

[149] Jews killed Jesus and they reject him as the Messiah and so all of these things so right so we're having this back and forth and this goes on for about a year and during that year I actually met him twice I protested him twice so you went to his functions or was he giving speeches like where was he?

[150] So in Long Beach actually at the Jewish festival they had this Jewish cultural festival.

[151] What a great name yeah that's great he's great so he right so he was going to be there and you know i went and i was protesting him and he came out to the picket line and it was it was one of those like very rowdy pickets there was a bunch of counter protesters like and they were it was i don't know guys dresses like the easter bunny and jesus and you know it actually got pretty violent so i was actually it got violent well yeah and the cops this where i told you we called the cops like the cops were just standing there watching people, like, actively assaulting us, like, hitting us.

[152] And so we're, like, walking around trying to, you know, to not be hit because we're not going to hit back.

[153] We weren't.

[154] Like, like I said, the church is very against violence.

[155] Like, they're not going to be violent to people or defend themselves just to, so I was actually really glad when David came out because he became like a buffer between me and the rest of the counter protesters because everybody could tell that he was, you know, he's wearing his Jewish shirt and whatever.

[156] Anyway, so, so the conversation.

[157] continued there and then also at another protest six or seven months later.

[158] And then it's not long after that second protest, we're talking again, and he was asking about one of our signs that said death penalty for fags.

[159] And, you know, of course, I'm reiterating why the church believes that.

[160] Because in the book of Leviticus, God calls for the death penalty for gays.

[161] And then in Romans 1, in the New Testament, it's reiterated to they commit such things are worthy of death.

[162] So, and so I'm telling David these things.

[163] And he says, it's like, yeah, but didn't Jesus say, let he who is without sin cast the first stone?

[164] And I said, well, we always said to that, which was, we're not casting stones.

[165] We're preaching words.

[166] And he said, yeah, but you're advocating that the government cast stones.

[167] And I remember, you know, this is all through Twitter.

[168] So I see this message and I kind of gasped.

[169] And I was like, I had never connected that Jesus there, of course he was talking about the death penalty, specifically about the death penalty.

[170] And we were advocating it.

[171] And so I wasn't sure how to respond, but David kept going.

[172] He said, and what about this member of your church who had a child out of wedlock?

[173] And I said, what about it?

[174] Like, this is another point.

[175] You know, people, it was common knowledge.

[176] People knew about this and what though this in our face.

[177] And we would say, the standard of God isn't sinlessness.

[178] it's repentance so she doesn't deserve that punishment because she repented she stopped you know she wasn't having premarital sex anymore and she knows that it's wrong and she changed her mind and she changed her conduct which is what repentance is and he said yeah but she would have been killed if you had instituted the death penalty for that sin and it was the first time again that I connected that if you kill somebody as soon as they sin they you lose the opportunity to repent and be forgiven.

[179] And so again, so I'm just sort of staring at my phone and, you know, in Topeka, Kansas, he's in Jerusalem.

[180] And I really quickly ended the conversation.

[181] I don't even remember quite how.

[182] But it was just sort of this, like I hadn't, I didn't know how to handle this because, like I said, the church is full of lawyers.

[183] They're very intelligent and their arguments and their theology for the most part is very well constructed and super consistent.

[184] And so for there to be this, you know this this hypocrisy this contradiction i didn't like my brain was it felt like i was exploding so i went to a couple people in the church including my mother um and the response was feel free to stop me at any time by the way i feel about no no no so she she's reiterated the same verses that i had told david that that supported our position but she didn't address the contradiction and when i seemed unsatisfied with it uh she said i was getting wrapped around an axle and just sort of push it aside and the response was so just to shut me down and then to move on to the next thing which is a very human thing right when somebody put something in your face that is this contradiction that you're not ready to deal with or that you can't you you know what I mean you you kind of sort of push it aside and try not to so the way that I dealt with it was to stop holding the sign because I knew that if somebody asked me about it I couldn't defend it because I didn't believe it.

[185] But there was nothing else I could do at that point.

[186] But the importance of that conversation, this is obviously just one small contradiction, one small inconsistency in a vast, you know, we still, I still believed that everybody outside the church was basically completely wrong and evil and or delusional and that the church was basically right, except this one point.

[187] Did anybody ever feel that it was bad to use slurs?

[188] like to use some sort of insulting term for gay people instead of saying god hates gay people so at the very beginning they did use the word gays why did they change it well so my grandfather would say that gay is a misnomer these people aren't happy they're committing suicide and they're they're evil and abominable and they have no peace god has taken their their peace they're not happy so gay is a misnomer and so the word the word fag they say like amos in the book of amos there's a uh it's a it's translated firebrand there.

[189] So my grandfather would say, the word fag is an elegant metaphor.

[190] And it's gays, you know, fags are a bundle of sticks, right, used for kindling.

[191] So gays are, they burn in their lust one toward another.

[192] And they fuel the fires of hell and the fires of God's wrath.

[193] So it's an elegant metaphor, Grandpa, Gramps would say.

[194] Do you know what the original metaphor was really supposed to be?

[195] You mean from the Bible?

[196] No, the word fag.

[197] Oh, no, actually.

[198] Fagot means a bundle of wood, and they would use that expression to describe a woman because a bundle of wood is burdensome.

[199] Like carrying around a bundle of wood is very burdensome.

[200] So when they would call a woman a faggot, they were saying that she was burdensome.

[201] So when they would call a man a faggot, they would say that he is burdensome like a woman, like a bundle of wood.

[202] Like a non -manly man. They can't get work done, you know, along those lines.

[203] Right.

[204] And then it became used by people erroneously saying that it was about burning them and that they would burn gay people because they would burn faggots of wood.

[205] That's not really the case.

[206] It just sounds cool.

[207] Yeah, I actually had never heard that before.

[208] Yeah, if you look, see if you can find that, Jamie.

[209] Google that.

[210] the original term faggot meant a bundle of wood and burdensome like a bundle of wood because I mean think about like carrying a bundle of wood especially if you didn't have a truck it's a huge pain in the ass that's kind of what the source of it was wow yeah no I had no yeah people use it wrong and the real problem is the people that use it wrong are like gay activists and they try to say how horrible that word is because it was used to represent how gay people were burnt but there's never been like a time in history where like there's a whole series of gay people that were like burnt you know it's just like they drowned witches and things were done like real specifically but it's never been like a thing what do we got here the word faggot has been used in english since the late 16th century is an abusive term for women particularly old women referenced uh to homosexual sexuality may derive from this uh why does it have to be so weird the way you got it oh okay yeah i can read like that Blah, blah, blah, blah.

[211] So there it is.

[212] An alternative possibility is that the word connected with the practice of fagging in British private schools in which younger boys performed potentially sexual duties for older boys, although the word faggot was never used in this context.

[213] But the big one means the bundle of wood.

[214] The bundle of sticks.

[215] What's that, Jamie?

[216] What do you got?

[217] Something awkward to be carried is right now.

[218] Exactly.

[219] Burdensome.

[220] So that's where it comes from.

[221] It really didn't have anything to do with burning people.

[222] But, like, they'll repeat it, like, to make a big point, like a big dramatic point.

[223] But it's, you know, it's melodramatic.

[224] You would think I would know this, given our respective histories, but I literally had never heard this in my life.

[225] Yeah, it's an important distinction for why people use that term.

[226] Because it's really just that they're annoying.

[227] I mean, it's really.

[228] just, you know, they just think of some non -manly man who can't get things done, and he's probably crying all the time, and he's burdensome.

[229] My experience of gay people since we left is obviously much more maybe reflective of reality has not been that at all.

[230] What has it been like?

[231] Impossibly wonderful.

[232] Don't overcompensate because you're getting out of this bad environment.

[233] I'll take you down to Santa Monica Boulevard to some of the gayest spots on earth.

[234] You'll see dudes would cut off shorts and you'll change your tune.

[235] What are they doing?

[236] Well, I mean, I'm not trying to, like, to paint everybody with one brush now either.

[237] They've been amazing.

[238] As soon as they start being attracted to men, something happens.

[239] No. They become different than every other person.

[240] That's not what I mean.

[241] They're just people, right?

[242] Yes, just other people.

[243] So, I mean, right after we left, like, at first I thought we have to hide from the past forever.

[244] My sister and I should say left together.

[245] How old are you guys?

[246] So I was 26.

[247] I was almost 27.

[248] Did you have a long conversation before you did it?

[249] Many.

[250] Many.

[251] It was about four months before.

[252] between when I first talked to her about leaving.

[253] So what was the first initial conversation and how did you gather up the courage to even sort of breach the subject?

[254] It was really terrifying and awful because, I mean, I remember from the time I was very young, there's this passage in Deuteronomy that my mom would quote, and it's about, you know, if your, you know, friend, somebody close to you, your relative, somebody comes up to you and says, let us go and serve other gods.

[255] Like somebody secretly says to you, those things.

[256] you have to stone them and you the one that they came to you're supposed to be the first one to and my family's not stoning people um what would they do though if it said it in the bible and someone said hey we got to we have to serve this golden cow so they we also have in the new testament it talks about rendering and to caesar the things that are caesars and to gods the things that are got so we also have to obey the law of man we have to obey the law of so and we're so we're not supposed to be just so law of man supersedes the law of god we're supposed to be obedient to the laws of men but also i mean there this is kind of a complicated um a little bit theology where it sort of undid a lot of the mosaic code that we didn't actually have to follow those things but honestly i don't know i think it's the whole i think it's like the death penalty for fags thing so like if they still believe that that punishment is is applicable then then we should be trying to convince the government lobbying the government to like with those signs right so um so that it was you know my sister if i went to her and said these things to her she could easily have turned around and and told my parents not as a it's a culture of tattle tales not out of bad intention but because they believe that they're trying to help you right they don't want you to go down a bad path so so you know when i It was the, I first thought of leaving on, it was July 4th, and I was with my sister at the time.

[257] And when it first occurred to me that I might, that I might have to leave the church, or that the church might be wrong, I thought I had to leave, like, that second, because if it even occurred to me, that meant I didn't belong there and that God was going to punish me, and that I, I just felt, like, immediately so much guilt and, like, I was a betrayer.

[258] But was all your social life connected still to the church?

[259] Yeah.

[260] And was this where, had you already known your husband by that?

[261] then?

[262] I had, yeah.

[263] So he corrupted you.

[264] He was definitely part of it.

[265] So, but like, it wasn't like that.

[266] It's like the beginning, like so, so he was just another person on Twitter at first.

[267] And it was like friendly conversation and this went over the, you know, for the course of several months.

[268] I don't know, eight or eight months or seven or eight months.

[269] And then, and it was never and there was never anything, you know, about feelings or, you know, relationships or all that stuff is totally forbidden no nothing like that like not even like not even anything like nothing like it's just that I my mind didn't work that way and that there is there can be no relationship like that with outsiders but outsiders outiders so you know and you I actually thought I was never going to get married because most of the people in the church about 80 % or so the people in the church there's only 80 people or so anyway or my immediate and extended family so I no there's no way that i'm gonna i'm gonna i'm gonna get i'm gonna get married so you just accepted that it was it wasn't it wasn't like an like an easy thing at first but it was just it was just the facts on the ground you know like so the facts on the ground where you had to date someone inside the church there was only 80 people in the church they're all your family you can't date your family fuck yeah wow i mean i i should say there were a couple of people my age and they can't they had just joined the church like you know that but i had no like i had no interest in any of them and no slim pickings and not wow and uh but yeah it's it's it was kind of strange but i so i actually had a dream about meeting and i should say also my husband at the time i didn't know he was totally anonymous on twitter like it's just his words i didn't know what he looked like i didn't know you know his name or where he lived or anything about him uh except accept these words um and he was uh he was just curious and kind and and that sort of and he loved people and so he would sort of always be pushing pushing the conversation back to it's like i'm giving it which like i've told you all those verses about protesting funerals and why we have to go and do this and the importance of it and why we have to thank god for these tragedies because god is sovereign and he's in control so i'm i'm talking about the um scripturally like the justifying all these things and he kept pushing it back to because he's not super well -versed in the Bible so he didn't know how to he's like I see that the Bible says these things but what about the family like I just cannot imagine going and doing these things to people and so this is all happening like on as I'm also still having conversations on Twitter with so many other people so it's like Twitter became this like empathy machine for me like so it's not just like on a picket line where people are butting heads and, you know, arguing and debating and yelling and it's, I'm, yes, having these, it can be kind of aggressive conversations, but I'm also seeing, like, photos of their cats and them, you know, exchanging, you know, joking with their friends.

[270] And so I'm seeing a side of people and sort of being immersed in this community in a way that I had never been before.

[271] And so it was really, it's like, I'm trying to say, like, when you say, why did you leave?

[272] Like, there's, it took, it was so much.

[273] It was so much sort of happening, you know, around this time.

[274] So when, by the time this like pile up of things, you know, and I'm processing it, as I'm going through this, I'm also talking to my sister and she was the only, and other people in the church, but she was the only person.

[275] If I ever had a doubt or a, or a, like, if I thought we're doing something wrong here, she was the only person who would say, yeah, you're right.

[276] That doesn't make sense.

[277] That, I should say my sister is creative and artistic and had a little bit of reputation for being kind of rebellious, not as submissive as me and our other sister.

[278] So it was this dynamic of, you know, between the two of us where she was the only person I could fully articulate my thoughts and feelings to.

[279] And so when I first thought of leaving and I turned around and I thought, I literally, we were painting at a friend's house, painting the walls, and I turned around to set my paint brush down.

[280] I thought I had to go and leave that second, and I turned around and saw my sister, and I thought I can't leave without talking to her.

[281] So the next day, she came home from work over the lunch hour, and we would always, like, go up to my room, and we were talking about all these doubts we were having.

[282] and I was crying and I put my head in her lap and and I couldn't even start like articulating the idea of leaving was too much like it's terrifying and it's just seemed like impossible and I said um what if we weren't here and she said what do you mean and I said what if we were somewhere else and so that starts this conversation where you know I cannot let go of all the things that I thought that the church was doing wrong, where our theology was wrong, where we were applying it wrong, I mean, in a way that was destructive and unscriptural.

[283] And she kept pushing the conversation back to, we're never going to see our family again.

[284] We're going to lose everyone and everything that's ever been important to us.

[285] There is no hope outside this church.

[286] All the things that we had learned about outsiders that, you know, that they were evil and they could never truly love each other or care about care about one another they're really just enabling one another on the path to hell so and so this this back and forth you know goes on for about four months before we finally actually left and uh it was as as bad or worse as and i could have imagined but to get back to the well let's get to that bad or worse you could have ever imagined so so you left how did you leave uh We were talking to my parents, and it was another issue had come up, and I couldn't, it was a battle that we weren't going to fight again.

[287] I should say, in those four months, I kept trying to articulate these doubts in a way that the church would accept, like trying to convince them, not being as open, but as time went on, I became more and more open about these questions and doubts.

[288] And I just, I couldn't, we couldn't fight it anymore.

[289] I just looked at Grace and I said, we have to go.

[290] And I should say also, we had already been packing.

[291] Like we had started packing our things about a little over a month before that.

[292] And we had started like taking boxes to our friend's house.

[293] And with the understanding, he's actually our, he was our high school English teacher that we had kept up with on Twitter.

[294] And he, you know, we basically told him, you know, if something changes, if the church changes.

[295] these things get better, then we'll take all our stuff back and just pretend like none of this ever happened.

[296] And he was just, you know, understanding and compassionate and really supportive.

[297] But so we had done all this stuff already, but we actually had to go and pack the rest of our things.

[298] So we walked out of our parents' bedroom and went and started packing.

[299] And, you know, people started coming.

