Walking In The Light

MEGAN PHELPS-ROPER WAS BROUGHT UP IN THE NOTORIOUS WESTBORO BAPTIST CHURCH, WHICH PUBLICLY PREACHES HATE AND PREJUDICE. BUT NOW SHE’S AN ACTIVIST FOR TOLERANCE AND LOVE, WITH A TED TALK THAT’S BEEN VIEWED EIGHT MILLION TIMES AND A BESTSELLING MEMOIR THAT’S SET FOR THE SILVER SCREEN.

SOCIAL MEDIA OFTEN comes under fire for being the cesspool of the internet, a place that breeds hatred and intolerance as much as it does laugh-out-loud memes. But it can also bring about a lot of good in the world – as Megan Phelps-Roper discovered. For Phelps-Roper, Twitter is the place where she learnt love is always a better comeback than loathing, where she found a new self, a new life and a new career... and even a husband. “I love Twitter!” she says. On Twitter, as in life, Phelps-Roper walks in the light. But she didn’t start off that way.

If her name sounds familiar, it’s probably thanks to the three documentaries filmmaker Louis Theroux has made about the church she grew up in, the Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka, Kansas, which many class as a hate group. Founded by her grandfather Fred Phelps, Westboro’s congregation is still mainly made up of Phelps-Roper’s family, and came to fame thanks to its habit of picketing the funerals of soldiers killed in Iraq and Afghanistan. The members would march up and down, singing hymns and carrying signs with slogans like “God hates fags” to spread their message that God was directly killing Americans as punishment for the country’s increased acceptance of homosexuality – along with fornication, abortion and all the other fundamentalist flashpoints.