ABC News 20/20 June 4, 2010
Raised to Hate: Kids of Westboro Baptist Church
Coached by His Dad, 7-Year-Old Says 'Gays, Fags, Hundreds ... of Jews' Are Bound for Hell
By GLENN RUPPEL, KELSEY MYERS and EAMON MCNIFF
Boaz Drain, a seven-year-old from Topeka, Kan., and his six-year-old sister Faith are the picture of typical American children, chock full of energy, fun and imagination. They watch movies like "Shrek" and enjoy playing with the standards like "Star Wars" light sabers and ray guns.
Yet ABC News' Chris Cuomo was shocked to hear some of the things Bo told him when he visited the Drain family recently.
"I don't think you'll go to heaven, I think you'll go to hell," Bo told Cuomo, adding those who were destined for eternal damnation included "gays, fags, hundreds and hundreds of Jews," among a wide swath of other people that Bo has been taught since birth were hated by God and bound for Hell.
Bo's family belongs to the infamous Westboro Baptist Church, led by Pastor Fred Phelps. Members believe the Bible is the literal law of God, and the penalty for violating the rules and lessons put forth in the scriptures is eternal damnation.
Westboro, based out of Topeka, Kan., spreads the message that because the United States condones homosexuality, abortion and divorce, all Americans are going to hell. It's a message they hammer home to their children from birth.
"He [God] only loves his elect that obey and he doesn't love the people that don't obey," Bo told Cuomo.
While his father, Steve Drain, stood nearby and occasionally coached his son on the beliefs of the church, Bo went into the ideology he said he firmly believes in.
"You get destroyed and you get put in hell. Hell is like a burning place where it can never be stopped, burning, and it can burn millions of people every day," Bo said about homosexuals.
Bo also considers "enablers" of homosexuality, including all citizens of the United States, to be destined for hell.
Steve and Luci Drain have four children -- Bo, Faith, 19-year-old Taylor Drain and 24-year-old Lauren Drain. Steve Drain was filming a documentary on Fred Phelps and the church in 2000 and came to accept the church's beliefs, uprooting his family from Florida and moving them across the street from Westboro's compound in Topeka.
The Children of Westboro
Most of Westboro's 70 or so congregants are Phelps' family and relatives living in or near the church compound. Their children often can be found playing in the backyard together before joining the parents in their daily task of picketing the streets.
Westboro members made national headlines in 1998 when they arrived at the funeral of Matthew Shepard of Wyoming. Shepard was beaten to death by two men because he was gay and the church held signs proclaiming Shepard was in hell because of his sexuality.
Aside from daily pickets in Topeka, the children of Westboro accompany their parents across the country, arriving at funerals and other events holding signs against the country, gays, other religions and specific public figures -- damning them all to hell, proclaiming God hates anyone not in line and praising God for taking lives.
Church members insist they actually love everybody, and that is why they and their kids picket events. They say they are warning everyone of God's anger in hopes people will change their ways. However, that message often riles up crowds and can put the church's members and their young children in danger.
"We've had knives or guns waved at us, and lots of violent angry people," Lauren Drain told Cuomo.
A particular target of the church is fallen soldiers, according to Steve Drain, who said the church arrives at the funerals to let families know their loved ones are in hell because they fought for a supposedly damned country.
"Military people mostly do the nastiest stuff ... and they, like, let their kids be raped and stuff like that," Bo said when asked why he thought members of the military were going to hell.
His dad, however, clarified their beliefs off camera.
"Remember what we all say: No God fearing man or woman would lift a finger fighting for a country awashed in sin like this," Steve Drain said to his son.
Church Produces Music Videos to Propagate Beliefs
The message is reinforced to Bo and his sisters every night when they sit at home and go over Phelps' fire and brimstone-filled sermons. Steve Drain also has cast the children in the wide variety of music videos the church produces that lampoon popular music and ideas, with their own beliefs on every topic imaginable.
