Former Westboro Baptist Church Members Open Up at Jewlicious Festival
Talk about coming full circle.
Three years after members of the Westboro Baptist Church picketed the Jewlicious festival, two granddaughters of the controversial congregation’s pastor appeared at the weekend event to give their first speech since defecting from the group, most of whose members are their relatives.
The March 8-10 visit by Megan and Grace Phelps-Roper at the annual, youth-oriented festival in Long Beach couldn’t have been more different from what happened in 2010. That’s when Megan, her mother and several other members of the church picketed the festival as one of many Westboro protests against Jewish institutions.
The most notable antic at the time was a sign, held by Megan’s sister Rebekah, that read, “Your rabbi is a whore,” directed at Rabbi Yonah Bookstein, the director of Jewlicious.
The two sisters told the story behind their decision to sever ties with their family and the Kansas-based congregation to a group of about 150 young Jewish adults on Shabbat afternoon in a grand banquet room aboard the Queen Mary cruise ship in Queensway Bay.
“I couldn’t continue living there, because I knew nothing was going to change,” said Megan, 27. But, she added quietly, “Leaving my family was so hard. We want them back.”
Her family is often in the news for picketing soldiers’ funerals (“Pray for More Dead Soldiers”), Jewish events (“God Hates Israel”), gay pride events (“USA=Fag Nation”), and numerous other gatherings related to issues that it believes are sinful.
With her younger sister Grace, 20, beside her, Megan described their internal conflict with some of the church’s teachings that culminated with their departure from their family’s Topeka home in November.
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