[300] My brother and some of the elders and my aunt, my cousin, you know, people, we were very close like our whole my whole life revolved around the church and so to look these people in the face and say that you know this the you know the us them mentality the bonds that are created in environments like that are incredibly strong at least they were in our church and again most of these people are also my family so it was awful and I'm trying crying and packing and trying to explain to them why we're leaving and i can hardly talk you know be just just i was so overwhelmed but um i actually had to go back the next day with the u -hall to get the rest of our stuff or our parents helped us pack it's not it's not one of those uh like there are some or groups like that where they don't want you to leave they'll they'll try to stop you from leaving like i heard um the scientology the miscavage yeah the i can't remember us for ron ron yeah he was talking about like physical obstacles to you leaving physically like they're not gonna you can't get out of the gate like nothing like that they always would say this is a volunteer army and if you don't want to be here then you don't belong here so it's just the it's the threat of losing everything and everyone alienation yeah being ostracized by and just sort of expelled into this world that you believe and have always believed is evil and without hope and doomed so how did you do it how did like you're you got all your stuff packed people are coming in they're saying yeah i mean like they're they're they're trying to convince us but once they understand that we're not being convinced that that you know they walked away so i mean that night our dad dropped us off at a hotel and then jesus christ yeah like it's it's it's so immediate that you become this you become other you become an outsider like in the next morning when we went back i rang the doorbell i rang the To your own house.

[301] And I had lived in that house from the day I was born.

[302] Whoa.

[303] So you felt like you had to ring the doorbell?

[304] This is not my world anymore.

[305] Grace was like, why did you ring the doorbell?

[306] And it was like, there's no other, there is nothing else.

[307] Like, this is not our home.

[308] This is not, so we go and, you know, we're packing all of our things.

[309] It was just, it was awful.

[310] Just, I had been, in those four months, I had been so terrified of, because I, knowing what was coming.

[311] Like, just imagine you're going to lose everyone in your life.

[312] They're just, you're just going to, like, you're not going to, like, how your parents met and fell in love or, like, your grandparents and family recipes and photos and memories and what did the house list?

[313] I'm, like, taking photos and voice recordings and just all the time, like, in every, it was just, it's just, it's overwhelming.

[314] It's just, um.

[315] But did, was there also, like, a feeling of relief?

[316] Was there also a feeling of, like, we actually did it?

[317] I'm actually doing it.

[318] It's actually happening.

[319] I'm going to get away from this.

[320] I know this isn't real.

[321] I know this isn't right.

[322] Did you understand that it was a cult?

[323] So I was really against, and I still don't attend not to use that word.

[324] I mean, it's a fine shorthand, I guess, for some.

[325] There are aspects of the church that are not cultish for sure.

[326] Like what I just said saying.

[327] Like, there's no, they're not trying to get your money.

[328] They're not trying to, like, not some charismatic leader trying to have sex with everybody's wives and children or whatever.

[329] It's nothing like that.

[330] But there are definitely aspects that are cultish.

[331] the fact that you can't there is no such thing as agreeing to disagree like that's and the the penalty for disagreeing uh is so high like so there are things like that that that are definitely quote like but um but i was definitely i was not in that in that moment i was not okay with using that that term for sure right it was it was it took a lot of time and well it's a derogatory term but what it represents is an ideology that a group subscribes to it doesn't necessarily have to have all the negative ramifications of an ideology for it to fit into the category of a cult right yeah and i and i totally understand that now which is why like you know if somebody says it i i sometimes will will say there are things that aren't cult like and explain what i think is not but i'm also i don't do it every single time like i understand that it's that it's so you get all your stuff after you ring the doorbell you're gone and then how do you like enter into the world.

[332] Did you have a job back then or did you have a job with the church?

[333] It was the job with the church looking for the law firm.

[334] So it's home, job, family, life, just everything all at once.

[335] And then also, of course, you're going into a world that I had just spent my entire life, you know, protesting and just it's so crazy when I look back now at videos, which I couldn't do for a long time, but there's tons of videos and interviews and documentaries that, you know, where I'm, I'm answering all these questions and I, I, it's, it's crazy to me. Were you there when Louis Theroux came out to do the documentary?

[336] Yeah.

[337] Did you talk to him while he was there?

[338] Yeah.

[339] Both times.

[340] He was, he was, the first time it was, uh, he was really super nice.

[341] Um, you know, he came and we were like making egg rolls together and like going bowling and jumping on the trampoline and, and yeah, he would come to pickets and it.

[342] And it was really funny because like, so he came for three weeks, like, but three weeks, like one month he came for a week and the next month he came for another week and then came again.

[343] So the first time, like I didn't know anything about him or who he was really.

[344] I mean, I knew he was from the BBC obviously and that, but I hadn't seen any of his stuff.

[345] And then before he came the next time, I was supposed to be studying for a test or something.

[346] I was in college and I was procrastinating.

[347] So I look on YouTube and find this documentary that he did.

[348] Do you know the one, the white supremacy, the Nazis, Louis and the Nazis?

[349] So I watched that entire documentary and I was like ah like I know what his uh angle is like it's the oh these poor kids they were raised in this and they don't know any better and at the time I was kind of indignant because I was like I'm a thinking person you know like I at all my life growing up like it was never just like I explained about the soldier's funerals like I never just just went along with something like I wanted to understand why I needed to understand that it was scriptural and from the Bible and so if you could show me that then but like I I'm a curious person, so, but I just had never obviously questioned, like, the most foundational premises of our belief system, which is the Bible is the infallible word of God, and Westboro Baptist Church are the only ones who have, who can understand it correctly.

[350] I just, I just never, I never really got past that, because if it was in the Bible and it made sense to me, then it was fine.

[351] So anyway, so I was kind of indignant when I saw what Louis was trying to do, like, we're just poor children.

[352] and so and I went and told my family and so then everybody, you know, everybody knew about it and this, you know, what he was doing.

[353] And I remember telling him something about how he was, it was insidious what he was doing because he was not being honest.

[354] He was being really friendly, but not being honest about what he really thought about us.

[355] Anyway.

[356] And what did he say to that?

[357] Well, he said, actually, he actually addressed it specifically in the second documentary.

[358] He said, you've been saying this, but but I've never pretended to agree with you I've never I've been pretty pretty honest about it and I'm an atheist I don't believe that what you're doing is right I don't believe the Bible is the word of God that and so I of course and he's right he was exactly right but I definitely couldn't see it at the time um well you leave you get out and then what do you do do you get a job So I thought immediately So my degree is in finance So I went through business school All these people saying You know start saving for retirement Immediately did it out So you know We believe that the doom of the world Was eminent So I never really did that So end of days type stuff Yeah yeah So you were thinking that Because of all the sin One day There's going to be a reckoning And all the Christians are going to vanish Yeah Destruction is imminent Was one of our signs Did you guys ever watch that movie was those terrible, two terrible movies with Kurt Cameron about the apocalypse.

[359] God damn, left behind?

[360] No. Oh, they're so good.

[361] You should watch them.

[362] You said they were terrible.

[363] I won't watch them.

[364] They are terrible, but they're so good.

[365] They're so bad that they become like, oh, my God, what the fuck is this?

[366] Did you ever meet Kurt Cameron?

[367] No. I want to meet that, dude.

[368] No, it's really funny.

[369] You listen to Sam's, Sam Harris's podcast.

[370] Yes.

[371] So his episode with Lawrence Wright, he said something like, Lawrence Wright said something like...

[372] Author of Going Clear, the book on Scientology.

[373] Yes, yes.

[374] He said, he talks about Freud, the narcissism of small differences.

[375] And I was like, oh, my God, yes.

[376] Like, we other Christians, like, were some of our biggest targets.

[377] And it would be, like, the smallest things.

[378] Like, for instance, there was, like, one church that we had some kind of, like, very little affiliation with in the early days of the picketing.

[379] and then their women started to cut their hair.

[380] Those bitches.

[381] Women are not allowed to cut their hair.

[382] You're not allowed to cut your hair at all?

[383] We weren't allowed to cut her hair at all.

[384] Yeah, no. Oh, my God.

[385] That's hilarious.

[386] Because of a Bible verse.

[387] What does the Bible verse say?

[388] It's 1st Corinthians 11, 14, I think, actually.

[389] It says, a woman's hair is her glory.

[390] It says, don't you know?

[391] Doesn't nature itself teach you that it's the shame for a man to have long hair?

[392] But a woman's hair is her glory, and it's given to her for a covering.

[393] so and it says a long hair right so my grandfather interpreted that to mean uncut which again like I I did not but we didn't believe in interpretation at the church so like the fact that he was adding something into the Bible that wasn't there before because obviously you can have long hair without right and still cut it yeah but but it's like if long hair is good then uncuts better so end of story oh he had his rules oh what about clothes like how do you recognize side with the fact that you're not supposed to wear two different types of cloth.

[394] So that, so the church sees this as the distinction between the ceremonial law of Moses and the moral law.

[395] So the ceremonial law is like mixed fabrics and keeping kosher.

[396] Isn't it like penalty by death of mixed fabrics?

[397] I actually can't remember, but we just something preposterous like that.

[398] We didn't worry about it though because we thought these passages in the New Testament said you don't have to follow those ceremonial laws.

[399] So we didn't worry about it.

[400] But did you guys, spend any time researching the actual history of the New Testament, like how it was constructed?

[401] So not, I mean, some, yes, but not really, because in our minds, uh, God is sovereign, right?

[402] So the church believes in predestination.

[403] So God controls everything and everyone.

[404] So God controlled the construction of the New Testament as well.

[405] Exactly, right.

[406] Even though it was done by men, it was God's will to have it be.

[407] So it was all God's word.

[408] Yep, exactly.

[409] How convenient.

[410] Mm -hmm.

[411] that's a nice little loophole You just don't have to You don't have to ask those questions But what about the fact that it was like Constantine wasn't even a Christian Until his deathbed Is that because God didn't want it to be that way?

[412] It's just it doesn't It's irrelevant That's a nice sweet loophole If you could just say that it's God's will God knew the entire time Don't worry about it But it's a bunch of men wrote it Yeah but they did it because God let them do it Right but then the question is which version Right Which is another question Like I sort of instinctively avoided it's like Atheist would ask this question and like, why the King James version.

[413] Yeah.

[414] And, you know, you can't really answer because Gramps said so.

[415] Like, that's not, did we actually say that my grandfather was the, like, pastor, first pastor, the only pastor for, you know, founded the West Robster's Church.

[416] I don't think we did, but I think everybody kind of knows.

[417] Okay, good.

[418] So when I say, yeah, I just, grandpa.

[419] Yeah, grandpa was Fred Phelps, right?

[420] Yes, exactly.

[421] Anyway, I just wanted to close that loop.

[422] So, it's just, but, like, what was the, what was the, what was the, thought process behind like just accepting that kind of stuff like did your grandfather ever bring up the even older versions of the bible that they were finding like who was his thoughts on like the dead sea scrolls and things along those lines just didn't address it because it just didn't matter because right again it's all god's word anyway it's god's will it's god's word so it's so fascinating when someone's so rigid with their belief system it's like this is it and this is and as long as you believe that it's all God's will.

[423] It's like, oh, it's God's will.

[424] Seriously.

[425] But the New Testament was written by Constantine, a bunch of bishops and God's will and God let them do it.

[426] Right, right, right.

[427] Oh, okay.

[428] And not just let him do it, but caused him.

[429] Caused him.

[430] Forced it.

[431] Made it happen.

[432] He knows what he's doing.

[433] Yep, absolutely.

[434] Every word of our conversation.

[435] The church would think that this is all.

[436] Well, how does God allow all the, you know, sodomy and all the crazy shit going on?

[437] Why is God allow that?

[438] So this is why I'm not a Christian anymore.

[439] Oh, you're confused, and you're like, what though?

[440] Well, so there's this passage in Romans 9.

[441] Well, it's not the only reason I should say, but I have real trouble with this.

[442] And I think it's still hard for me to say, I think this is evil, but I think this is evil.

[443] There's this passage in Romans 9 that talks about, it gives this analogy of God as Potter and humans as clay in his hands.

[444] And it uses the example of Jacob and Isa, who, in the Bible, Jacob and Esau were twins and says while they were yet in the womb before either of them had done good or evil, God loved Jacob and hated Esau.

[445] And so it paints this picture of God, you know, it says, what if God willing to show his wrath and make his power known endured with much long suffering, the vessels of wrath made for destruction.

[446] So it says God created some people as vessels of mercy, people that he loves, and others as vessels of wrath made for destruction.

[447] So made for the express purpose of destroying them, of torturing them in hell for eternity.

[448] So, and then, so he, it's Paul who's writing, he, he paints this picture, God making you do all of the things that you do, and then blessing some and cursing others.

[449] And he says, well, you're going to ask me then, why does God yet find fault for who is resisted his will?

[450] Right?

[451] So if God's making you do it, why is he punishing you for it?

[452] Right.

[453] If God's making you do a horrible thing and you resist his will.

[454] You can't resist his will.

[455] Right.

[456] So he makes you do it, and then he punishes you for it.

[457] And the answer is, you don't get to ask that question.

[458] Oh.

[459] It says, nay, but oh man, who art thou that replies against God, shall the thing form say to him that formed it.

[460] Why hast thou made me thus?

[461] He just don't get to ask that question.

[462] And to me, so I've asked, like, for, I spent a long time talking to Christians and, you know, people of, well, mostly Christians, because it's obviously this New Testament.

[463] so and but also talking to Jewish people about the Old Testament and found so many of the like interpretations so many of our beliefs are not they're not fully supported by by the Bible and that there are so many different ways of interpreting so many of our the more destructive of our beliefs but that one I have not found any explanation for that passage that's anything that makes any kind of sense that's consistent with the text and and not evil and I just I just I didn't I thought I couldn't ask that question for so long when I was at the church right I thought I just have to accept this this is the truth and nothing that I feel or think matters against it but now I I can't not think of course I cannot ask the questions yeah that's got that it'd be so strange it's also strange when you read the pastures in the Bible and there in thou and thy and you go wow like what a we you're like you're reading something in a style of communicating and thinking that we don't even use anymore like how strange is that like how strange like if you had a conversation with a rational person and they've they started talking and thou and thy you'd be like what do you why are you using those words like what's going on here are you okay like are you a crazy person but as long as you're quoting some ancient stuff you're allowed to do it like and it just it sort of highlights how bizarre scripture really is and how bizarre these ideological imperatives these ideological like pathways that are just completely rigid and carved and so you have to follow them but then you're listening you're like you don't even talks like this anymore like this is such a strange and they didn't even talk like that then when they wrote it because you're dealing with something that was in ancient Hebrew and then it was translated to Latin and it's translated to Greek and by the time it gets to English like boy what a terrible game of telephone you know that the great vine right so it's just these are questions that I never thought I could ask or that again that it didn't matter because if God or you know foreordained all of it right then it wasn't relevant but there's also uh I mean like there is so and this I was talking to Sam Harris about this this morning he like there's so many things in the Bible that I find so much good there also and like the language is something that like yeah, I know it sounds so weird to people, to a lot of people, but, like, the King James, like I grew up, like, again, my mother was reading this to us every, every night.

[464] And so these words, there's actually a passage that says, I found thy, like talking to God, I found thy words, and I did eat them.

[465] And they were unto me the joy and rejoicing of my heart, right?

[466] So it was this thing where I loved it.

[467] I loved, I loved these ideas.

[468] I thought, I thought it was the truth and I thought it was like the definition of goodness because God did it and God said it and but even now like there's this one passage that I I really love it says um by long forbearing as a prince persuaded and a soft tongue breaketh the bone that last like that's that's it's it's a soft tongue break at the bone that that phrase I love the imagery I love the like because you know I did this TED talk a few months ago and and uh you know I was in the And it was kind of about this, like, modern political discourse, this, this, this, um, tribalism.