The children of the Westboro Baptist Church can be seen singing enthusiastically to the tune of songs like "Santa Claus is Coming to Town," saying instead, "Santa Claus will take you to hell," as well as the Beatles classic "Hey Jude" ("Hey, Evil Reprobate Jew").
One video features little Faith Drain, with bright blue eyes and blond hair, smiling brightly through a verse of "God Hates the World," that her parents are proud to say they taught her.
"How many people teach their daughter to gyrate and do some Britney Spears song?" Steve Drain said. "I'm teaching my daughter what the scripture says."
"And the scripture says if you don't obey the Lord, your God, you're going to hell," Luci Drain added.
Estranged Daughter: 'They Sing Lullabies About People Going to Hell'
According to their oldest daughter, Lauren Drain, the songs and the pickets and the constant lessons on Phelps' sermons are all part of the church's constant indoctrination.
"They sing lullabies about people going to hell," she told Chris Cuomo in an exclusive interview. "I remember I did that with Faith, and I was teaching her songs and stuff. I was trying to please my parents."
As Lauren Drain reached her 20s however, she said she began to question the gospel she was surrounded by, questions that quickly drew the ire of her follow congregants.
"I saw some hypocrisy, and I mentioned them and they hated it," she said. "You're not supposed to question anything."
Lauren Drain said her natural curiosity drew rebukes from Pastor Fred Phelps.
Eventually, she said, when she was 21 the members voted her out of the church and out of her home, including her own parents.
"My dad didn't cry, my sister didn't cry, my mom cried, she said. "I'm bawling and like out of my mind, you know, and they're laughing. I'm telling them I'm sorry. I'm telling them I'll do anything, what is it going to take, when can I come back."
But her pleas fell on deaf ears, and the same night she was voted out she said her family sent her to stay at a hotel and cut off all communication.
A week later, Lauren Drain returned home to pick up her belongings and said she found that her youngest sister Faith already had been taught to hate her.
"I was gone a week, came back to get my stuff, and my little 3-year-old sister told me, 'You don't live here anymore.' Mocking me," Lauren Drain said. "I raised her from the time she was born. I used to watch her every day. And a week later, she is happy I'm gone."
A Family Divided Over Message of God
Lauren Drain said it was very hard to come to terms with what had happened to her. She has tried to move on and start a new life, working as a nurse over a thousand miles away.
It's been three years, and she still greatly misses her family and yearns for contact. But she said she could never go back to her former life. After struggling with her beliefs, she now rejects the hate she was taught by the Westboro Baptist Church. She hopes her siblings one day can make the choice she did. If they do, they too likely would be cast out.
"The people who are spiritually bound to one another because of a shared fear of the Lord, that's really your family," Steve Drain said.
Drain said if Bo decided he wanted to stop believing, he'd simply say goodbye to him and be done with it.
So far, Bo and his sisters are keeping in line. Bo said he doesn't play with other children at school who are not in the church, although it can be hard. And he seems, at least at his young age, firmly planted in his church.
"I'm preaching and I'm going with this church, and that's what the church says. I'm going to go with that my entire life," Bo said.
As for the daughter they have lost, Steve and Luci Drain said they don't miss her and don't think they would ever allow her back.
"Why would I miss her?" Steve Drain asked.
"She chose a life that is contrary to the Scriptures. She chose that life," Luci Drain said.
The daughter they now say is bound for hell seems to be the only one still talking about love.
Lauren Drain said she wishes she could speak to her younger brother and sisters, to tell them she loves them and that the hate they spread is not the true message of God.
"I miss them and I love them and I really care about them, and God doesn't hate everyone. God has mercy on people, God forgives people," Lauren Drain said she'd tell her siblings.
As for her parents, she said that, no matter what, she still loves them.
"There are horrible things I went through, and I don't hate them," she said. "I forgive them. They're my parents. How can I not love them?"
