“And once the storm is over, you won’t
remember how you made it through, how you managed to survive. You won’t even be
sure, whether the storm is really over. But one thing is certain. When you come
out of the storm, you won’t be the same person who walked in.”
Haruki
Murakami (born 1949)
I’m not certain what it is about the physiology of humans
that makes us slow our cars to look at the carnage of a car accident but it
seems to be a prevailing part of human nature. We know that it slows traffic.
We know that it complicates the work of emergency responders. We just can’t
help ourselves. We have to look. Perhaps it is the fear that we might see
someone that we know or perhaps it is the knowledge of the randomness. Perhaps
it is the idea that in a moment of vulnerability it could be us on the side of
the road. We could unintentionally give way to inattentiveness for a moment and
change the course of life for ourselves or someone else. On the other hand we
give less attention to the things that are right in our worlds. It doesn’t seem
to be our nature to look for the best in others. We don’t celebrate the teacher
who teaches our child to think outside the box. We don’t recognize the efforts
of the man who routinely stops to pick up trash from the side of the street. We
certainly don’t see the miraculous in the flower that sprouts from crack in the
sidewalk. We don’t consider the odds of its presence. We don’t spend one moment
thinking of the breeze that carried it there, the force that implanted it or
the tenacity of the life force that allowed it to grow and reach for the
sun. Often we don’t even stop to
acknowledge its beauty.
Fred Phelps is a tyrant.
He is a zealot who spews hate. The media has spread the word of his
highly distasteful protests at funerals to the entire world. He and his
followers ride the jet stream of well publicized and tragic deaths and his
hateful words and acts are protected by the first amendment. His words and
actions repulse reasonable people but we can’t help but stop to look. We are
transfixed and our attention empowers him.
Long before Fred Phelps became a household name his wife and
children were subjected to humiliation, starvation and physical abuse. The cruelty to which his family was imperiled
is sickening and heartbreaking. Although I find myself wanting to list these
details they are well documented in many publications and easily found on the
internet. I encourage you to research this information which will help you to
understand the power he had and still has over his family and followers.
Nate Phelps is the sixth of thirteen children born to Fred
and Margie Phelps. Like his siblings he
is highly intelligent, well- spoken and passionate. Unlike most of his siblings
Nate courageously escaped his father’s tyranny at age 18. Today Nate has
dedicated his life to serving as an advocate for GLBT rights. He is an author,
public speaker and avid atheist. Nate’s
story reminds me of stories that I have heard from WWII survivors, stories of
people who in the darkness and despair of tragedy allowed their courage and
beauty to lead others to safety. Nate is proof that true beauty is resilient
and can be born from misfortune.
A few months ago my son Adam called me to tell me that he
had attended a conference at which Nate was a speaker. Adam asked me to
research Nate and learn more about him and I did. I hadn’t heard of Nate or the
work that he was doing. I inhaled everything I found but discovered myself wanting
to know more. I emailed Nate and asked for an interview and he graciously
accepted. I found him to be very authentic and surprisingly forgiving. It is my sense that Nate has absolutely no
idea that he is truly remarkable.
This is our conversation:
Q: Reading
about the abuse that your father dealt out was emotional for me. There were
details shared that were will haunt me for a lifetime. The degradation to which you were all
subjected to was horrifying. I can’t imagine living through those experiences
without taking on a sense of “self-loathing”.
Is that a battle that you fight? If so, are you getting better at it?
A:
Yes, it was (is to some degree) a daily
battle. As a child you absorb it unedited and it is the truth. If you're lucky
you find enough of yourself to defy it. It's a constant battle, fed by the
circumstances of your life. In my speeches I talk about the hours of
disappearing into my head, silently raging at my father. Today I think that
process was a big part of what saved me. Somewhere I could challenge him and
his ideas and come out a winner. Not that winning was the goal, just that
defeating that self-loathing tape was crucial. When I moved to Canada, it was
at the tail end of a failed marriage of 23 years. I sat in a broken chair, in a
broken house, in a foreign land and I was utterly lost. Angela was busy cooking
and I fell into a hole. She turned and saw the look on my face, dropped what
she was doing and rushed over. She put her hands on my face, looked into my
eyes and said "don't do this...don't go to that place of fear and guilt.