[469] This is becoming this, you know, these calcified, you know, positions and, and failures of empathy and, and, uh, like, people think that because, you know, they're so sure that they're right, that their position is the right position, they're willing to talk to the other side in ways that, they're just, it's just, it's terrible.

[470] It's the way that I did it at the church.

[471] It's the way that it's, you know, that.

[472] dismissive, condescending, you know, just hostile, aggressive, angry.

[473] Right.

[474] They're the enemy.

[475] Yeah.

[476] And that's like it.

[477] That's also cult like.

[478] And people don't respond to it.

[479] Like they respond.

[480] It's this whole complimentary behavior, right?

[481] It's like somebody approaches you a certain way.

[482] You tend to respond in kind.

[483] So if somebody comes to you in kindness and compassion, you tend to respond, you know, in that way also.

[484] And when you are angry and aggressive and hostile, like it just elicits the same reaction.

[485] People get defensive.

[486] Right.

[487] But that verse, I love that verse.

[488] It's a beautiful verse.

[489] Well, there's obviously some wisdom from what those people were writing down and trying to translate what that wisdom was.

[490] And there's some really fascinating passages.

[491] To me, it's always been most fascinating as a time capsule.

[492] Like when I read it, I'm like, well, regardless of who translated this, this is still a thousand -year -old book.

[493] at the very least in terms of you know or 2 ,000 years old like that alone is really amazing you're reading the thoughts and the ideas of how someone was perceiving the world 2 ,000 years ago or roughly you know it's there's something to it where you're it also solidifies in my mind how briefly human beings have been conscious of their time here on earth 2 ,000 years ago is Not very long.

[494] I mean, it seems like an incredibly long time for a person, one of those, to be 100.

[495] But in terms of the age of the human race itself, which I think they just backdated again, they found a new discovery where they pushed back the oldest known human being by over 100 ,000 years yesterday.

[496] Some new discovery, some new bones.

[497] Wow.

[498] So now they know modern human beings have been around for at least 300 ,000 years.

[499] It's probably going to go back even further than that.

[500] They don't even know.

[501] But that's so cool.

[502] I was going to say, I actually think Rob Wolf.

[503] Oldest Homo sapien species discovered in Morocco.

[504] Yeah.

[505] What does I say?

[506] Time.

[507] Okay, yeah.

[508] Add 100 ,000 years to the history of modern human fossils.

[509] These bones are from early anatomically modern humans, our own species, homo sapiens, with a mixture of modern and primitive traits, an international team of anthropologists, paleontologists, and evolutionary scientists report a pair of papers published on Wednesday in the journal, Nature.

[510] Evolutionary, what was evolution talk like back at home?

[511] We didn't believe it.

[512] What about dinosaurs?

[513] Young Earth creationism.

[514] One of the elders said something like, God brought baby dinoes on the ark. Really?

[515] yeah i i they didn't make it yeah they drown i don't know we we just it's not a we just anytime there was any conflict or apparent conflict between the bible and uh evidence you know physical evidence um we just believe the bible like because it's course yeah it's the bible wow um but what you're saying about like ancient wisdom like yeah there was this uh so my husband um he got super into paleo a few years ago and uh he read um um um John Durant's book, The Paleo Manifesto, and he made me read one chapter of it, and it was called Moses the Microbiologist.

[516] And Rob Wolf, I was going to say, Rob Wolf mentioned it on your podcast, whatever that was a few weeks ago or whatever.

[517] And it's so fascinating to, like, when you read Leviticus, like, without the context, you know, the time and the time they were living in, like, a lot of it just seemed, like, I remember whenever we be reading this at home, you know, as a family, like there was just so much of it that just seemed like incredibly tedious and like what are we supposed to be getting out of this like I don't even understand so I read this chapter and it was so like incredible talking about like Jewish the the rules about washing your hands which is like of course the the simplest and most effective form of you know hygiene and prevent you know preventing pathogens and and infectious disease anyway it's like super fascinating like how how many of those laws make sense like what you were allowed to eat and what you weren't allowed to eat and what you weren't allowed.

[518] to eat because of not eating pigs there's all sorts of parasites they carry right and then not eating like cats because cats eat like rodents who also carry anyway but it's like it's super there's so much detail in there and it was it's incredibly fascinating so like there's when you think about like just the history of humanity and how this book has shaped people's lives for so long it's it's it's really it's really it's really fascinating well it is an amazing piece of historical literature you know i mean and it's amazing that so many people have not to use the term but use it as gospel i mean it's the right term right and it's just i always feel strange whenever i read it whenever i read it i feel strange they're thinking about all the momentum and all the history that has been altered by these words and by the application of these words and your own history when your own life was essentially guided by the application of the interpretation of these words that were thousands of years old.

[519] I mean, that is bizarre, but then what's even more bizarre to me is that Twitter is what snaps you out of it, is that interacting with people through online, this open forum exchange of ideas, and especially in Twitter where it's this 140 character limit.

[520] Yeah, that's, it really bugs me that Twitter gets such a bad rap.

[521] Because it has saved your life.

[522] You should have a t -shirt.

[523] This is Twitter saved my life.

[524] I think I might actually do that.

[525] I went to Twitter actually a year ago, and I'm going next week, too.

[526] I joined their trust and safety council.

[527] Oh, really?

[528] Yeah.

[529] That always sounds so Orwellian to me. And I found out some of the people that are on it, and they're full of shit.

[530] There's a lot of BS social justice warrior nonsense going on in that council.

[531] I'm definitely not on the censorship or, you know, trying to, like, stop people.

[532] shadow banning people I think so I don't I just don't know enough about all of that stuff like so I'm I'm obviously like I'm definitely on the side of of I mean I want people to be able to control their experiences on Twitter of course like so I mean you should be able to like um definitely be able to block people and mute people and all that stuff that's all well and good right that's what I mean like so you should control your experience but like trying to stop people from because like obviously somebody's when it's when it's criminal when people are threatening and it's violence and threats of violence I think that of course should be illegal it's illegal sure shouldn't be a lot on the platform but i agree and harassment if you're harassing people or trying to get people to harass people like soliciting harassment right to others like hey let's go go after Megan she doesn't believe in the god's word anymore let's go get her right like those kind of organ using the platform for any sort of a fucked up way like that yeah yeah but i'm obviously woman much more on the side of like the importance of the marketplace of ideas and being able to it's everything absolutely because people So many people, we come to these, we come to bad ideas in so many different ways.

[533] Sometimes we argue ourselves there.

[534] Sometimes we're influenced by other people.

[535] But the way out of it isn't to pretend or to push it out of the public sphere.

[536] It's to engage it, to shed light on it and to publicly argue against it so that other people who might be tempted or starting to go down that path will understand.

[537] In other words, we need to have people who can articulate and defend good principles and to argue against bad ones so that the good ones will rise to the top.

[538] Absolutely.

[539] I mean, that's everything.

[540] That's human discourse in general.

[541] And that's one of the main problems with really rigid ideologies.

[542] There's no room for that.

[543] And then you just, like, it's God's word and this is it.

[544] And you just have to trust it.

[545] And there's baby dinosaurs on the ark. And you're just kind of go, okay.

[546] And because of that, that, like, I have a friend who was Mormon.

[547] And she was Mormon for a long time.

[548] And then she, they just sort of, like, drifted away.

[549] They decided it was kind of silly.

[550] And then they read into the church.

[551] And they started like, oh, what?

[552] how do this get started and they they just decided maybe we should spend some time away and so they eventually left and one of the things she said that was really fascinating she said um i'm really susceptible to like like someone who's a bullshit artist so like she's like i'm easily influenced like too much so she's like growing up in this fundamental environment this fundamentalist you know where you don't question anything and just go along with the word she goes it at least me really vulnerable to like being influenced and I was like wow that is fascinating she's like I'm really gullible I'm like wow yeah it's like her her structure of how she her questioning muscles were like wobbly and weak and atrophy they just didn't have any pep to them that's exactly the word I used also about the decision making because if somebody else was always making the decisions you you never have to like the answer is already there for you you don't have to figure it out for yourself so on both of those fronts like when after my sister and I left it was this sort of like more or less constant you know processing and asking these questions so like I would have these so for instance like back to gay people after we left right so I got and this guy wrote an open letter like he'd been somebody that I had sparred with on Twitter quite a bit and threatened to pick it but never actually did he wrote an open letter after uh in my sister and I published this statement essentially just this short explanation that you know we had left and that we regretted to hurting people and that we were trying to find a better way to live basically just because we'd been so public at the church it seemed like we had to it seemed like and also it's complicated but anyway so we did this he writes this open letter in response and invited us to church over at Hollywood United Methodist Church uh and he this he was gay he is gay um he's a gay churchgoer yes yeah and how does he reconcile all the anti gay stuff i was going to say so you you you said, you know, earlier, like, just the accepting, like, whatever you find it in the Bible, so you therefore you have to accept it and just go along with it, no matter, you know, what evidence or whatever seems to contradict it or whatever, I was going to say, like, I encountered people for the first time, including, I'm actually not sure how he reconciles it.

[553] I think it has to do with the love of Jesus and, and, you know, grace and, you know, just that's the Old Testament and whatever.

[554] I'm not exactly.

[555] Doesn't the New Testament represent?

[556] It does.

[557] does homosexuality right yeah so i i honestly don't really know uh just like la la la not listening well so that's what i was going to say like i remember encountering for the first time christians who were willing to say like yeah i know the bible says that but i i think that applied at a different time or i just don't believe that well i know dude i know more than one that has uh an old testament bible quote tattoo like hey you got to read the whole book man says don't get tattooed you can't just Yeah, yeah.

[558] God, I'm really into what you're saying.

[559] Like, no, you're not.

[560] Right.

[561] You're not even listening.

[562] But like that, like, I think that's, it's honest, right?

[563] Like, to be able to say, like, yes, I, I think this is good.

[564] And to, but to have the wherewithal to say, like, yeah, this is good and this is wrong.

[565] There's a Bible verse actually that says, hate the evil and love the good.

[566] And I love that.

[567] I mean, and when I say hate, like what I'm talking about, I'm not never, it's never about for me is about people.

[568] It's about ideas.

[569] Like, I think there are a lot of bad ideas.

[570] And so I try to, well, anyways.

[571] There are a lot of bad ideas, and there's a lot of people that get defined by bad ideas.

[572] And I think in that way, the Bible is a lot like people in that you could take a really good person who does something stupid, does something wrong, does something bad.

[573] And it doesn't mean they're a bad person.

[574] You can't say, like, you are this time you ran this red light and hit that car.

[575] Or you are this time where you, whatever you did that you shouldn't have done.

[576] done that you may have done impulsively or what for whatever reason right that doesn't necessarily defined you it's a moment in your life but we love to find moments like that and say that's you tiger woods that is you you are bad i don't like you now i hate you like no matter what you do in the future you will be defined by this moment that you got drunk and drove a car whatever the fuck it is it's it's so frustrating and you know now like like we we the tendency now on, did you read John Ronson's book?

[577] Yes, you did.

[578] Yeah, so you've been publicly shamed.

[579] Yes.

[580] Like that, that tendency that...

[581] We'd love it.

[582] Well, and my family, like, this, this, it's, it's, it was incredibly judgmental, like, even within the church, um, and became even more so, um, towards the end of, you know, before my sister and I left, where, like, everything, this is the way that my sister and I started talking about it after we left.

[583] It was like, it's like everything that looks bad is bad and everything that looks good is also bad.

[584] Like, once you if you can if you identify a person as some kind of troublemaker or you know you can just read into the worst intentions and motives when it's it's just as likely that it's it isn't that like to generalize the worst sorry sorry it's getting under your jaw and so we're losing some of the sound sorry sorry that's okay i kind of talk a little bit soft too sometimes um but and you just don't want to generalize the worst about people and and and make it make that their entire identity.

[585] Right.

[586] And there's a tendency to do that with people that are also, they're terrified of scrutiny coming their way.

[587] So what they do is they cast it all out on others instead of looking internally, instead of looking at their own actions, and they like to find a fault in a person, and then that is their main focus.

[588] And you see people doing that, that is why tabloid journalism is so fascinating.

[589] You go to the supermarket and, you know, you know, Matt Lauer's doing cocaine.

[590] Oh, look at that.

[591] You know, it's like right there in front of you, whether or not it's real, who knows, but it's, It's like, I want to see how he got caught.

[592] What did he do wrong?

[593] What this person do?

[594] He's doing drugs or whatever anybody's doing.

[595] She's leaving him for her.

[596] She's a lesbian.

[597] And all this stuff that we love when someone did something bad, then everybody's watching it.

[598] We love it.

[599] Because we all know that there's just some creepy shit that we've done that if somebody found it and then everybody started talking about, you'd be horrified.

[600] So when you see someone getting caught publicly shamed and then this.

[601] giant pile on it's very attractive to us in some weird way and almost cathartic and almost a relief that it's not us yeah but it's so dangerous right because when when you make it when the penalty for speaking up and possibly misstepping and I don't the whole idea of like microaggressions like I like fundamentally like it's this like and I understand like I'm not saying like I think it's really important like I've said this so many times like how we talk to people like it matters how you talk to people but if we're always looking for for offense we're going to find it right and so but so the problem is like when you know people say something maybe not quite in exactly the right way or they like the way that we punish people like when we make the penalty so high you know so just to go back to john's john ronson's book the justine saco you know she tasteless joke on Twitter to her 170 followers or whatever and then it blows up and her entire life is over.

[602] Yeah, people don't know the story.

[603] Do you remember the joke?

[604] Yeah, I'm going to South Africa.

[605] Hope I don't get AIDS.

[606] Just kidding.

[607] I'm white.

[608] Yeah, exactly.

[609] And that turned her life inside out.

[610] Right.

[611] And I don't mean to say, like, I'm not saying like I'm just saying there has to be more to get biblical grace.

[612] Like there's this there's this writer that I love actually.

[613] and she says that the language of public discourse has lost the how does she put it it's public discourse has lost the language of generosity like and that I think that's really it's really terrible but like so when you make the cost of miss speaking or or of maybe not saying things in exactly the right way like when you make that cost so high what it does is it pushes out moderates and what you end up with people on both you know two ends of these extremes and they're the only ones talking and then it just It just, again, reinforces this, this, you know, calcification and us, them and, you know, tribalism.

[614] And it's, it's dangerous.

[615] I think you're 100 % right.

[616] I also think there's something that's going on where when you see someone do something really stupid like Kathy Griffin holding up ahead of Donald Trump, I think we realize that in our worst day with our worst thought process, worst circumstances that could easily be us.

[617] and the worst, if you grew up in a fucked up way or you have some imbalance in your personal life or maybe you have some chemical imbalance or you're depressed and then you make a poor judgment call or you get reinforced by other people around you that are fools as well.

[618] The next thing you know you're doing something dumb and that is, that's why we like watching people balance and do handstands on the top of buildings because we know that we've taken risks.

[619] We know we've done something stupid.

[620] You can identify those aspects of human behavior in other folks and when they're doing something particularly terrible there's a certain amount of relief that it's not you and there's a certain amount of fascination of how will this play out and it's certain how is this person going to recover from this all that stuff is very very intoxicating to us as these tribal animals that live together and understand how valuable it is to have the love and support of your peers and then that hate is so dangerous the ostracizing of a person from the group, the alienation of them from the social community, the knowledge that they have that people are talking about them all the time in an evil way.

[621] Kathy Griffin, she's on American, she needs to go burn in hell and all this.

[622] That is going to be just eating away at her, and we know it, and it's one of the reasons why we like to concentrate on it.

