Activist

I don't think that, if you do everything else in your life right and you happen to be gay, you're automatically going to hell.

When we engage people across ideological divides, asking questions helps us map the disconnect between our differing points of view.

If you can see these people... as human beings and capable of change, there is hope. We should be willing to reach out. Imagine what could happen if we kept reaching out to people like Westboro members?

Loving someone whose ideas we find detestable can seem impossible, and empathizing with them isn't much easier - but it's so important to remember that listening is not agreeing.

There's so much power in seeing the possibility of change.

I had never experienced the death of someone close to me until my grandfather passed away.

Empathy is not a betrayal of one's cause.

We read the whole Bible, cover to cover, over and over again... It wasn't that we read selective parts of the Bible. It was that we interpreted it in this very selective way.

When we lose hope that there is a possibility of reaching the other side - I don't even like to say the 'other side' because there are so many sides, and breaking it down into us/them is oversimplifying - it allows us to treat people in a way that's incredibly destructive.

I wanted to do everything right. I wanted to be good, and I wanted to be obedient, and I wanted to be the object of my parents' pride. I wanted to go to Heaven.

I know I want to do good for people. And I want to treat people well.

I don't believe in God anymore.

Arguing is fun when you think you have all the answers.

My church's antics were such that we were constantly at odds with the world. That reinforced our 'otherness' on a daily basis.

At Westboro, the depictions of hell are extremely vivid. The only thing that changes in hell, according to the church, is your capacity to feel pain. As the capacity to feel pain increases, so does the pain. It's absolutely terrifying. I believed God was going to curse me for having left this group of people.

We were supposed to be able to use the Bible's words to explain what we were doing, and if we couldn't do that, then we shouldn't be doing it.

I liked 'The Sun Also Rises.'

You know, I had grown up standing on public sidewalks, saying things that people, you know, were very provoked by and were upset by. And - but standing outside that first soldier's funeral, it was eerily quiet.

Generally, people don't change their minds about fundamentally deeply held beliefs; it doesn't happen in an instant - it's a process.

I don't believe any more that WBC has a monopoly on truth.