You have to question your assumptions Nate". I had heard this before but I
was never prepared to receive it until that moment. It was my life line. I hear
it every time I move toward that darkness.
Q: I have
recognized as I grow older that I am my parent’s daughter. There are some
elements of me that are undeniably traits passed to me in my DNA. Some of those
qualities make me laugh, some worry me, some comfort me and some infuriate me.
Do you see your father and mother in yourself? How do you manage that? Can you
provide some positive attribute that are a part of your parents?
A:
I see it as a part of my environment (DNA
or learned) that I am constantly motivated to be someone...make a difference.
That could be a false perception, but my father was driven and he demanded it
of us. As I thought about this answer, it dawned on me that I am not sure what
my mother brings to this equation. I have argued over the years that it was her
quiet gentleness that provided the good in all of the children. Yes, there is
much good in my siblings. The public image is one of hate and madness, but
that's just the religious part. They are generally good people in most ways.
I recall
very clearly that my mother was extreme in her insistence that the male
children never strike one of the females. As an adult it makes sense that she
was powerless to change my father's actions in that regard but, by god, she was
not going to raise abusive sons.
Another
specific aspect of this question is that I have spent my adult life over
reacting to abusive men. On several occasions I put myself in immediate harms
way to intervene between a man and the woman he was abusing. In each case it
was (and I say this somewhat tongue in cheek) beyond my control not to
intervene. I have a visceral response to aggressive men, physical or verbal. My
instinct is to avoid men in life and to lead with mistrust. I despise extreme
expressions of anger. I see it as a weakness in myself and others because it
can do such long lasting harm. I made a point of teaching my children that
anger is normal, anger is good if it's righteous, but the Bible says "be
angry but sin not". Even the Bible gets it right every now and then :) The point I make is that we have a profound
duty to find ways to release our angry energy in neutral or constructive ways.
Maybe I
went a bit too far afield with that point, but it seems to fit. I have anger in
me. It is my father's anger (DNA wise), and it is my enemy.
Q: I
listened to a “you tube” speech that you gave at the University of Kansas, I
heard an eloquence that surprised me a bit. I’m sorry Nate, but I think that
there is a bit of a spiritual leader lurking beneath your surface. I’m just not
sure that it is possible to have experienced everything that you have and to
come out with the desire to serve as an advocate to others without some level
of “faith”, Perhaps it is not a faith in a Christian God but a faith in a human
divinity. We have evidence of “the
sacred” in human behavior, people who are not perfect but sacred in their
treatment of others. What do you have to say about that?
A:
The idea appeals to me but I have always
craved proof. Perhaps it's learned from my experiences, perhaps it was enhanced
by them. When I let myself get emotional about it, I can get very angry at the
harm spiritual claims impose on humanity. On the other hand I recall listening
to Elizabeth Smart on Oprah. Several years after her kidnapping ordeal she
reflected on how her learned belief in god sustained her during that horror.
How do I tell that person they were relying on a fantasy? But that's what I
truly believe.
When you
talk about human divinity, I think of those people who have "risen
above" the noise of life and found a peace and understanding that made the
well- being of all a priority to them. Nothing supernatural, just a direction
that the sum total of their life experiences, thoughts, DNA and other variables
took them. Why can't that be enough? Why do we have to see something more to
accept that a person like that can exist? Invoking a supernatural element, too
me, weakens the value of it. We humans are quick to blame our humanity for the
harm but slow to give our humanity credit for the good.
It's a
mind set. It's a paradigm. It's an assumption. Where is the hard evidence?
I hope
this doesn't sound preachy.
Q: Let’s
talk about religion. The story about discussing “hell” with the kids and
sitting in the car and crying, really touched me. I personally am not religious
and frankly some of the people who I believe best represent Christianity are
actually atheists, perhaps because they are simply good people because there is
no “prize at the end of the rainbow”. They are simply good because it is the
right thing, because it is part of their human code. However, there is
something about faith that I find remarkable. What are your thoughts about
religion is it simply a tool of manipulation, a fairy tale or rule book that
some people need in order to navigate life? If your father had had a different
beginning in life could he have represented a more “just” way of representing
religion?