[623] There's a certain amount of weird sort of voyeurism that's involved in any sort of a public misstep that people have and then the pile on by and a lot of people are just very very unhappy with their lives and so when someone else does something screwed up that they can take away some of the focus of their own missteps and focus it on this person and and throw rocks and there's also just the sense of of I mean righteousness yeah right the self -righteousness the the um and this is why there's a did you see Sarah Silverman's new Netflix special?

[624] No I haven't seen it yet um um So she gets to a point, and she's talking about, like, going out to a picket, a Westboro picket.

[625] And I actually had seen, she talked about this on Billmore a few years ago, too.

[626] And I just remember, like, I knew her as this, like, I didn't really, of course, know her anything specific, except her, her comedy.

[627] She seemed kind of, just kind of loud and a little, I don't know, she would say things that would always make me cringe, like, just very, like, very blunt.

[628] So you listened to her comedy while you were in the church?

[629] A little, like, not a lot.

[630] Did she just to sneak it?

[631] No. So, like, they're really, like, they're constantly, they call themselves, they're the watchers, right?

[632] So they are looking around the landscape and seeing, like, how the word of God applies to all these people.

[633] They have to, in order to comment on, they have to know what's going on.

[634] So what people are saying and the trends and things.

[635] So, so, yeah, so I, when I saw her on Delmore, I expected her to be, I don't know, like, hostile and whatever about the church when she started talking about them.

[636] but what she said what she said was at least on the special the way she put it was I am them like she went out and was talking to members of my family and you know she said we have to see them as human and she was like kind to them on the picket line like told it she said I told the duty joke or whatever you know trying and the picketer I guess one of my cousins or something like snickered you know when she when she makes this joke we have to see them as human and then maybe they'll start to see us as human and the way she you put it on the on the Netflix special was I am them like I am the product of my experiences and so are they and you know the only way you can you know change those things is to add to the those experiences like to introduce like David did on Twitter with me and my husband like introduce these ideas in ways that that people can actually hear them and and be moved by them yeah we love to categorize people into these rigid boxes that are unchangeable and that you are this person you always be this person you are my enemy and you think this and you think that and you're a dirty liberal and you're a disgusting Republican and we have these weird ideological boxes that we love to shove people into.

[637] That's a perfect example of that.

[638] I mean, if they were little kids and they grew up in that church and they're seven years old, do we really believe that they would have the wherewithal and the understanding of the full spectrum of human behavior to say that this is wrong and that we shouldn't be protesting at this gay person's funeral and we shouldn't be holding up these signs to say God hates fags?

[639] Does God hate fags or not?

[640] Like, are you right, Grandpa?

[641] Like, who would have the mind?

[642] What's incredibly brave is that you, deep into your 20s, have this revelation and then have the courage to escape.

[643] And so I want to get back to that.

[644] Like, what was your job?

[645] Like, what was the first job you got?

[646] So I didn't get a job immediately.

[647] I thought I had to.

[648] I thought I have to be responsible.

[649] Like, of course, I'm with my sister.

[650] Like, we had some money.

[651] saved just we lived at home we didn't have a lot of expenses like we we used our money to travel across the country picketing but we still we still had some money that's hilarious yeah we got to get out there and piss people off well we and it was it was it was the I thought it was the greatest like I thought like it was always excited like are you going on this picket trip yeah I'm going to Los Angeles oh my god so it was just like a part of life yeah you guys used to picket Scientology a little that's hilarious yeah and we're doing it in Clearwater once too it was super boring like there was nobody out there You got to rank the pickets by, like, I don't know, George W. Bush's second inauguration was, like, insane.

[652] Oh, was it?

[653] And then there's, like, Scientology.

[654] Oh, yeah, that was, like, post -9 -11.

[655] It must have been really rough to hold up those signs.

[656] Yeah, especially.

[657] We had a sign that said, thank God for 9 -11.

[658] Oh, God, damn it.

[659] And it was, like, we were stationed, like, at the intersection of these three streets, and they were blocked off for the parade.

[660] So, like, he finishes his inauguration speech in this, like, huge crowd of people, like, hundreds of that, whatever.

[661] How many of people?

[662] Oh, my God.

[663] Thousands of people, like, flood down this thing, and then they're stuck in this, in this intersection, waiting to go right past us on this sidewalk.

[664] And so there was, like, this, you know, they're seeing this, like, thank God for 9 -11.

[665] And it was right after the tsunami, too.

[666] So my mom was holding the, thank God for the tsunamis or whatever.

[667] And, like, so people are just enraged by the time they actually got to us.

[668] So, like, we're standing, like, right at the edge of these barricades.

[669] Like, so on the other side is the parade route.

[670] And so, like, you know, people were, like, jumping, like, some guy jumped on my back.

[671] like on one another like stealing signs and like jumped on your back yeah like so i'm like i was like leaning over the barricade so he couldn't steal my signs sorry i'm not getting away from like and uh so like one of my cousins actually like gave his signs to another church member and then was like standing on top of a trash can like going come on you guys like just just don't worry about them they're not worth it they're not worth it like like my cousin who was you know just because it was so it got so physical like you know people and like the cops so he was saying you guys aren't worth it he was trying to yeah pretending like He was not...

[672] Yeah, exactly.

[673] Oh, wow.

[674] Yeah.

[675] Subterfuge.

[676] That one got pretty...

[677] Yeah, got pretty dicey.

[678] Did it get violent?

[679] Like, the guy who jumped on your back, like, what did he do?

[680] So I'm holding my signs, and I'm like, like, I've tucked myself into this barricade.

[681] So, like, there's nothing else he can do.

[682] Right.

[683] So he...

[684] And there was, like, I should also say, there were cops just on the other side of the barricade.

[685] Just like, like, every five feet there was a cop.

[686] I think there was, so there was, like, maybe 14 ,000 cops in D .C. that day, because I was the first inauguration after 9 -11.

[687] So anyway.

[688] So, I mean, and the cops were mostly just standing there.

[689] Like, I look over, the guy gets off and, like, my brother is standing next to me, who's seven or eight years.

[690] He would have been, like, early 20s.

[691] And this, I see, and then when he jumped over the barricade because the way people were coming after us.

[692] And this cop, like, pulls out a, you know, club to, and making us get back over the bar, like, jump back over on the other side, like, with these people who were, and not really doing anything.

[693] But did you expect the cops to risk their lives, even though you're obviously provoking people?

[694] I mean, you're obviously putting yourself in a situation where you're saying something incredibly insulting and just devastating to all these people that lost friends or loved ones on 9 -11 or in the tsunami or have family members that are gay.

[695] I mean, did you guys really expect the cops are going to take the beating for you or the cops are going to get involved?

[696] For sure.

[697] I mean, we thought that.

[698] He was like, it's their job, right?

[699] If they didn't, you would never do what you did then, right?

[700] Like, what if someone passed some sort of a law saying, listen, you guys know what you're in for?

[701] We have no desire to help you.

[702] There would be no police presence.

[703] Would you still protest?

[704] Well, we did that.

[705] Some cops did respond that way.

[706] Did they say there will be no police presence whatsoever?

[707] Yeah.

[708] And some...

[709] Where was that at?

[710] Can't remember, right?

[711] But it happened more than once.

[712] Yeah, for sure.

[713] And, like, sometimes the cops would, we'd say, we're going to come to protest this, you know, something.

[714] And they would say, you know, you can come, but you can't hold that sign or you can't they would tell you step on the flag or whatever sometimes they would tell us in advance sometimes they would wait until we got there you guys are step on the flag yeah like we desecrating the flag was a big we saw it as an idol and you know the American flag as an idol actually my mom got arrested I had a we were in Nebraska and um my little brother that we were protesting a soldier's funeral and we were like far away from the church um but there was a group of people on the other side of the street and they were all holding American flags all the way from from the road all the way up this you know the long entry to the church.

[715] We were quite far away.

[716] And my brother was nine years old at the time.

[717] And he did what he always did, which was, you know, put down, lay the American flag on the ground and stand on top of it and hold a picket sign.

[718] And within like a couple of minutes, like nine cops showed up and started talking about arresting my mother for flag mutilation and contributing to the delinquency of a minor.

[719] And so before they do the arrest, you know, again, my mom and my uncle were both there and they are both lawyers and my uncle's like uh you know johnson versus texas the supreme court said in that case that uh you can even you can mutilate not only can you mutilate a flag you can even burn it and uh and that's perfectly lawful and one of the cops was like we're not in texas we're in Nebraska so like this is obviously a supreme court case so it's and he said the Supreme court has jurisdiction all over the country so in other words i guess what i'm saying It's like the way that sometimes they did, sometimes there were really good cops who did their job and were super professional and didn't let their beliefs about our, you know, religious beliefs or what they thought about our message get in the way of them doing their job.

[720] But sometimes they did.

[721] Sometimes they would threaten to arrest, you know, our parents, if they brought children, they would take their children away from them, you know, things like that.

[722] But we absolutely expected them to do their jobs like that.

[723] is, and this is the Supreme Court, yeah.

[724] I mean, I know you're not justifying it, but it's from the point of view of something like me, someone like me, I would say don't bring any cops there.

[725] No, if you start that kind of shit at a funeral or for a soldier and a bunch of people come by and beat your ass, well, then don't do that again because you're pissing people off and you're hurting their feelings and you're dealing with someone who's already emotionally scarred.

[726] Those cops need to be out there stopping robberies and, you know, breaking and enterings into people's houses and carjackings.

[727] And that's what they're supposed to be doing.

[728] They're not supposed to be like helping out people who are intentionally provoking and emotionally disturbing people.

[729] Right.

[730] But, I mean, so obviously from the churches perspective, it's like this, it's, these are sincerely held religious beliefs.

[731] And the First Amendment, like, what good is the First Amendment?

[732] Like, obviously this.

[733] But it's not a First Amendment issue, but because it's no one in an official position is saying you cannot speak.

[734] Well, so compare that to like the campus, what's going on on these campuses, right?

[735] Right.

[736] So you think that the cops shouldn't be there to protect those people?

[737] They're provoking people and making them angry.

[738] Well, it's a different sort of a scenario.

[739] I think the cops should definitely be there to prevent violence on campus for several reasons.

[740] One reason, because I think you're dealing with very young, very impressionable people who make, very poor choices and feel justified because they're around a bunch of people that also have like -minded ideas, a lot of peer pressure, a lot of diffusion of responsibility that comes from these mass groups of people that are acting and the mob mentality that comes along with that.

[741] I think it's very, very important to protect them from themselves, and it's a hot -button issue.

[742] I think protesting at a soldier's funeral is just gross.

[743] I agree with you.

[744] Yeah, I mean, I know you do.

[745] I know you do.

[746] I mean, but I'm just saying, like, I don't think the cops have a responsibility to save you from being gross.

[747] Yeah, I just, I don't know.

[748] I mean, obviously, this was a Supreme Court case.

[749] It became a, did you know that?

[750] That it, this, there was a case where we were sued by the church.

[751] Yeah, I do remember that.

[752] And how did that play out?

[753] Yeah, it went on.

[754] First, they, they won a $10 .9 million verdict against us at the trial court.

[755] And then it was reversed at the appeals court.

[756] And the Supreme Court said, eight to one, they have, it's the constitutional rights.

[757] for them to do this.

[758] This is their religious beliefs.

[759] They have a right.

[760] They were, especially because, I mean, sometimes I will say, like, I described to you that very first picket, soldiers funeral picket that I went to.

[761] Like, that was very close quarters, you know, and we were right up on top of them.

[762] Like, if we had chosen to sing or, you know, that, you know, they would have heard us.

[763] But in a lot of instances, we were way far, far away.

[764] Like, in that, in the instance that went to the Supreme Court, they were more than a thousand feet away.

[765] There was, like, a hill.

[766] The family didn't see church members, you know, things like that.

[767] There was, so, I mean, they have a right to do it.

[768] Who has a right?

[769] Well, the church.

[770] Right.

[771] Okay.

[772] They have a right to decide.

[773] They have a right to do it.

[774] To say horrible things about someone who just died or someone who lost a son or a daughter in war.

[775] Yeah.

[776] I think, obviously, I don't, I think it's terrible that they do do it.

[777] And that was actually one of the things, you know, before my sister and I left, that was one of the, I wasn't going to hold a sign that I didn't believe was true.

[778] and I wasn't going to go to any more funeral protests.

[779] Right, but do you think that the police should, I mean, they're operating on tax dollars and it's a limited amount of resources?

[780] I mean, we're taxpayers, right?

[781] I mean, sure you are, but do you think that the resources should go to the, the we think out of the we think, right?

[782] I know, I know, but do you think that really that the cops, that's the, an intelligent and adequate and fair use of resources to go and protect a bunch of troublemakers?

[783] So it depends on what how do you how do you feel about the first amendment like it's it's it's the principle of the thing rather than the applications like this is just one application like so so who's to decide whether or not it's right that's the whole idea like so who what we have not entrusted our government to decide what opinions are acceptable and what aren't so they they don't they don't get to have like so it seems like you're organizing this so if you're organizing this sort of antagonistic display where you know you're going to hurt someone's feelings and are very.

[784] We know we're going to make people.

[785] very dangerous time.

[786] Don't you think you should hire your own security?

[787] Like, why should the police have to be there to secure you?

[788] Because, because it's the law.

[789] Like, they are supposed to, you know, protect, like the, again, what good are, so First Amendment rights, right?

[790] To be able to say, it's, it doesn't protect popular speech, right?

[791] Because popular speech doesn't need protection.

[792] Unpopular speech needs protection.

[793] So it's just, again, it's the.

[794] But the police are really there to enforce laws.

[795] Well, the law is you don't get to punch somebody, right?

[796] But they're just assuming that something is going to go bad.

[797] Okay, so for instance, like just back to the campus thing for a second, you have these people who have announced we're going to go protest this person.

[798] We're not going to let them speak even though they've been granted permission by the, you know, everybody like they're going, they should be able to speak, right?

[799] We're not going to let them speak because we don't like their message.

[800] So if the cops know that that's going to happen, like so what happens?

[801] I'm just trying to compare this.

[802] They don't do anything about it.

[803] They let them shut it down.

[804] But I'm saying, I think.

[805] that's wrong.

[806] I think they should be able, they should go and like, so this is what they think the cops should be able to, is what it's called, right?

[807] I think in, and like the cops can't say, well, obviously this is still back to like, it's not, if the cops say, well, you can't speak because you're likely to cause a riot or people to, you know, some, some kind of disturbance.

[808] Like, they're not allowed to do that based on like, if it's just, this is religious opinion.

[809] We weren't saying, we want you to hurt us.

[810] We're not trying.

[811] We're not trying.

[812] to provoke you to hurt us.

[813] We're trying to deliver this message that we think is the truth of God, right?

[814] So it wasn't, there's a difference between like deliberately provoking and inciting violence, like deliberately inciting violence and what we were doing, which was, you know, trying to proclaim this message that we thought was the truth.

[815] Our goal wasn't violence.

[816] Like, we didn't want violence.

[817] That's why we contacted the cops.

[818] Right.

[819] I understand that.

[820] We weren't going to attack them and we didn't want to be attacked.

[821] We just wanted to be able to exercise our rights without fear of violence that that's that the principles of of our democracy right um so i see what you're saying and i think that it's it gets a little weird when we're talking about people giving speeches on campus and then having other people shut down those speeches because i think that the people who are protesting have as much right especially if it's in their school they have as much right to voice their concern for this message as the person does to distribute that message.

[822] And if the police come along and say we're going to shut down the distribution of this message, most of the time they do it when things are out of hand.

[823] So an excellent tool for someone who's trying to silence people is to make sure that things get out of hand.

[824] Which is why, so that having the cops present and letting both sides have their voices without the ability to resort to violence.

[825] So this is the whole idea, like we would, in these letters that would go out to the cops.

[826] was that the idea of having a buffer zone, like a, yes, we're going to, we want to proclaim our message.