This article was found at:
http://abcnews.go.com/2020/raised-hate-kids-westboro-baptist-church/story?id=10809348
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Notorious pastor's atheist son speaks out at Reason Rally
ReplyDeleteBy Kim Geiger, Los Angeles Times March 24, 2012
Reporting from Washington
In what has been billed as “the largest secular event in world history,” athiests will gather in Washington D.C. today to rally in support of secularism.
The event, known as the Reason Rally, also will feature a collision of estranged family members. Nate Phelps, the atheist son of Westboro Baptist Church Pastor Fred Phelps, will address the crowd as his father’s church pickets the event in protest.
The Westboro Baptist Church of Topeka, Kan., has become infamous for using military funerals as a backdrop to promote an anti-gay, anti-military message. The church believes that the United States is too tolerant of sin and that the death of American soldiers is God’s punishment.
The church was sued by the father of Lance Cpl. Matthew A. Snyder – a Marine killed in Iraq – after it staged a protest at Snyder’s funeral with signs such as “Thank God for dead soldiers” and “God hates fags.” In a controversial ruling last March, the Supreme Court said that the church’s speech was protected and therefore it could not be sued for the offensive protest.
Nate Phelps is one of 13 children of Fred Phelps. A professed atheist, he is among four of Phelps’ children who have defected from the church. When Nate Phelps, who has not had contact with much of his family for decades, learned that the church planned to picket the Reason Rally, he decided to counter the protest by speaking out at the event.
In an interview with the Los Angeles Times, Phelps discussed his childhood, the day he left the church, and his views on religion and free speech.
LAT: What was your religious training like growing up?
Phelps: The actual theology is called Calvinism. And at the centerpiece of Calvinism is this idea of absolute predestination, that God is the one that picks the saved, as opposed to us making that decision for ourselves. And it was, you know, the environment was such that whatever our father defined as the doctrines of the Bible was what we were required to believe. So there really wasn’t any choice in the matter.
I don’t know, I guess that’s probably it, in a thumbnail.
Have you always been an atheist or was it a personal journey that led you to your beliefs?
Well, no, I haven’t always been an atheist. You know, growing up in that environment, atheism was a frightening proposition. And, you know, everything pushed us in the direction of looking for – and I think at the age of 14 or 15, I actually declared myself saved, which was the necessary process for being in that church, and was baptized.
I will say that I always had questions centered around the behavior of my father and the ideas that he espoused there. But it wasn’t until years after I left, and I would say probably only the last five or six years, that I have been willing to finally let go of the idea of a god. So it’s been a journey.
How did you get along with your father as a child? And was he aware of your beliefs, or did you keep it to yourself?
It was not an option to openly discuss any doubts which you might have. It wasn’t safe, physically or otherwise, to even consider such a thing.
So I learned early on to keep my thoughts to myself. And, you know, plus there was a component, you know, we heard regularly that we were just dumb kids and didn’t have any idea what we were talking about. So that played a part in the amount of validity that I gave those thoughts.
As far as the relationship with my father, the best way I could describe it was I was afraid of him from very early on. That never really changed, growing up. But it never got to the point where it was a sense of having a, you know, father like you might imagine that was an educator, a helper, you know, that kind of father figure. So he was always the disciplinarian and a threat in my mind.
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ReplyDeleteWhen did you leave the church?
I left on the night of my 18th birthday, literally at the stroke of midnight.
I bought an old car, used car from one of the people that worked at the high school, and I packed all my stuff up without anybody knowing about it. And on that night, when everybody was asleep, I went out and got the car and put it in the driveway and loaded the trunk with my boxes and then went back in the house and waited at the bottom of the stairs, watched the clock go up to midnight, and I left.
Where did you go?
The first three nights, I had a friend who was the manager of a gas station near the high school I went to, and he gave me a key to the front door and I slept in the bathroom of the gas station for the first three nights.
And then my brother’s girlfriend’s mother found out about it and she offered me a room in her house. So I went from there and then eventually getting a job and getting my own place.
