“If anything bad happened to me,” she said, “it was because I was a sinner. It was because I deserved it. Instead of showing compassion or understanding or trying to help—you know, being a parent—my mother said things like that.” I was dumbfounded. Westboro and this woman’s mother clearly did not draw from all the same wells, but their attitudes sounded remarkably similar: an unwavering certainty in their righteousness and a categorical disdain for any ideas that did not fit with their own. Although it saddened me to hear, I also felt a surge of recognition that made me oddly hopeful. Maybe it
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