[827] We want you to be out there, too.

[828] Like, we loved, and honestly, we loved it when counter protesters were there because it just brought more attention to our message.

[829] Yeah, I understand that, but I just think that you shouldn't, obviously, it's not you anymore.

[830] But I just do not think that anybody, especially from an offensive group like that should be able to allocate resources that are public use, like police.

[831] Well, so we, obviously, we didn't make the decision.

[832] Obviously, like, we didn't make the decision for them to, like, they decide, like, okay, well is this likely going to like so they can either be proactive and set the buffer zone or be reactive like we're calling the cops because we're getting punched or whatever and because like they're going to go out no matter what it was a we when even when they would say we're not going to protect you where we would go right I mean there were obviously there were rare situations where so for instance like when gabby Giffords was shot in Arizona we had a couple of an FBI agent actually and a guy from the local police department come and say like you shouldn't go in because there was a nine -year -old girl who had been killed.

[833] Yeah.

[834] And the church said they were going to protest her funeral.

[835] Oh, Jesus.

[836] And so they said, I don't think we can protect you like this.

[837] It's too volatile.

[838] It's too.

[839] And so in that case, we actually didn't go.

[840] That's kind of a chicken shit response.

[841] Actually, I was going to say, like, so the thing is, so I was there during this conversation, and I heard my mom was explaining that we weren't going to go.

[842] it actually had more to do with logistics like we couldn't get there like plane tickets and whatever like we just couldn't get there so it's like okay like that's fine like i hear you but like you're so reasonable it's so fascinating to talk to you because you're such an intelligent reasonable person it's almost impossible for me to imagine until i see like the little bit of resistance to the idea of this being a first amendment issue and the police there then you kind of go back to the church.

[843] I could see it boil up inside of you.

[844] Well, it's just like, we were talking about this a little bit ago.

[845] I mean, just the whole, the importance of discourse in the marketplace of ideas.

[846] This is one, like, like, again, I, I, I just think it's so important.

[847] And I think it's important, you know, because obviously my own personal experience makes me such a believer in.

[848] Well, you've gone on a journey through free speech that most people never experience.

[849] Free speech that you don't even agree with anymore.

[850] Right.

[851] Yeah, which is even.

[852] even more crazy so let's go back to your first job what was it what was the first job um i worked at a very briefly like so i should say my sister and i we were in it was a couple months before i actually got a job um we spent the first month with um a cousin of mine who had left the church a few years earlier she lived really close she had left her as well yeah so you guys knew some people had made it out right but like the thing is it there's there's so many my sister calls them mind fucks right so like the thing about people who leave is that they are demonized more than anybody else like even more than gays or jews or any other outsider it's ex -members who get the worst you hear the worst things about them because they knew the truth and they rejected it right so i was when it when i thought of leaving like the last thing on my mind was that i could go to an ex -member i thought you can't trust them they're evil like so it's just this whole um there's intensely negative instinctive reactions to those things but obviously i overcame it and i reached out to her a few weeks before we left and she was amazing like within i hadn't talked to her in three and a half years and had said all kinds of terrible things you know about her um after she left but um but she was wonderful uh and she said like within like 30 seconds of like when i when she understood that i was you know planning to leave uh i want you to come live with me and it was it was amazing amazing and so kind.

[853] And so I lived there for about a month.

[854] My sister was still in school.

[855] So we were traveling back to Topeka, sorry.

[856] So it was like so it's half an hour from my cousin's house, you know, four days a week while she was still in school.

[857] And so we were constantly running into our family and driving by the pickets because they picket every day in Topeka several times a day.

[858] And like at the grocery store and on campus.

[859] And so it was just we needed to get away.

[860] So we ended up going to Deadwood, South Dakota.

[861] Um, my brother had been a fan of the TV show and, uh, and, uh, it just seemed like a, a nice, quiet, like, place.

[862] So how many people went with you?

[863] Is you, your sister and your brother?

[864] No, it was just, just you and your sister?

[865] Me and my sister, yeah.

[866] Did anybody else join you after a while?

[867] I have a brother who left about a year and a half after my sister and I did.

[868] Wow.

[869] And I have another brother who left about eight years before I did.

[870] Wow.

[871] Mm -hmm.

[872] So now there's seven.

[873] There's 11 kids.

[874] So seven are still at home and four of us are out.

[875] do you talk to them yeah the people who are out yeah what about the people that are in no they they won't have anything to do with us wow they're just like i talk to your mom no no uh she they they they they're like that's how i know what they're up to like that's i see photo like they post photos like i'm watching my little brothers grow up on through photos on twitter and you know see what my parents what i'm hard is that it's awful i mean it's it's i'm glad i'm so glad to be living now and not you know before social media where i can actually see these things and and know what they're up to and a little bit about how they're doing do you want to reach out i do you do yeah i mean i do on on twitter you know this is great about twitter um sometimes like i have they blocked me on my main account um they block you not all of them but a lot of them do your mom block you uh she actually created, she got caked off of Twitter at one point, so she had to create a new account.

[876] So she didn't block me on her new account yet.

[877] Unless she blocked you in her old account?

[878] Yeah.

[879] Yeah.

[880] That's deep.

[881] Yeah.

[882] When your mom blocks you on Twitter, that's a big thing, right?

[883] When you look and you see that you're blocked, what is that what is that lump in your throat like?

[884] Just what you'd imagine?

[885] Like, I can't believe.

[886] like it's so hard to think back to like I was incredibly close with my mom and I I love her and I miss her like I'm I used to make coffee for her every morning and like we'd go on walks together and we'd walk around the last time you spoke to her um well actually I I saw her to pick it a little over a year ago she didn't she didn't say anything to me she didn't even talk to you no she she couldn't like a baby that came from her body loved you and raised you she can't like it's it's There, it's, it's so, like, when I think about, like, when I was at the church, and this is one of the hardest things to articulate, I mean, to that, the feeling of, like, when somebody leaves, like, there is no interaction.

[887] So some people would ask, like, well, what if you saw her at such a place, you know, wherever, at the grocery store, whatever, like, what would you say?

[888] They would ask me this while I was still at the church.

[889] And it's so, it's like, the only thing I can compare it to is, like, it's like dividing by zero.

[890] Like, the situation does not exist.

[891] Like, there's nothing.

[892] the idea of trying to talk to her, it's impossible, right?

[893] That's so crazy.

[894] That's the cult.

[895] Yeah, exactly.

[896] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[897] It's the, like, in Jehovah's Witnesses, they call it disfellowshiping, right?

[898] Yeah, they all have it.

[899] Excommunication.

[900] Scientology has it, they all have it.

[901] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[902] It's one of the ways they control people.

[903] The fear of alienation is incredibly strong.

[904] And the fear becoming like them.

[905] Yeah, exactly.

[906] So they'll talk to gay people.

[907] they'll talk to people with rainbow shirts on they'll talk to ex -soldiers they'll talk to those people they won't talk to you right that's insane but this is one of your mom on acid one of the like great things about twitter and and i just the internet in general is that it's a thing where so like they obviously like my little brothers for instance like they are you know hearing all this bad stuff about you know my sister and me anybody who leaves they'll hear bad things about us but the good thing about the internet is like they can go on they can go to my twitter account and see what i'm actually saying so i'm still i go through these phases where like i i i i will tweet and then i get like i can't i just like the the fear of judgment i guess from my family and i just i just choose to focus on other things and not post things on twitter but like i still i follow them on this other account that i created that's not blocked right and it's just wbc accounts so like and i see like things that they say and uh like it does doctrines that I now believe are unscriptural.

[908] And so, like, I will tweet them, you know, versus, like, that I, this contradicts you, like, and try to, like, basically doing what I was doing for them now against them, like, just in this, in these instances.

[909] And so there is some engagement a little bit with my family on Twitter, because, especially because of any, like, anything that I do publicly.

[910] So maybe something about this, I don't know.

[911] But, like, when my TED Talk came out, there was a couple of articles and, like, people were tweeting it a lot.

[912] And so my uncle and my aunt both were tweeting, tweeting me and tweeting about me. And so I was, you know, we're having this repartee, I guess, like just, you know, going back and forth about these, these Bible verses and, and debating.

[913] And so all of that stuff is, it's, it's, I hope, well, at some point, hopefully we'll have, we'll have some effect.

[914] And in some ways, it already has.

[915] So, like, the day that I left, there was a, we're going to get to that job sometime soon.

[916] Don't worry about it.

[917] The day that I left, one of my cousins, you know, came into my bedroom while I was crying and packing, and I was asking, like, just very calmly.

[918] Like, this is my best friend.

[919] She was a year older than me, is a year old than me. And she's asking me why we're leaving, and I'm describing a lot of things.

[920] And one of the, I described specifically two signs.

[921] One of them was the death penalty for fags, and another one was fags can't repent.

[922] And she sent me a message.

[923] the next morning.

[924] And I was describing verses that I thought, you know, contradicted those two signs.

[925] And the following morning, she sent me a message, a text message super early in the morning, just like, just chewing me out, basically, like, that I know that Lividicus and Romans won, like, the death penalty, like, there's no, there's, you have no argument.

[926] Like, so, so what's really your problem?

[927] And so, and then for a while after I left, like, those signs were like everywhere like she's holding my cousin changes her profile picture on twitter to her holding those two signs like screaming into the camera and like one of the elders like making a snow angel with those two signs and it's like so they're just like doubling down on this right and uh so this goes on it's like during this time like i'm talking about it and like giving a few interviews like talking about it there like on twitter a little bit um like reiterating the verses that contradict them and then like after more than two years like i wake up one morning and i check you know i'm checking their twitters and uh there was a blog post and they said uh about that fags can't repent sign and i was like oh my god it's like open the blog post and it's uh for the first time ever they had publicly disavowed a sign and using the same bible verses that i had been and i know that's like a very small point that's in the grand scheme of things right but that's that's reason that's critical reasoning but but but like so this is this is this is like to knowing this is like what do you do you know the story behind it i don't i don't it was after my my brother left so i don't really know you know nobody nobody who's left since then i also i have two two actually of my cousins have left since then also um but none of them have any understanding of like of of what happened so i don't know i and i'm not i'm not trying to take credit i should also say like well it doesn't matter it doesn't matter like it just matters is that it's that this idea is possible yeah Yeah.

[928] This idea gets into their head that what they're doing, it's, this is not in any way the teachings of Christ.

[929] Right.

[930] I mean, like, the thing is, like, some of it is.

[931] Some of it is, yeah.

[932] But, like, there's, like, there's, like, huge things.

[933] But not that God hates fag stuff.

[934] Well, like, so it's so crazy because, like, this is something that I didn't realize until after we left also.

[935] But, like, we thought, remember I told you about love thy neighbor.

[936] Like, they have a sign.

[937] Love thy neighbor equals rebuke, right?

[938] Because that's in Leviticus, 19.

[939] That's how it describes.

[940] describes, you know, love, warning your neighbor when you see them sinning so they don't go to, you know, they have an opportunity to repent.

[941] But the one time, like, so in the New Testament, uh, Jesus is, talking with this guy and the guy says, like, how do I inherit eternal life?

[942] And he says, well, Jesus is, what does the scripture say?

[943] And he says, to love God and to love your neighbor.

[944] And he says, you're right.

[945] And he says, and who is my neighbor?

[946] And Jesus tells the story of the Good Samaritan.

[947] So it's like this, do you know the story?

[948] How does it go?

[949] It's, um, so this man, it says this man falls among thieves and they beat him and leave him half dead.

[950] They beat him until he's half dead or whatever and, you know, steal his clothes and leave him there.

[951] And then it says a priest goes and sees the man and he crosses the street and walks by on the other side.

[952] And then a Levite who's also like dealing with the things of God, right?

[953] He does exact same thing, crosses and and goes on, goes on his way.

[954] It doesn't help him and then the samaritan uh stops and binds up his wounds and puts him on his own says he puts him on his own beast and takes him to an inn and gives the innkeeper money to take care of him and says anything that you spend more than this i'm going to i'll pay you back when i when i come again um so he's like actually practically taking care of him so jesus says and who do you think which which of these was neighbor to the man who fell fell among thieves and he said he who has mercy on him so in other words what I'm saying is like we reduced loving our neighbor to preaching to picketing to putting words on signs and going out and publishing them that's what we thought loving our neighbor was but the one time the example that Jesus gives is not preaching like they they didn't go like the Samaritan didn't go and say like this happened to you because you're a sinner repent he went and helped them right and so like where was that on our picket signs where was that in your practice yeah like why didn't exactly we're exactly like why why didn't we why didn't we make that an issue for ourselves like a primary part of our theology and why didn't we encourage others to do it too anyway so again this is something that I didn't realize until after and it was I was talking to a couple of um Christian friends of mine who who pointed that out and I was like I cannot believe I missed that like all those years like and what's crazy is like the in in the story the priest and the Levi or the people who are like dealing with the things of God, right?

[955] So they're presumably preaching.

[956] It's not enough.

[957] Like that's not the fulfillment of that.

[958] So anyway, there's like so many of these things that I just couldn't see when I was at the church.

[959] Because again, you're in this, it's kind of an echo chamber.

[960] Like clearly we had access to the outside world and we're having these discussions.

[961] But the problem with that discussion is that in a lot of cases, people just didn't understand what our theology actually was, how we actually thought, which is.

[962] is why, you know, David, Abbottball, making this, you know, Jewish, like, the fact that this was an ongoing conversation that he really got into the nuances of our theology and could really understand where I was coming from to be able to make the point in a way that I could understand.

[963] And that's, I mean, I'm kind of in a position to do that with my family now.

[964] Anybody, any of us who leaves and who understands, you know, can try to push back in a way that's a lot more effective than people who just don't understand where they're coming from.

[965] So you get this job.

[966] yeah so i got a deadwood my sister and i got a deadwood and uh we were only going to be there for a month and and then we're going to go back and grace was going to go to school and then i was going to get a job um and then i was in deadwood for a couple of weeks and i was like i could i the idea of going back to kansas and like being back in the shadow of the church and like seeing our family all the time and like seeing them and not like it's it's constant like being face to face with rejection right and the people that we love the most and like like the idea of going back to that environment.

[967] Like, my cousin was wonderful and I love her dearly.

[968] Like, I just couldn't go back there.

[969] So, like, the day before we're supposed to leave Deadwood, Grace decided to try out for a play there and agreed to stay with me. So we changed, like, all of her classes to be online.

[970] And anyway, so we're staying with Jehovah's Witnesses, which we didn't know that when we booked it.

[971] It was an Airbnb, our first Airbnb.

[972] It's a beautiful old house in the Black Hills.

[973] and so yeah like they they thought at first when they realized like what was happening like who we were we start having these conversations and then we find out their Jehovah's Witnesses and they thought at first that we might be disfellowshiped witnesses before they realized that it was we were at the church anyways it was just like these insane conversations about you know doctrine and theology and interpretation and it was just so mind -blowing to see that there were other ways of understanding these texts that are consistent with the text but totally different than we understood.

[974] Anyway, the husband, Dustin, is co -owns a marketing company in Deadwood.

[975] So I took a job there part -time.

[976] Oh, so what is your process or what's the journey from leaving the church, going to Deadwood, and then becoming sort of a self -proclaimed atheist?

[977] Like, how do you completely remove yourself from the shackles of ideology?

[978] Or did you?

[979] No, so it's, it's, um, it's, it's, um, it's, it's, um, it's, it's, um, it's, it's, um, it's, it's, um, it's, it's, um, it's, definitely a, I didn't want to do, I don't think it's possible.

[980] It's not like a switch flips and you're just, everything that you knew is gone.

[981] But you're obviously very rational.

[982] Yeah.

