Unfollow: A Memoir of Loving and Leaving the Westboro Baptist Church

by Megan Phelps-Roper

At the root of my shame was the assumption that I had nothing to learn from people like David and C.G.—a premise that had so clearly proved false. Bit by bit, my shame was being replaced by profound gratitude to Twitter for its commitment to being “the free speech wing of the free speech party.” Instead of booting me from the platform for “hate speech,” as many had demanded, it had put me in conversation with people and ideas that effectively challenged beliefs that had been hammered into me since I was a child—and that conversation had been far more illuminating than decades’ worth of rage, isolation, and efforts to shame and silence. It struck me as ironic that this very idea had been repeatedly referenced by church members when they spoke of the First Amendment, a quote from 1920s-era Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis: “If there be time to expose through discussion the falsehood and fallacies, to avert the evil by the processes of education, the remedy to be applied is more speech, not enforced silence.”