A: I think I unwittingly answered a lot of
this question above. To respond to the "faith" part of it I'm
compelled to begin with a disclaimer. I know from personal experience that this
is an emotional topic for people. I never intend to insult, but find that I
often do. Here goes: Faith is not a virtue. Let me start again. My
understanding of faith, as it pertains to religion, is a belief in something
without evidence. Some will reject my position by providing another definition
of faith. Going with this definition, faith is not a virtue. Following 9/11 I
vividly recall an encounter with my mother-in-law. We had always had a polite
but distant relationship. I maintained a respectful approach with her because
of who she was. We were discussing 9/11 one day...a group of us at my
home...and she, in a moment of fear and worry, made a comment along the lines
of "America has to get right with god. That's why this terrible thing
happened". At this point I was actively questioning my remaining adherence
to religion and I, pretty harshly, said back to her that it was this same blind
ignorance that those people used to justify flying planes into buildings. What
kind of fools are we to continue to make that same mistake.
I tell
people that I had an epiphany after 9/11. I truly believe that blind faith
could be one of the greatest threats humans face today. Blind faith is not
accountable. It holds sacred the position that I don't have to listen to reason
or subject myself to facts or evidence. If I retreat to that position, I am
prohibited from challenging someone else's faithful belief. If I accept that
exception to the rules of evidence in life, I support, and to a degree am
culpable for, acts of violence justified by faith. I know this is a strong
charge, but where else can the evidence take us?
As for my
father and the path he took. You unwittingly open up another huge area that I'm
fascinated by right now. Free will. Not the free will debated for centuries by
various religions. Free will as we are beginning to understand it in the
sciences of the brain. As I understand it, absolutely my father could have gone
another direction. Just as he was "powerless" to do anything other
then he has based on the direction his make up, environment, and experiences
took him in fact. More and more science is making the case that we are
profoundly sophisticated biological machines. If we had the ability, and one
day we may, to identify and quantify all the variables that impact on who a
person is, we could accurately predict their every decision and action. Crazy
eh? What does that do to self-responsibility? Are we morally obligated to treat
our prisoners better? Do we throw out our entire justice system and rebuild on
this new evidence?
Q: I've
read a lot about the night that you left and your preparation for that process.
I haven’t read much about what you felt during the preparatory period and what
you felt those days following your departure. I imagine there was some level of
exhilaration, fear and vulnerability. Did you question yourself? Did you have
to “dig deep” to find that courage or was it more of a “fight or flight” situation.
What took place in those days and weeks immediately following? Did your father
try to make contact? Were there any attempts to bring you back?
A:
My older brother Mark had left when I was
16. He was the first one to leave and stay gone. It was the first time I was
exposed to, and entertained the idea of, being free of that situation. Another
part of me started forming around that time. My anger. Up to then I was simply
existing and taking in the message of my father. I recall several times,
responding to my father's raging insults, a burning resentment rising in me. I
remember one particular time when I was 17. My father often berated and
chastised us children behind the pulpit. After one particular sermon where he
focused on me. I stood up after the meeting and walked toward my father at the
front of the church. It's the closest I ever got to confronting him. My mother
saw it developing and she stepped into the isle and blocked my way. She quietly
talked me down and the shame and fear slowly quenched the anger.
My recall
of that night and leading up to it is that I didn't perceive a choice. I felt
like I didn't belong. The physical and verbal abuse had convinced me that I was
bad and I didn't want that reminder anymore. I left believing that I had until
the year 2000 to live my life then I would have to confront this eternal
damnation issue (my father was teaching at that time that Christ was returning
in the year 2000 give or take a decade). I was excited about not being subject
to him any longer.
The only
preparation I did beyond buying the car and slowly packing my few belongings
was to talk about my plan with a friend who managed a gas station near my high
school. He knew just enough about my situation to agree to let me sleep in the
bathroom of his station until I made arrangements. I reached out to my brother
Mark after I had left and his mother-in-law gave me a room and helped me find a
job.
Surprisingly,
I never did receive the excommunication letter. For others who had left my
father had drafted a very official legal sounding letter that he had a group of
us deliver to the wayward. That letter, full of Bible verses, detailed their
crimes (enjoying the pleasures of sin for a season, lusting after the flesh,
forsaking the assembly) then announced that they had been "delivered to
Satan for the destruction of the flesh so their spirit may be saved in the day
of the Lord". However, several years later, I started receiving calls from
Shirley and Margie urging me to come back. I had lived for a year with Margie
in Kansas City where we worked for a law firm. When the senior partner was
arrested we discovered the firm was one of the top law firms for the Kansas
City mob. I moved to St. Louis to go to work with my brother in the printing
business and Margie made the decision to return home. After 8 months in St.