[983] So it was like each, each time we'd be presented with a situation that, that, so like, gay people or Jewish people or these, like, Jehovah's Witnesses, it was, obviously I had the instinctive responses to their ideas.

[984] And so, but each time, I would feel, you know, feel something.

[985] it would I would just like ask myself these questions you know what am I feeling why am I feeling it is this just instinctive what is the evidence like does what makes sense like it's sort of like having to to to try to reconstruct like actually look at the evidence again like starting from scratch basically in a lot of ways so so each time we're presented with these situations like you know it's because obviously like there's all these like so for instance gay people like that actually didn't take that long to change like because I I had met a lot of gay people like well I was at the church and and they after we left and you know we're talking to them and I'm like you know I thought I was doing the right thing and and I'm sorry like I didn't I didn't intend to hurt to hurt you or to say hurtful things about you like I thought I thought it was the truth and now I don't know what the truth is.

[986] I don't know.

[987] I don't know what I believe.

[988] I don't know.

[989] I don't know what I'm doing.

[990] And, like, people, I mean, they responded to that.

[991] I mean, like, they were really understanding and empathetic in a way that I never imagined people would be.

[992] Like, given how, I don't know if you've seen, like, it's really hard for me still to go back and watch some of those videos because it's so, it's, I know exactly where I was coming from at the time, but it's so, like, the.

[993] arrogance and the condescension and the certainty that we were right.

[994] And now, of course, knowing, like, all the reasons why I don't believe those things.

[995] It's a very strange, strange dynamic.

[996] But anyway, it's like the fact that people were understanding, in spite of that long history of all those things that I had said and done at the church was, was overwhelming and wonderful.

[997] But anyway, so, like, being, I was basically, my sister and I were basically putting ourselves over and over.

[998] We had to have.

[999] hadn't been in Deadwood for very long when I got a message from David.

[1000] It was on my, on my birthday, and I told him that we had left.

[1001] And, you know, he saw, I had stopped tweeting.

[1002] He knew something was up because I had stopped tweeting several months earlier.

[1003] And so he invited us to come to the Jewish Festival, which was a few weeks later.

[1004] It's like end of February or something, beginning of March.

[1005] And I had protested at the Jewish Festival, like three years earlier.

[1006] And all these like negative associations and feelings about jewish people but realizing i don't know anything about jewish people like we've been protesting the synagogue in in topeka like all my life but i haven't i don't really know it like other than you know just generally jews killed jesus and you reject him as the savior so therefore they're like without hope but i didn't know really much about jewish theology i didn't know anything about jewish people like i'd never really spent time with them so so i wanted to go to the festival my sister and i did um because we wanted to um we wanted to meet jewish people and like do this whole it's this examining process like what do we believe in why and what and and we got so much like light and sort of wisdom from other people like learning what they believed and why you know so and then david said yeah but you have to you have to speak at the festival and i was like no no this is not happening like i can't i I cannot imagine facing these people that I have spent so many years.

[1007] Like I thought I just, it just seemed impossible and it terrified me to be coming face -to -face with people.

[1008] And I hadn't even been out of the church three months yet.

[1009] So it was really scary.

[1010] But my sister was like, we're going.

[1011] Like she knew that we needed to have this experience of like learning about Jewish people.

[1012] And if the cost was we have to talk about it, fine.

[1013] And she also said later she knew I was.

[1014] do most of the talking.

[1015] So I was like, okay, fine.

[1016] But so we, we went and, and we, we spoke there.

[1017] And then I thought, okay, that's great.

[1018] Now we're going to, like, we need to figure out, like, Grace and I kept saying we want to do good.

[1019] Like, that had been the motivating principle of our life was to do good.

[1020] And now we realized we did so much damage.

[1021] And so anyway, so we were trying to find a way, like, we didn't know what to do.

[1022] Like, how do you move forward from there?

[1023] and so we just we didn't know so we were kind of drifting that whole first year we basically I think a month was the longest we spent anywhere we were you know we went to visit ex members of the church you know who were across the country my dad's family who we never knew growing up because they were never part of the church so I mean like we had seen them like they would come visit for a few hours sometimes or maybe they were allowed to visit even though they were for a while but then several years before we left they cut off all contact with his family there also it had been very limited already but then so you haven't spoken to your dad either so you spoke to his family yeah his his parents and his his brother how they feel about all this my my grandmother i called her um about a month a little of a month after we left one of my first nights in deadwood and i i told her we had left and she just immediately started crying and she said i've been waiting for this for 30 years like she had my older brother had one of my older brothers had left since since my dad had joined the church is what she was saying you know she my dad's parents are so they're they're amazing people like his dad is it was career air force he retired from the from the air force um and they're they're wonderful people and all we could see of them was well they're divorce and remarried they're they're going to hell they're a bad influence and like it what's it's it's insane to me now to think like my grandmother has been without her son like her son for decades and how painful that that must be like i've only been it's been four and a half years since i left and what am i going to be doing in 30 years like how am i what is what is the and i don't know it's a crazy journey that you've been on for just four and a half years it's really insane really like when did it solidify in your head that you were going to like identify or like speak out as a non -believer this morning i mean like so i was i was actually talking to sam about this a few months ago like because like there's there's there's part of me that like i mean when i said when a lot of a lot of people hear jerk when they hear atheist right and uh i don't use that word for myself atheists i don't either and and it's because like it entails like it seems to bring in like this idea that you're so certain you're certain there's no God you mock people who are religious you don't like them and all this and I I don't feel that like and I also feel like I am I'm open to evidence you know know like I haven't like decided there is no God it's like I just I just don't see the evidence and so I don't believe and if there is evidence like I want to know like I and again I talk to religious people all the time and I think about theology a lot I just I can't not like it also becomes there's a there's a group mentality involved in atheism and there's uh i one of the reasons why i was reluctant to identify as an atheist is that so many people were asking me to identify as an atheist like what do you give a shit why do you want me to come out i told you i'm not religious like but especially especially the idea that there cannot be a god like or there cannot be any sort of a higher power and that after you die It just ends.

[1024] How do you know?

[1025] Right, exactly.

[1026] And that's exactly where I am.

[1027] It's not a knowing for certain that there is no God.

[1028] It's a, I just don't believe.

[1029] There's so little we know about human life.

[1030] Yeah.

[1031] Forget about the idea of the possibility of afterlife or the possibility of what consciousness is.

[1032] There's possibility of what this concept that we call a soul is.

[1033] What is that?

[1034] Or forget about psychedelic experiences and what do they represent?

[1035] And what do they represent when they're coming from what essentially is human, neurochemistry.

[1036] There's the most potent ones are chemicals that exist in the brain.

[1037] They're endogenous of the human body.

[1038] And what are those experiences?

[1039] And why are they so akin to religious experiences?

[1040] And why do people even believe now, especially these scholars in Jerusalem, have connected the burning bush of Moses with the acacia bush, which is a bush that's rich in psychedelic chemicals.

[1041] And they think that it's entirely possible that Moses had a psychedelic experience in which he came back with all the laws that human beings are supposed to be lived as proclaimed by the great spirit of the universe or whatever the hell he encountered.

[1042] Like who knows?

[1043] Who knows?

[1044] But this idea that people love to say, you know, God is dead.

[1045] There is no God.

[1046] Like that's just as silly as saying there is one.

[1047] Right.

[1048] And this is why like the like the whole process since we left, like it wasn't like, I mean, first of all, like the idea of choosing another belief system like i would like learn all this stuff about jehovah's witnesses and they're like like okay yeah that's mostly internally consistent like i think there's a lot of i i never was like tempted to join them or whatever and i should say they're actually they're not they're not witnesses anymore like they're not they've since yeah they left a little over a couple years ago oh they left too huh yeah wow do you think that you guys leaving and having these intimate conversations with them and their home might have had something to do with that i i'm we're still really good friends with them like they're some of my best friends um i don't i don't think that it was that direct of a thing but it was a part of the whole journey yeah i mean i think so like we we would have these long conversations and actually i was the craziest thing when i found out like that that they had left like it was it was it was it was duster and laura other names laura it was her birthday and uh they don't javas don't celebrate birthdays like i was i was talking on the phone and i didn't even know it was her birthday it's like we were talking on the phone for like over an hour and i was like telling her about all this all these things that I'd been thinking about and like and then at the end of the conversation she's like she's like well it's my birthday today and I'm celebrating it and I just like was shocked I didn't say anything for a couple of seconds like I I obviously like knowing what that and it was different it wasn't as like as much for them you know like it wasn't the same level but like I know the disorientation and the loss and all that it's complicated it's like you don't want to just be like oh my gosh I'm so glad you're out this because I think they believe some things that are really kind of nuts but but so I was just like very cautiously like I don't know what happened but just know that I I mean I I always like loved and cared about them and and you know like but I was so eager to have these conversations like to understand what had happened with them and it's kind of just just following the like how much internal inconsistency like when you were saying earlier about the the whole idea about the Bible being the infallible word of God and like oh that's a neat trick there's no way you can argue around that this is why like it's i think internal inconsistency like in the doctrines themselves like that's seems to be a really important way to get to to get in to get through that like to argue the seed of doubt yeah because that's it's you have it's finding the inconsistency in these two beliefs that allows you to maybe question the bigger things the bigger principles and anyway just i think it's it's important to ask the questions no matter what you believe it's important to question and to always be looking and examining for new evidence because like you know you talk about this a lot but like confirmation bias and and cognitive dissonance like these these things that um keep us locked into these belief systems and and impervious to change or not even impervious but like like resistant to it yeah we want to be like open and and so this is I mean I still try to do this do you do you ever want to like grab your mom and go you got to listen to me for an hour just Let's talk.

[1049] I would love to talk to her if she would listen to me, but she...

[1050] She just won't even look at you.

[1051] No. Like, if you knocked on the door or rang your doorbell.

[1052] That's happened a couple times.

[1053] Not me, my sister.

[1054] And, like, they close the curtain, the window, and turn off the lights inside.

[1055] That happened once.

[1056] Wow.

[1057] Yeah, they won't.

[1058] And this is why...

[1059] Do you think it's possible?

[1060] She might hear this?

[1061] Yeah.

[1062] She would listen to this?

[1063] I think it's possible.

[1064] I mean, I think somebody at the church will listen to it for sure.

[1065] I mean, so this is the thing.

[1066] Like, when people leave, like, everything that we say, any of us who leave, that we say and do publicly, the church pays very close attention to it.

[1067] Like, when I was at the church, I did the same thing.

[1068] And partly it's a, like, needing to know, like, what they're saying so that you can have a good explanation, like, so you can counter it effectively.

[1069] It's a game.

[1070] Yeah.

[1071] You're scoring points.

[1072] Mm -hmm.

[1073] And, but, so this is why, another reason why it became evident that, you can't, that I couldn't hide forever.

[1074] Like, if I, hiding, following the rules, you know, pretending like none of this happened, like not causing any waves for the church members.

[1075] Like, that doesn't change anything.

[1076] Like, the only thing that helps is, is talking about it.

[1077] Like, and, and, and, because here's the other thing.

[1078] Like, even if I, like, privately, in letters, like, there's things that I sent to my parents or other church members, like, they're not going to, I mean, they're probably not going to share those with my siblings.

[1079] And if they do, it's going to be with a whole bunch of, you know, words against me at the same time.

[1080] So, like, it's, it's, only by talking publicly, can you, you know, that's how they can actually see who you really are and what you really think and what you've really gone through without the filter of, look at what these whores are doing, you know, things like that.

[1081] Like, it's, it's, uh, do you think your kids or your, your brothers and sisters are going to hear this?

[1082] I think some of them definitely might, definitely might.

[1083] Do you have hope that they'll eventually, bolt I do I hope that they not not because of any I hope they can hear the reasoning and see see the consequences of what they're doing for other people and that a lot of it I mean is unscriptural and so even even by their own understanding like they there are things that contradict them I hope that they change their minds and at the very least I hope that the church continues to to moderate Right.

[1084] To not be so.

[1085] A lot of their new signs are things like, another one of the big things for me was imprecatory prayer, right?

[1086] Which is this idea of.

[1087] What is the word?

[1088] Imprecatory.

[1089] Imprecatory.

[1090] I never heard of that word.

[1091] Praying for curses for your enemies, right?

[1092] Oh, God.

[1093] Right.

[1094] So we did this.

[1095] You pray to curse against your enemies?

[1096] Oh, often.

[1097] Yeah.

[1098] Wow, that seems incredibly non -Christian.

[1099] Right.

[1100] But there's like David, King David.

[1101] Oh, yeah.

[1102] So you...

[1103] It's Old Testament, though, right?

[1104] It is.

[1105] It's true.

[1106] We'll see, this is the thing.

[1107] So, like, you know, we took that as an example for us.

[1108] So he prayed for his enemies for their children to be fatherless and for their wives to be widows.

[1109] And so he's, you know, praying for God to do all these, you know, bad things to...

[1110] Is that the Romans?

[1111] He was praying against the Romans?

[1112] No, it was David, Philistines.

[1113] Okay.

[1114] Yeah.

[1115] And Saul, I guess.

[1116] But, but so we took that as an example, right?

[1117] Him praying against his enemies.

[1118] So after we left, I sent, I contacted my, this is my dad, and talked about this problem.

[1119] So like, David also had a lot of wives, but we don't take his example as that men should have many wives.

[1120] Yeah, what about that?

[1121] And why?

[1122] Well, it's because it contradicts what Jesus and the Apostle Paul said about marriage, being one man, one woman for life, right?

[1123] So Jesus.

[1124] That's the new way.

[1125] Right.

[1126] So, and Jesus and Paul both also said they talked about loving your enemies, bless them that curse you, and pray for them that despitefully use you and persecute you.

[1127] So you're supposed to be praying for the good of your enemies, right?

[1128] And so it's a contradiction.

[1129] And so, anyway, it's another, like, a long time.

[1130] Like, there's been, like, a bunch of sermons.

[1131] Like, so now my grandfather passed away three years ago.

[1132] And so now there's eight elders.

[1133] are the eight pastors, and my dad is one of them.

[1134] So there's been a series of sermons on imprecatory prayer since then, and they're, like, it seems like, it seems so confused because, like, on the one hand, they're still kind of justifying it, but also it just seems like you're trying to reconcile things that aren't reconcilable.

[1135] Right.

[1136] So, so, but a lot of the, the, so they stopped, I should say, there used to be a flyer that went out every, like, Friday, and that used to say, like, thank God for 15 dead soldiers.

[1137] we pray for 15 ,000 more.

[1138] And so it would list all the soldiers who had died that week.

[1139] And within a, like, after like eight months, you know, my dad gave a sermon about impregatory prayer.

[1140] Like at the time, when I first, you know, said that, you know, there was, he put out of video news explaining, like, why impregatory prayer is the thing.

[1141] And it's supported by the Bible.

[1142] Eight months past, he gives a sermon about loving your enemies.

[1143] Within a couple of weeks, that flyer was changed.

[1144] and now it doesn't say that we pray for 15 ,000 more.

[1145] I haven't seen the...

[1146] What's the first part?

[1147] Is the first part still...

[1148] Thank God.

[1149] So they say, because God is sovereign, you have to thank him for everything.

[1150] So the fact that these...

[1151] So it's still thank God for 15 dead soldiers.

[1152] Yeah, so the second part.

[1153] What I'm just trying to say is like there has been some moderation.

[1154] Mm -hmm.

[1155] And a lot of the new signs are things like, be reconciled to God and Christ are hope, things like that, like that are not God hates facts.

[1156] Like those are, I think that's...

[1157] I think that's improvement at the very least, even though there are still, obviously, these harsh things as well.

[1158] Yeah, so there's some adjustment and some consideration.

[1159] So you don't talk to your dad anymore either, right?

[1160] No one.

[1161] No. Is there, wow.