When did you end up in California?
That was actually like five years later.
I went to work for a law office in the Kansas City area and then I later went to St. Louis, went to work for a printing company there that my brother was working at. And we eventually came back to the Kansas City area and started a printing company that would eventually bring us out to Southern California, where we opened eight different stores out there.
There are a couple of them (still around), but they’re owned by someone else now. I lived in California for 25 years.
Was that an older brother, the brother who had already left?
Yeah. That was Mark.
And how many years did he leave before you left?
I seem to recall – I think that I was 16 when he left, so he would have been 19 or 20. So it was a couple years before I left, that he left.
He was – Mark was, he was kind of the, in everybody’s mind, he was the one who was going to follow in my father’s footsteps. As it turned out, he had just figured out that that was the way that he was going to survive that environment, was by being, you know, his father’s yes man.
So he was still around when he was 19. I think he might have even been pushing 20. And his girlfriend, who had found favor with my father and was attending church regularly and was on the path to being accepted there, came to church one Sunday night and found my father upstairs beating my older sister. And everybody thought – some of the other church members were already there, and we were all just kind of standing around out in the auditorium while all of this screaming and yelling was going on upstairs. And Lueva (sp), who was Mark’s girlfriend, was – she was just freaked out by it. She was like, why isn’t anybody doing anything? And then they got upset at her for even suggesting such a thing.
So she turned around and marched out and Mark chased her and she basically said I’m not going to raise a child in this kind of environment and forced him to choose between her or that situation.
So that’s what drove Mark away.
How do you feel you are treated, as an atheist?
I mean, the general attitude amongst the Christian community is, as it has been for centuries now, that if you don’t believe in god, that you are the enemy and there’s something morally degenerate about you.
And you know, that attitude’s been around for a long time. It’s not going to go away. But I think if we’re ever going to change it, just like some of the other misperceptions throughout our history, we have to be honest about it and try to have dialogue with people. And eventually, that perception will change because it’s not based in facts.
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ReplyDeleteWhat is your family’s view of evolution?
They are young Earthers. They believe the world is 6,000, 10,000 years old. And that evolution is nonsense. At least that’s what they believed when I was growing up there.
I don’t know how it’s possible to hold to that belief after as much information that’s come out.
Have you had any contact with the families of people whose funerals have been picketed by the church?
I had some email conversations back and forth with – I can’t remember his first name now, but the gentleman who sued my family in Snyder vs. Phelps. He and I talked back and forth.
I have had scores of emails from people who have had to deal with the presence in their town, not necessarily family members, but community members, talking about how upsetting it was for them to be there with the protests. But a lot of that, hundreds of emails, if not thousands, from young gay people who are trying to come to terms with the message that they’re hearing.
And so I’ve gotten tons of that over the last couple years.
What do you tell those people?
I just, you know, apologize, for one. And I try to express to them that that attitude isn’t consistently out there, and that, in my opinion, it’s not accurate. What else can I say?
Sometimes I get very specific questions asked about theology, and I’ll answer it as honestly as I can as far as what I believe today.
What are your thoughts on the recent debate over birth control and abortion?
I have changed my attitude about that a lot over the years. I started out in favor of abortion rights just because my father was against it. But that wasn’t a good reason.
I guess the bottom line for me is while I couldn’t condone it for myself, I feel very strongly that that is a individual personal decision for each woman to make for themselves, and that the government has no business being involved in it. And it’s frightening to see how quickly and destructively we’ve moved back that direction.
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ReplyDeleteDo you agree with the Supreme Court’s ruling in the Snyder vs. Phelps case?
No. But I think I need to explain that a little bit.
A lot of people out there believe that the Supreme Court ruled that they have a right to picket at funerals. And that simply isn’t true. In fact, Chief Justice Roberts, who wrote the majority opinion, very specifically in that opinion said that they were not addressing that question because they didn’t need to, that they were only looking at the details of the Snyder case and that their First Amendment rights prevailed over that idea of intentional infliction of emotional distress. But they deliberately avoided challenging those forty-some state and federal laws that are on the books right now.