Louis Mark and I decided to open our own printing business in a suburb of
Kansas City in September of 1978. Circumstances conspired to force Mark to move
back to Topeka and I was left, at the age of 20, to run this new shop on my
own. I was ill-equipped in all respects. I was still very immature and I
allowed myself to be swayed by Shirley and Margie's promise that the old man
wasn't violent anymore and I agreed to go home.
Within a
few months I realized my error and left again. At this point I became very
self-destructive. I spent about six months on the verge of crime, drugs,
alcohol, and prison. At my lowest I reached out to Mark again. I moved to
southern California where we opened the first of 8 printing stores in that
area. I spent 25 years in southern California and the Phoenix area. I married
and raised a family of 4 children. Eventually I left the company I helped build
with Mark and started my own. I ran that for 7 years until I separated from my
wife after 23 years. I met a woman on line. She lived in Canada so I moved up
here to be with her in December of 2005 and have been here since.
Q: You
serve as a LGBT advocate, which I personally find delightful but are you also
fighting to counteract the damage done by your father? Do you feel that is your
responsibility? What is the status of your book? What can you tell me about the speech
circuit?
A:
I relate to the LGBT community. They are
beaten and bullied for being different. They are ostracized for circumstances
they didn't create. Most of this harm comes from a religion that boosts the
"unconditional love" of their god. I also feel an obligation of sorts
to undue some of the harm of my father (and now my siblings).
Two quick
stories:
When I
was in 7th and 8th grade there was a push to educate America's school children
about the unjust history of blacks in America. Bill Cosby narrated a 3 day long
film called "Black History: Lost, Stolen or Strayed" that was, at its
essence, a propaganda piece to jump start our efforts to fix the harm we'd done
to black Americans. I ended up watching this film 3 different times over two
years. I remember a profound sense of injustice and feeling like I needed to
personally apologize.
I don't
remember the exact year. It seems I was a young teenager. My father made me go
with him to the YMCA to jog. It was a small indoor track, I think you had to do
like 28 laps for a mile. There was a weight area in the middle of the track and
racquetball courts along one wall. We children spent a lot of time at the Y and
knew many of the regulars. One regular was an older man who was blind. He would
use his walking stick to whack the outer edge of the track as he walked as fast
as he could around it. This system meant that he would often meander toward the
middle of the track until his next swing of the stick would send him back
closer to the outer edge. Folks were used to that and made a point of being
aware of him as they ran past so they wouldn't run into him.
My father
had his first encounter with this man on that day. But he responded
differently. He was indignant that he had to watch out for him. So he started
threatening him every time we lapped him. At one point he said to the man,
"if you get in my way again, I'm going to knock you down". The old
man, outwardly shaken, apologized and disappeared from the room. A few minutes
passed and he returned with one of the managers. I remember he was weeping so
hard his face was ugly red and a mess with spit and snot. My father started
yelling at the manager, defending his actions, and stormed out. Again, I felt a
profound sense of injustice and that I needed to personally apologize.
The book
is the bane of my existence. Every time I write on it I spend too much time
trying to make it perfect instead of just writing. Eventually.
The
speaking circuit has been amazing for me. File under "unintended
consequences" that I have met a lot of amazing people and been exposed to
understandings and ideas that I never would have. I am grateful.
There is
constant debate between the faithful and unbelievers about the source of
meaning in life. A friend recently wrote that her college professor said she
could not be helpful in social work if she didn't have faith. I believe that we
make our own meaning...even the faithful. They just use the prescribed method
and the rest of us create our own. These past 4 or 5 years have given me new
meaning. The idea that I can have a positive effect on even one young gay
person is profound to me.
Q:
Personal story – A few years back I heard that Fred Phelps had cancer and was
dying. A lot of people saw it as his getting “his”. I guess that I thought it
might be the thing to make him do a “turnaround”. I must have thought about it a lot because
one night I dreamed that my sister in law and I were planting flowers around
the perimeter of the Phelps compound. Sadly my sister in law died from breast
cancer after that. Fred Phelps on the other hand still lives. Could Fred do a
turnaround?