[1162] Is there anything that you think that you can do other than continuing to speak and continuing to do what you're doing that's going to reach them?

[1163] so i mean i i'm almost finished writing a book i'm nearing the is it a book to them it's it is both for them and also for for other people there's part of the that's kind of what i was getting at like it's like you writing a book like letters to my mom and dad so it's not it's not it's not written quite that way uh not as a i actually did consider doing it that way but uh eventually ended up like right now it's based on um each chapter is based on a relationship that sort of brings us like that starts with my mother and then my grandfather and sort of like coming into this ideology and then the process of all the like the mental machinations of of leaving and like how my mind changed over time and then what's happened since we left like and I hope that by you know for my family I hope that by articulating these things in in a way it's like obviously we're sitting here and even if we talk for like however many hours like there's only so much that it's not the same as having it written in a way that's hopefully very clear and and and and just honest to the experience like in as much detail and clarity with as much detail and clarity as possible like I think that that's I hope that that will will be effective in at least showing them that there's a different way there are other ways of of understanding these things and so I do hope that I guess I also hope like in my TED talk I have, I feel really, um, like, hesitant about like trying to teach anybody anything at this point.

[1164] You know what I mean?

[1165] Like, because I spent my whole life telling other people how to live and now to be like, well, you guys, no, I got this.

[1166] Like, now I got this.

[1167] Like, you know, like, it just, the idea of like, insinuating even in any way that I have something to tell people about.

[1168] anything like I'm I really don't like that idea at all and the only reason I did the John Ronson actually is the one who reached out to me about about doing it because he was a thing that he was curating an event that he was curating curating and so I wrote the first draft of the talk and and the curators you know came back afterwards I was like well it's like this is how can we avoid the mistakes that you made and so like and I went back and like took examples from David and my husband in the way that people on Twitter engaged me that actually helped change things but so so it's not explicit in that way in the book but i hope that just by talking about this and telling the stories like i when i read accounts of people who have gone through similar situations it it's so helpful to me like to realize like my family like yes they man up their their activities are are kind of their extreme and like they manifest themselves in very strange ways to most people but they're very common very human flaws and if if anything that if I talk about this in a way that helps other people see it in their own lives or that you know will resonate with people who have gone through similar things like that's I think I mean that's I want to do that I want to do as much good with these experiences as I can because just because I that's how my parents raised me honestly right but their argument of course would be you know you were so right and so convinced when you were with the church.

[1169] Now you're so right and so convinced now that you're outside of the church.

[1170] How do you know you're right now?

[1171] So the latter, it's not the same.

[1172] It's not the same at all.

[1173] Like, I do not walk through the world with that sense of certainty and in my position and righteousness of my position.

[1174] I'm asking questions and I'm trying to explain what, why I believe differently now than I did.

[1175] I'm still asking the questions that.

[1176] Like, I never still.

[1177] stop like you know what I mean it's it's it's such a fundamentally different way of of engaging the world I do know what you mean but if I was on their side and I was trying to pick holes in your statement which is what they seem to do right if they're listening to the things you say they're listening to things you say so they can counter them with some sort of a Bible quote or some sort of a more articulate opinion right if I was listening right I would say you were so convinced when you're with us now you're so convinced but now you don't even have God yeah so how could you be right.

[1178] So the thing is, you're deluded.

[1179] The Satan's serpent scales are covering your eyes.

[1180] So this is another one of the paradoxes that I realized before I left.

[1181] So there's this verse and again, this is one that my mom would quote all the time growing up and with such urgency, like she needed us to understand this.

[1182] And the verses, the heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked and who can know it.

[1183] Right.

[1184] So, so.

[1185] So.

[1186] I thought the heart was good.

[1187] Home was what the heart is?

[1188] No. I thought heart is like people being sweet.

[1189] And so the human heart is inherently, and according to the church, is inherently deceitful, right?

[1190] Wow.

[1191] Okay.

[1192] But the problem is they also talk about the heart as being like, that's how we know that the Bible is true.

[1193] It goes, God puts an unction on our hearts.

[1194] Your deceitful little heart.

[1195] Yes, exactly.

[1196] So you're at the end of the day, it's always our own hearts.

[1197] It's our hearts that say, okay, well, I'm going to follow the Bible no matter, no matter what.

[1198] Or in other words, at the end of the day, each one of us is always making a decision.

[1199] It's just that for them, they think that outsourcing it and saying that, oh, no, it's the Bible.

[1200] It's like, well, it's your, it's your, I tried to articulate it's when I did Sam's, Sam Harris's show a couple of years ago.

[1201] Like, but it's that I read it actually in his book.

[1202] Like, that's what helps me like, it's your own moral impulses that are authenticating the truth of the Bible.

[1203] Bible.

[1204] Right.

[1205] So at the end of the day, it's still you.

[1206] It's still your judgment.

[1207] You're the judgment of your own deceitful heart.

[1208] So again, from their perspective.

[1209] So I guess what I'm saying now is like I'm not when I when I talk to my family when I'm addressing them like it's it's with these questions like I know how you understand these verses.

[1210] But what about these things that contradict them?

[1211] Right.

[1212] I'm not saying you're wrong.

[1213] I'm saying I can't see how you're right.

[1214] because of these verses like how do you do this right you understand this and what about verses that contradict other verses in the bible that's the church doesn't believe in that that is that those contradictions exist so when you talk about those contradictions which are pretty clear what what do they say well so the lord works a mysterious way is good night kids right right there's there's always that like if if you think there's like for instance like back to the like free will you're sorry the predestination thing, that God designing people to go to hell and then holding them responsible.

[1215] So this is a contradiction, right?

[1216] This is the idea that you are responsible, right?

[1217] You're man's responsibility and God's sovereignty.

[1218] They don't go together, right?

[1219] Such an awesome quote.

[1220] Can you say that quote again?

[1221] Man's, sorry, man's responsibility and God's sovereignty, they do not go together.

[1222] Right, but the quote in the Bible, the way it's phrased?

[1223] Um, oh, which the nabit, old man who art thou that repliest against God.

[1224] Yeah.

[1225] Okay.

[1226] Uh, shall the thing form say to him that formed it.

[1227] Why hast thou made me thus?

[1228] Yeah.

[1229] So, yeah.

[1230] So it's that, those ideas are inherently, they're inconsistent, right?

[1231] They're contradictions.

[1232] And so Gramps, I remember one day in church, he was, you call him, Gramps?

[1233] Gramps, yeah.

[1234] Sounds like such a cute name.

[1235] He's great.

[1236] Such an evil old dude.

[1237] No. I'm sure he's not evil.

[1238] be so funny and like it's so funny because like again he could be funny oh hilarious really yeah was he a sweet guy does like his family he would sing the song from the 40s and call us my great big beautiful doll like that's what he would he'd call us and love bug and so you miss him yeah we sat you you didn't get to see him before he died because you left I can't talk about that you can't not now I can't not unless you're me to start crying I won't oh Sorry.

[1239] That's okay.

[1240] But, but yeah, he's...

[1241] I thought there was like a legal reason.

[1242] No, no, no. He was...

[1243] That's just that deep for all the stuff you talked about.

[1244] Yeah.

[1245] Like, you can't talk to your dad, you can't talk to your mom, but something about your grandpa.

[1246] Yeah.

[1247] He's special.

[1248] Yeah?

[1249] I'll tell you later.

[1250] Okay.

[1251] Okay.

[1252] But in the eyes of most people, he was the booming voice.

[1253] Yeah.

[1254] Of hate.

[1255] For sure.

[1256] And I totally understand it.

[1257] Isn't that so fascinating, though, that you could see someone in an intimate way.

[1258] You love them, their family, you get to see all the positive aspects of them, and yet you get to see this venom that he spews out to all the world, and that that also represents you guys and your family and your ideology and you're behind this powerful leader.

[1259] He's the founder of all this, right?

[1260] So essentially, he's the man who created the very bars that imprison your family right now.

[1261] I know, and it's so, and this is one of the things, you know, after I left, like, thinking about, like, how did we get here?

[1262] You know, how did we end up in this place?

[1263] It's an understanding of psychology or a lack of.

[1264] The problem with any sort of ideology, rigid ideologies that are backed up by a deity, is that there can be no questioning.

[1265] And as soon as there can be no questioning, you're talking about human language.

[1266] You're talking about something that came obviously from the words of human beings.

[1267] They wrote those words down.

[1268] They put them somewhere.

[1269] And now you're reinforcing this ideology.

[1270] one with even a basic understanding of how easily influenced people are and about our alpha male chimpanzee history or lower primate history, we know that we're incredibly susceptible to influence and incredibly susceptible to the whims of the group mindset and that this is imperative for survival, these tribal instincts that we have imperative for survival and the reason why we made it to 2017 and that these play against us in forms of ideology and the these very rigidly reinforced behavior patterns.

[1271] I mean, that is what, that's what, and when the problem, because atheism versus people who are deists or people who are Christian or Muslim or whatever the fuck it is, it has nothing to do with that, honestly.

[1272] It's just about mind and about humans and about our inherent tendency to give in to these, these predetermined patterns of behavior to give us comfort in these patterns.

[1273] Yeah, there is so much comfort in certainty.

[1274] Yeah, I mean, it could be really frustrating all these.

[1275] Sometimes all the rules and the, like you said, very rigid.

[1276] But after when I left, the uncertainty was just this enormous weight.

[1277] Like, I had no idea.

[1278] Like, what do you?

[1279] Enormous weight on you.

[1280] Right, all the sudden.

[1281] Yeah, because like, again, well, one, first of all, like, one of the things that makes doing things like this hard or like speaking publicly at all now that it's not.

[1282] like me like with God on my side or whatever is the idea like now I'm standing on my own two feet like it's it's my own ideas and like who the hell am I you know just that the sense of like self doubt and uncertainty and and and like it's it's it's it's it can be crippling sometimes but but you just you have to keep going and keep asking the question like this is one of the things like you said uh I mean the whole another reason I don't like to call myself an atheist or or to call myself anything.

[1283] Actually, Sam, sorry, I cannot stop talking about Sam Harris, but he had this video where he was saying, like, we shouldn't call ourselves atheists or secularists or humanists.

[1284] We shouldn't call ourselves anything.

[1285] We should just be good, decent people living in the world and challenging bad ideas wherever we find them.

[1286] Like that's, it's not about the, I mean, we want an identity.

[1287] Like people crave identity and belonging in this, like the in -group.

[1288] Like what you're talking about grants, like how, how much goodness I got to see in him that like people on the outside never saw it's because of that you know the in -group out -group mentality like the bond like I said earlier the bonds that are forged there it's so it's so enticing but but it comes at a huge cost and I didn't see that cost for a long time so now this is another reason I don't I just don't like those labels it's not about the identity it's just about trying to find the best way we can to live in the world and and do as much good as we can.

[1289] I think there are bumps in the road and the evolution of culture.

[1290] I think that's what they are.

[1291] I just think we haven't figured out how dangerous they are and that we fall prey to them.

[1292] But they're also the reason why we got here in the first place because we did figure out these ways to bond together.

[1293] We did figure out these ways to identify with each other in this very extreme and very personal way.

[1294] And if it wasn't for those things, who knows if we would have ever made it this far?

[1295] Who knows?

[1296] But they've also been able to, people have been able to rationalize acts through the use of this us versus them, you know, the our group versus the other.

[1297] It's a very strange aspect of what I believe is the adolescent nature of human, social, and cultural evolution, which is where we're at right now.

[1298] We've come so far, we think, but really we haven't.

[1299] We haven't really been around that long.

[1300] I mean, they're talking about this modern human being they found 300 ,000 years ago.

[1301] God, that's a blip.

[1302] So it's a blink of an eye in terms of the history of the world, never mind the history of the universe.

[1303] And I think that it's, it's very dangerous when someone tells you they know.

[1304] It's very dangerous because you don't know and so you're like, well, if they know, I'll just listen to them.

[1305] And that's what we've been doing forever.

[1306] And I think people are recognizing more and more now that that is, that's not safe.

[1307] It's dangerous.

[1308] And it's an impediment to progress.

[1309] Personal progress.

[1310] Progress as a community.

[1311] We have just an insane instinct to join teams to the point where people, they identify with certain patches of dirt.

[1312] I'm a Texan.

[1313] Like, oh, you're a Texan.

[1314] So this is all okay.

[1315] You know, hey, I'm from New York.

[1316] Oh, you're from New York.

[1317] Well, I get you now.

[1318] I understand you.

[1319] You're in this nice little category.

[1320] You get to operate on these predetermined patterns now.

[1321] You know, you don't even have to have your own beliefs.

[1322] You just adopt a conglomeration of beliefs that fit whatever category you fall into, whether you're a left wing, progressive or a right ring conservative.

[1323] Mm -hmm.

[1324] It's weird.

[1325] We're a really weird.

[1326] We're a really weird monkey.

[1327] Yeah.

[1328] We're so strange.

[1329] And we're also aware how weird we are.

[1330] That's, I was going to say, like, that is the, that's where I feel so much and why I feel so much hope, right?

[1331] Because, like, the more awareness we have, like, the better we can go about trying to sort of shore those things up.

[1332] Yeah.

[1333] Like, see the pitfalls.

[1334] and then try to find ways around them.

[1335] But it takes people like you that are incredibly courageous that break out of the pattern and just paddle out into the waters of discomfort because that's what people have a really hard time doing.

[1336] People have a really hard time changing.

[1337] They have a really hard time taking chances.

[1338] They have a really hard time doing new things.

[1339] And you did all of it at once in one big burst.

[1340] And you separated from your tribe.

[1341] It was so important to you that you separated from your tribe.

[1342] that's so hard yeah yeah for sure but it's this is one of those things where like i mean i was talking to david after i left before the jealicious festival we were sitting uh in the home of uh this rabbi that i had protested earlier and and uh your rabbi as a whore was the sign my sister held and like oh nice now like living with this rabbi right like actually that's what i'm staying with here well i'm here you're stay with a rabbi yeah rabbi and his wife and their their four kids are wonderful how is the rabbi a whore that you you pay them and they make you feel good like they tell you what you want to hear because you pay them that makes them a whore in that case is a comedian a whore too i must be a whore yeah probably probably yeah they're probably going to be you know it's hoard them it's prostitution but uh david people give massages whores i wouldn't go there And you feel good and you pay them.

[1343] Well, it's lying to you.

[1344] It's lying to you.

[1345] Oh, okay.

[1346] So chiropractors would be horrors.

[1347] Is that how it would work?

[1348] I guess.

[1349] But David was like, it's like you are your parents' children.

[1350] Like I'm just like sitting there bawling.

[1351] And because I felt like such a betrayer.

[1352] This is like right after we left.

[1353] And he said, I said, what do you mean?

[1354] He said, well, they're the ones who taught you to stand up for what you believe in no matter what it cost you.

[1355] and so I I love that idea like that there's still so much from home that I have held on to and that that still guides me it's just that I obviously had to it's just the things that I now think are destructive and and hurtful and just not true not not consistent with reality but that that gave me a lot of like a lot of hope right well you you definitely seek comfort in ancient wisdom and quotes.

[1356] Who mean?

[1357] Yeah.

[1358] Well, it's hard.

[1359] Like, here's the thing.

[1360] Like, it's so, I remember I was, uh, there's a New Yorker article that came out at the end of 2015.

[1361] And so I, I was doing interviews with the writer, Adrian Chin, who's amazing and he's an amazing writer, just, just generally, not that just that article, but like, and so we're having these conversations, like, like, we, I think we spent three days together in Kansas talking about like, maybe six hours at a time.

[1362] And then on, on the phone, like three and four hour conversations regularly.

