Watch This: Ex-Westboro Member Talks About Why She Left

When you mention the Westboro Baptist Church (WBC), it doesn’t exactly bring up feelings of goodwill. The WBC is better known for picketing funerals and concerts with signs that had such offensive messages like “God hates f**s!”

And while ex-Westboro member Megan Phelps-Roper’s 15-minute TED Talk isn’t going to change that impression anytime soon, it does provide a peek into what her life was like with that church, as well as a lot of insight on what it was exactly that drew her out of it.

In the video that was posted this Monday, Phelps-Roper recalled being in a picket line as a five-year-old and holding up a sign that read “Gays are worthy of death.” From there she talked about how the WBC considered everyone else as evil and their church as good, and how they spent most of their making the world aware of this.

“From baseball games to military funerals, we trekked across the country with neon protest signs in hand to tell others exactly how ‘unclean’ they were and exactly why they were headed for damnation. This was the focus of our whole lives,” she says.

What changed the course of her life was her decision to go on Twitter, where she found herself questioning her own beliefs after encountering several Twitter users who had the patience to engage with her, ask her questions, and try to understand her point of view. it’s because of these Twitter followers that Phelps-Roper ended up questioning her own beliefs and leaving the Westboro Baptist Church. She even ended up marrying one of them, a Jewish blogger named David.

Phelps-Roper has not been with the WBC since 2012, but she says that she sees similarities with the way she was raised to the state of public discourse in the Trump era.

“We celebrate tolerance and diversity more than at any other time in memory, and still we grow more and more divided,” she said. “We want good things —justice, equality, freedom, dignity, prosperity — but the path we’ve chosen looks so much like the one I walked away from four years ago.”

Phelps-Roper calls instead on people to do as the Twitter users did with her — engage, question, and make the case for your side.

“We are all a product of our upbringing, and our beliefs reflect our experiences. We can’t expect others to spontaneously change their own minds,” she said. “If we want change, we have to make the case for it.”

You can watch the entirety of Phelps-Roper’s Ted Talk below.

What do you think of Megan Phelps-Roper’s Ted Talk? Do you agree with her insights? Share your thoughts with us in the comments section!