A:
What an interesting story. Life and
death. God's judgment was Fred's explanation for death. He believes (it's
become part of their internal dogma) that no one in that church will ever die.
They are convinced that Christ will return and they will be the only ones to
rise up and meet him. It will shake their foundation when he dies. But history
suggests that they will rewrite their beliefs and be all the more dogmatic.
I don't
know about a turnaround. For my father to have a turnaround he would have to
have an experience so profound that he may not survive it. It's a popular idea
out there that the WBC is just a scam, that they don't really believe all this.
I assure you my father believes it to his core. I can't imagine so many of my
siblings embracing it otherwise. I watched my father behind the pulpit for 18
years. He would be reduced to tears at times as he contemplated the enormity of
his relationship with god. I suppose it's possible for him to turnaround, but
it's also possible that teapots orbit Saturn.
Q: Fred
started getting a lot of press after picketing at Matthew Shepherds funeral. It
seems to have set the pace for the future. People all over the world know Fred.
If we stopped paying attention to him would his activity stop?
A:
Several thoughts about this question.
We should
stop paying attention.
We won't.
Regardless,
he would never stop. Stopping is defeat to them.
Q: Why
haven’t any of his children had him charged with abuse?
A:
He justified everything he did. His
violence was god ordained. That's the psychology of the equation. However,
there was a time in the early 70's when my junior high principal reported him.
My brother and I were taken to the police station and photographed...then they
sent us home. (I've attached a redacted image of the original report from the
Topeka Police) As an adult that seems crazy to me. The system was ill prepared
to manage such a situation. They assigned an attorney to my brother and I but
the one interview we had with him was at our home with my father coaching us
(threats of violence included) prior to his arrival. The attitude was different
in the early 70's. There was a greater acceptance of the idea that physical
violence was okay, even necessary. The problem was that there was no real
effort to distinguish between corporal punishment and brutal abuse.
Q: As you
might have guessed from the posts that you read, I have a tendency to believe
that we are born from our ashes. Those experiences shape who we are today. How
would you describe who you are today?
A:
Searching. Hopeful. Cautiously
optimistic. At the end of the day we sleep with ourselves and we have to find
peace with the choices we made. There are days when I am hugely confident and
certain. Then there are days when I let the messages from my past indict and
accuse me.
The
essence of it is this. I will read about some new discovery that science has
made that is leading us to a profound understanding of the universe we live in
and the good we can bring to humans with the discovery. I can't find the words
to describe the thoughts and feelings I have in those moments about how utterly
insane it is for us to continue clinging to, and arguing about, nonsense when
we have the tools to change everything in our hands. All things supernatural
seem a colossal waste of our time in those moments. Wasted energy, emotions,
time, resources, etc.
When
Nate and I spoke the last time I was stricken by the dichotomy of perceptions
he has of himself. There is the Nate that I see. This is the man who at 18 fled
the confines of abuse, control and humiliation. The same young man who had the
intelligence to question the validity of the thinking he had been taught from
infancy. I see a Nate who at the moment of his 18th birthday ran of the doors
of his father’s home and into the dark of night unable to suppress the screams
of joy that were bursting from his body. It was that Nate whose instincts to
live and explore the world were far more powerful than the man who had
oppressed him from birth. There is
another part of Nate who holds his joy at bay. His father’s words still linger,
holding a heavy wooden stick prepared to beat him into submission.
I
asked Nate if things are “okay” now. To which he responded, “they are starting
to be that way”. I find myself wanting to say, “Stop empowering your father by
allowing his actions to define what you are today. Start celebrating that
indomitability that truly defines you. Celebrate that spirit that chose to take
your experiences and use them as an opportunity to teach tolerance and acceptance.
You have earned your joy, Nate.”
Like
Nate, all of us are a composite of the experiences that we have had. Some of
those experiences are horrendous and painful and we want desperately to put
them in our past or to deny them all together. Those experiences however, are a
layer of who we are. We have a choice. We can allow those experiences to
perpetuate anger and hate or like Nate we can use them to be more empathetic
and to promote more acceptance for others.