[1363] like it was so much like trying to really get across all of these all of this for him to really understand exactly how my mind changed and all the details in the church whatever like and at one point like you know we're talking and and he asked me a question it was about the soldier's funeral I think and then I just immediately started like quoting all these verses and like he's like whoa you just went into this mode like I can tell this is just like this like switching into this like it had been at the church like it's just not possible like even though I think that I don't believe the Bible is the infallible word of God.

[1364] But like I spent so much time like reading it and learning it and and memorizing, you know, chapters at a time with my family and all this stuff.

[1365] So it's like it's right there.

[1366] It's always like and there like I said there is so much good in it.

[1367] So it's like I don't know.

[1368] It's just.

[1369] I know what you're saying that that are it's comforting.

[1370] It's comforting.

[1371] It's and it's and it's it's a part.

[1372] It's a part of.

[1373] It's like to me it was just sorry.

[1374] It's comforting.

[1375] Yeah.

[1376] Yeah.

[1377] Yeah.

[1378] And it's it's it's a part.

[1379] It's a part of.

[1380] It's a part of.

[1381] my home and my upbringing that I can keep.

[1382] As a person outside of it, looking at it, when someone starts spouting out biblical phrases and terms and using these parables and using these stories and passages in the Bible to justify things and then equating like certain aspects of modern thinking and behavior to those things, to me it's almost like I'm looking at mathematics that I don't totally understand.

[1383] It's like, I see what you're doing.

[1384] You're plugging this equation in to achieve a desired result, and this result is a piece of mind.

[1385] Peace of mind is what you're looking to attain, and you're looking to attain justification for your lifestyle and actions, and you can do so with this quote, which is essentially like you're plugging in some sort of theoretical physics.

[1386] I mean, it's a weird stretch of what I'm saying, but what I'm saying is just like the feeling of it.

[1387] The feeling of it is like, oh, I don't like this.

[1388] You use this.

[1389] Oh, and then is that.

[1390] Okay.

[1391] It makes this.

[1392] So it's all these little tools in order to operate the mind on a more harmonious frequency for your own personal satisfaction and your feeling of happiness and peace.

[1393] Like you can feel comfort in the fact that you have quoted the Bible verses that explain your behavior correctly.

[1394] You've made the noises in the right order.

[1395] Yeah.

[1396] And whether or not those noises make sense at all.

[1397] and then when in doubt you throw in like some weird principle like that god has a plan for everything so uh fuck your doubts like we can just stick that right in there and like okay good right so that's like dark matter you know like well where's all the mass oh it's dark matter there you go okay you know what I'm saying it's like it's like it's an odd sort of a thing because the it's the desire sources the uncertainty and the lack of knowledge like you don't understand.

[1398] It's something I don't understand.

[1399] It's okay.

[1400] I don't have to understand it because somebody else understands it.

[1401] Also, you're using tools.

[1402] It's also like you're using these phrases and these tools and these passages to achieve desired results internally as well as externally.

[1403] You're using them to comfort yourself, but you're also using them to prove your point against these others.

[1404] And that's a big part of what's going on with this whole tribalism, cult -like behavior.

[1405] it's justifying your own patterns of thinking by demonizing and marginalizing other patterns of thinking.

[1406] Yes.

[1407] Okay, so this is something that I miss this for a long time too.

[1408] But like so my grandfather, like I think I said earlier maybe that Christians were some of the biggest targets of the church.

[1409] We spent so much time.

[1410] The minor differences.

[1411] Yes, exactly.

[1412] But I mean, even like major differences, like the hatred of God and, you know, like people going to hell for eternity and why and all these things.

[1413] like we we spent so much time grams would instead of saying we are the only ones who have it right westbro baptist church is the only true church in the entire world and i'm 100 % certain of that it was a different strategy it was attacking every other version of christianity every other understanding of of the bible and so and it's like by default it's like well you know exactly why all these people are wrong methodists and catholics and whatever like and you can articulate chapter and verse why they're all wrong and therefore the end like it becomes clear like we are right and we are the only ones who are right and everybody else is so it's just this it's it's so frustrating yeah so frustrating it's well I hate to use the word but it just it lacks enlightenment because it's dealing with conflict and it's dealing with finger pointing it's dealing with insults like just the term fags god hates fags just using that like that in itself it's just like a giant red flag showing the errors of your thinking in order to even sit down and draw this poster like this is this is not god's approach if there is a god of the bible i mean if there is a god that's in charge of this whole thing and he's filled with love and he has a plan for us all you give it super emotional when you're talking about this stuff don't you yeah yeah i see you're all worked up.

[1414] Sorry.

[1415] No, no, don't apologize.

[1416] It's important.

[1417] Look, I mean, it's amazing how well you keep it together without contact with your mom and your dad and your brothers and sisters.

[1418] And it's been four years.

[1419] How long?

[1420] Four and a half.

[1421] Yeah.

[1422] Wow, I totally last my train of thought there.

[1423] That's okay.

[1424] You said something.

[1425] Well, I was talking about just that, the insults and this attack.

[1426] Oh, insults.

[1427] Yeah.

[1428] So, like, the way, like, I always, you know, we would say.

[1429] people don't it's not the method that's the problem it's the message it doesn't matter how we say the message people are still going to hate it like if you if you say you know god created most people to go to hell and we're we're among the only ones going to heaven and sorry suckers you know like people hate that message right um people hate the idea that you have to uh like follow this set of rules like you can't just live the way you want to live you have to obey these ideas as we understand them um like people don't like that message they don't want you telling them what to do so that's we would always make that argument and then of course and you know after when i was thinking about leaving it was like of course it matters how you talk to people of course it does and even the bible talks about it so like you know in the new testament uh paul talks about you know to the jews i became as a jew and to the greeks as a greek and you know to the week i became as weak it's like the idea is like you understand your audience and who you're talking to and you're actually trying to reach them.

[1430] You're not just self -righteously, you know, proclaiming this thing and saying, get on board or you're doomed.

[1431] Like it's, it's, there's, there was no, we had, and we, we sometimes could have those arguments one on one, but like, you know, when we go out to these protests, we're saying these things, and it's so provocative and inflammatory, and we knew it, and we just did it anyway, because we thought it was justified.

[1432] As long as it was true, then it didn't matter how we said it or when we said it or to whom we said it.

[1433] It was a grieving widow or a, you know, a child whose father had just died or parents whose children had just died.

[1434] It's just, it's insane to me now.

[1435] And I can't, I have a hard time, like, so so much of my past, like, I know why I believed what I believed.

[1436] But sometimes that when I see these, these contradictions, I think, what was I thinking when we were reading these verses?

[1437] And I don't, and I can't think of what they could be thinking now, except that it's just that cognitive dissonance, that just just just going past it and shoggs like oh yeah that sounds good but like not seeing you know there's another verse that talks about a deceived heart has turned him aside so he can't even say is there not a lie in my right hand like that's that's the feeling that I have sorry back to the you know quoting ancient ones that great they're great yeah but anyway it's just this is why I think I think you're uniquely qualified to sort of translate those and I I that's the thing like I that's that's why I keep I mean I want to keep asking the questions it's not just about you know I think my family feels they feel attacked I'm sure when I talk about this and why I don't believe it and you know when I send these messages on Twitter and I remember what that felt like you know hearing people that people that I had loved speak against these doctrines and values that I held so so dear but I it's not because I'm trying to hurt them or or embarrass them or humiliate them it's because I I want to help them see right and if if I'm wrong about something then like I want to know that too so it's just it's always this like openness to change and to into I don't know finding a better way one of the things you did that's incredibly brave is not just leave but when you change your thinking and change you have to admit that you fucked up big time you have to admit that your entire life has been essentially about propagating a lie.

[1438] There was a, I honestly, you know Weird Al?

[1439] Yankovic?

[1440] Yeah.

[1441] That is a song that I remember listening to as a kid.

[1442] Which song?

[1443] It was everything you know is wrong, up is down, black is white, and short is long.

[1444] I remember like in this process of like, you know, before we left, like remembering that and being like, I can't believe I just thought of a Weird Al song.

[1445] But yeah, that's totally what it, like just coming to turn.

[1446] terms with like how how wrong and how how could this have been for my entire life and how can I possibly face this like in my own mind let alone to all of these people like I did it in front of the like in front of the whole world you know anybody who'd seen like all the documentaries all the times that I had so publicly defended all these ideas and now realizing like how can I possibly face that right and if you were ever running for office that's the first thing to pull out Look at Megan Phelps in 2003 and the horrible thing she was saying.

[1447] That's what they do, right?

[1448] Yeah, yeah.

[1449] Well, I think your ability to say that you don't agree with what you used to do and you are a different person now is so important for people to hear.

[1450] It's one of the most important things I think you're saying because people feel so imprisoned by their past.

[1451] It's a huge problem with human beings that we repeat sort of the same patterns of behavior because, Because even if they're wrong, there's comfort in going back to those cigarettes.

[1452] There's comfort in binge eating again.

[1453] There's comfort in gambling.

[1454] I know this.

[1455] I know this crazy rush of trying to find crack.

[1456] I'm going for it.

[1457] I mean, there's a lot of weirdness in human behavior patterns.

[1458] And what you've done is not just have real intellectual courage to just actually challenge your own personal thought processes and ideas and look deep.

[1459] into these scriptures that you've been following your whole life and find these contradiction and explore these contradictions and try to debate them but also just to just to come out and say like I was making just big mistakes I think it's really hard to say I mean a lot of things but but two things just for people in general like I messed up yeah and I don't know yeah and like we have to be able to I mean I think to be able to there's so and honestly like this is another thing like there's so much freedom in that in both of those ideas like i i said earlier like certainty there's so much comfort and certainty like you don't have to wonder you don't have to doubt you don't have to question you can just go on your way and know that what you're doing is exactly right and sure like there's so much comfort there but but in my experience it's a false certainty it's a false comfort because you're you're you're going along if you're not if you're not examining if you're not like taking in new evidence if you're not Like saying, I don't know.

[1460] It's like, I don't have to have all the answers.

[1461] Right.

[1462] Like, I can just say, like, I'm doing my best.

[1463] This is where I'm at now.

[1464] Like, I'm sure I'm going to, like, find something, I'm going to find something else that I've got wrong now.

[1465] And I'm just going to keep trying to get, I'm going to keep trying to get better.

[1466] Like, you don't want to become this static.

[1467] You know, you want to be able to grow and learn and understand and do better in as many ways as you can.

[1468] But you're wrestling constantly with a dangerous and volatile factor.

[1469] That's uncertainty.

[1470] Yep.

[1471] And that is, people try to avoid that sucker as much as they can.

[1472] Like, I don't want that.

[1473] Right.

[1474] Just like learning to be comfortable there.

[1475] Like I exist here and I exist in this uncertain space because it's honest.

[1476] Yes.

[1477] I don't know.

[1478] I don't have to know.

[1479] Right.

[1480] I can keep trying to understand and, you know, so it's.

[1481] That's why one of the most, the weakest things you can ever see in a person is a person talking about something in a way where like, like you ask them a question about something.

[1482] and they don't really know, and they try to pretend they do.

[1483] Start to pontificate.

[1484] Yeah, well, you see it instead of saying, God, I don't know, is that true?

[1485] Instead of being, like, open to the possibility of anything being outside of the realm of their understanding, they double down.

[1486] They double down on their ignorance, or they avoid it at all costs.

[1487] And you literally see, literally see, like, the man in the machinery, the ego, just yanking on the gears frantically.

[1488] You can see it.

[1489] We all recognize it.

[1490] It's one of the more fascinating things to me about religion in general is that there, we have this incredible desire to become a part of a group.

[1491] I mean, everybody does.

[1492] We find comfort in these groups, but we also can see the gears spinning when someone does agree with something or someone does say something that resonates or when someone says something that's contradictory.

[1493] We see the gear spinning.

[1494] We recognize that this is all some sort of a weird cognitive dance that we're doing to try to make sense.

[1495] of this temporary existence on a planet hurling through infinity.

[1496] It's insane.

[1497] Yeah, but it's human.

[1498] And it's the human of today.

[1499] You know, it's the human where we find ourselves existing and communicating that clearly is on some sort of path, some sort of weird path of progress and of innovation and of understanding that we're in the middle of.

[1500] We're in the middle of this storm of understanding.

[1501] and it's happening like clearly in your own life and you're living it out in front of the whole world yeah and on that note yeah maybe it's a good way to wrap it up we did already two hours and 45 minutes believe it or not yeah just flew by yeah um you're a brave person and i think it's really important what you're doing it's massive it really is super hard to do I'm sure.

[1502] Thank you.

[1503] And the fact that Twitter is what started all off is even...

[1504] I love Twitter so much.

[1505] I just, I cannot.

[1506] Like, even what you were saying earlier about like, oh, there's only 140 characters.

[1507] Like, like...

[1508] Don't diss Twitter.

[1509] But here's the thing.

[1510] Like, it's so crazy.

[1511] Like, Twitter, like, the fact that it's only 140 characters, like, nothing taught me how to be more...

[1512] I'm very, I'm verbose.

[1513] I talk a lot.

[1514] But, like, in writing, and I do the same thing in writing.

[1515] But, like, on Twitter, like, it taught me to, like, distill my ideas and become concise.

[1516] And it stopped me from using, that was one of the things, one of the ways that I stopped, like, insulting people instinctively.

[1517] Because, like, we did it so much.

[1518] Like, we would write these elaborate insults, like, responding to emails and stuff.

[1519] Because, like, obviously, on email, you can write as much as you want.

[1520] But, like, on Twitter, like, so it's two things.

[1521] Like, one, only 140 characters, if I, like, throw in a, you idiot, like, there's no space for it.

[1522] But also, like, when I did do that, like, there's this immediate feedback loop that you get.

[1523] So, like, you can watch the conversation derail in real time.

[1524] Yeah.

[1525] And then you realize, like, okay, no, I just need to not, like, because instead of, like, addressing the arguments, like, then you're saying, like, you know, you, like, you don't know me, they risk, you know, they'll answer.

[1526] And, like, it just, it stops, anyway, it stops the conversation.

[1527] Like, you want it to be about the points or whatever.

[1528] It was like, I learned so much about communication from Twitter.

[1529] And I just love it so much.

[1530] Like, it's just a tool.

[1531] Like, it depends on how we use it.

[1532] I use it a lot.

[1533] And I learn a lot of things on it.

[1534] I mean, I'm constantly being sent articles.

[1535] And that's where I found out about the 300 ,000 -year -old human.

[1536] And, I mean, every day someone sends me something and I retweet it.

[1537] And that's how we got connected.

[1538] Yeah, there you go.

[1539] So there you go.

[1540] More Twitter.

[1541] Yes.

[1542] Your book is coming out when?

[1543] I don't know yet.

[1544] I'm finishing the last draft.

[1545] And I'm not even going to tell you the name right now because I really want a different name.

[1546] Okay.

[1547] Don't tell me. Yeah, I'm not going to tell you.

[1548] Sorry.

[1549] What did you say, Jamie?

[1550] Oh.

[1551] Okay.

[1552] Um, if people want to see more of your stuff, I know you have a TED talk that's out there.

[1553] Right.

[1554] Um, my Twitter account is just Megan Phelps.

[1555] Um, yeah.

[1556] That's it.

[1557] Well, yeah, there's going to be the book, but, uh...

[1558] Well, when the book comes out, come back on again.

[1559] We'll do it again.

[1560] All right.

[1561] And we'll tweet out your book and let everybody know.

[1562] Amazing.

[1563] I really enjoy this conversation.

[1564] Thank you very much.

[1565] Thank you.

[1566] Thank you for being so brave, too.

[1567] Thank you.

[1568] Huge.

[1569] What you've done is huge.

[1570] Thank you.

[1571] For a lot of people listening to.

[1572] Thank you so much.

[1573] All right.

[1574] Everybody.

[1575] See you tomorrow.

[1576] Bye.