Damsel, Arise: A Westboro Scion Leaves Her Church

Her departure has hurt them already-she knew it would-yet there was no way she could stay. “My doubts started with a conversation I had with David Abitbol,” she says. Megan met David, an Israeli web developer who’s part of the team behind the blog Jewlicious, on Twitter. “I would ask him questions about Judaism, and he would ask me questions about church doctrine. One day, he asked a specific question about one of our signs-‘Death Penalty for Fags’-and I was arguing for the church’s position, that it was a Levitical punishment and as completely appropriate now as it was then. He said, ‘But Jesus said’-and I thought it was funny he was quoting Jesus-‘Let he who is without sin cast the first stone.’ And then he connected it to another member of the church who had done something that, according to the Old Testament, was also punishable by death. I realized that if the death penalty was instituted for any sin, you completely cut off the opportunity to repent. And that’s what Jesus was talking about.”

I think this is the church member that emailed me a couple of times about this story I wrote, giving me pictures of their protest. At the time I thought it was funny that they were so willing and proud to give me photos that made them look so awful, because they were clueless how the entire rest of society views them. It’s amazing that any of them was persuadable and capable of rational thought.