So, that question hasn’t been answered yet by the Supreme Court. That’s one thing I would want to say.
The other thing I would want to say is that I think that it is a false dichotomy for Americans to see this as an either-or question, that either they have the free speech rights or they don’t. I think that we can find – because, in my opinion, the right to bury our loved ones in peace is one that we have lived with as long as humans have been around, just because it doesn’t appear in the Constitution doesn’t mean that we don’t have that right or haven’t behaved with that right.
So I see it as a question of competing rights. And I think that the idea that we could limit the place and time for people to express their free speech, in this instance, is legitimate.
We can still have a robust, healthy right to free speech in America and give people the time and place and proper decorum for burying their loved ones.
What do you think is the greatest misperception about atheists?
Well, the most common misperception is that to deny God is to deny a system of morality or to abandon a system of morality. And the fact is the vast majority of atheists – first of all, atheism is … it’s simply a rejection of the idea of a god. But most atheists embrace a humanist ideology…. Square at the center of that ideology is the idea that we treat humans with kindness and respect.
So there most definitely is a moral system inherent in the conclusions that atheists draw.
http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-pn-q-a-nate-phelps-20120324,0,4407066.story
TODDLER'S AIN'T NO HOMOS SONG Puts Church on Lockdown Pastor Gets Death Threats
ReplyDeleteTMZ May 30, 2012
Members of an Indiana church say they've been flooded with death threats since video of a 3-year-old proudly singing, "Ain't no homos gonna make it to heaven" ... was posted on the Internet.
Multiple members of the Apostolic Truth Tabernacle Church in Greensburg, Indiana tell TMZ the church office has been getting harassing calls and the pastor has received death threats at his home. They also say a prayer meeting scheduled for this evening at church had to be moved to a secret location.
We're told they are looking into increasing security, but for now the congregation is handling it ... taking turns watching over the church.
One member says Pastor Jeff Sangl is extremely worried about his safety -- and this morning he and his wife left for vacation without telling anyone where they were going.
Despite the threats, all the members we spoke to have no regrets about the song getting posted online -- in fact one said, "The people who are upset just don't read the word of God. If we don't teach the children the truth early they will never learn."
As for the thunderous applause after the hate-filled song -- we're told, "Of course we applauded a child who is singing a song about God."
http://www.tmz.com/2012/05/30/indiana-toddler-church-song-aint-no-homos-death-threats/
see video at: http://www.tmz.com/2012/05/30/indiana-toddler-church-song-no-homos-heaven/
This video is nuts -- an Indiana toddler took the mic at his church recently, and sang a hate-filled anti-gay song ... with the lyrics, "Ain't no homos gonna make it to heaven" ... and the crowd went WILD.
The video was reportedly recorded at the Apostolic Truth Tabernacle in Greensburg, Indiana -- featuring a young boy on the altar, barely old enough to walk, singing a song he was obviously spoon fed.
It's pretty hard to make out the words -- so here are the lyrics ...
"The Bible’s right, somebody’s wrong.
The Bible’s right, somebody’s wrong.
Romans one, twenty six and twenty seven;
Ain’t no homos gonna make it to Heaven."
The congregation erupts in thunderous applause after the song.
FYI, here's Romans 1:26-27 -- "Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural sexual relations for unnatural ones. In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed shameful acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their error."
It's the latest video to hit the web showing rampant homophobia in America's churches -- starting with a North Carolina pastor advocating beating the gay out of your child ... and another NC pastor talking about fencing up gay people and letting them die out.
see: Pastor Sean Harris -- Beat the Gay Out of Your Kid! http://www.tmz.com/videos/0_xf12hm61
N.C. Pastor Charles Worley: "Put Gays And Lesbians In Electrified Pen To Kill Them Off" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w2839yEazcs