My review of the book is found here.

We kept our signs, shirts, and caps hidden from view so that we wouldn't be harassed as we made our way through thousands of heavily armed security and military agents to our assigned protest site. Finally, almost in position, some of us started announcing our message. "God Hates You!" I declared, as we pushed forward. The high we got from picketing took over. "You are going to hell! You are all fag enablers!" we hollered over one another. "We are the only true patriots," I added. "If you people were really patriotic and religious, you would be standing with us holding signs." I told them that God mocked their calamities, and good Christians were supposed to warn nations against sin. "Thank God for September 11!" I yelled, the strongest insult to the sinners and the one most certain to get a rise out of the people within earshot.

The Washington crowd that day reacted strongly to us, which reinforced our sense of success. The more enraged they became, the more we felt we were making our message known. If they had thought we were just a bunch of crazies, they would have simply ignored us, but their heated interest in us obviously meant that our words were making an impact. We were delivering the message of the Holy Ghost, making us superior and perhaps even omniscient. In a sea of heathens, we were the messengers.

Police nearby tried to defuse the venom being aimed at us. "They're not worth it. Move along," they'd say over and over to the protesters around us.

My father loved arguing with people. He was pompous and wanted to discredit the visitor with reason and logic. The preacher gave him answers that he hadn't expected, though, ones that were intriguing and intelligent. It wasn't long before he and Dad began meeting once or twice a week in our dining room to study the Bible together. My mother was wary of the relationship at first, but she trusted my father to know what he was getting into. I thought it was weird, because my father didn't really like zealots, but I guessed that maybe it had to do with Taylor's brush with death, and that Dad was searching for the meaning of life or the promise of ultimate salvation.

The next year, my father moved away from religion, saying that it tended to go to extremes. He said the preacher's theory that some people lived on the earth forever was a perfect example. Instead of the faithful Bible student he'd been, he embraced his hippie rocker side and became the coolest dad in the world. He never missed a single one of my peewee softball games, and he was always on the sidelines cheering me on. Everybody liked him. He was so sociable and still in his twenties then; he was like a big kid. All of my friends adored him, too. Dad filled the void left by the preacher's departure with a lot of wilder friends. He even started his own band called Boneyard. There always seemed to be a ton of people in the house drinking, smoking, and playing instruments in the basement. My mother had a few acquaintances from work, but they weren't really the kind of friends that came into their social life; those came from Dad. Mom would chat with them, but she really wasn't into the same kind of scene that Dad was. For one, she didn't like drinking. She might have a wine cooler here and there, but that was it. While Dad was playing rock and roll in the basement, Mom preferred being with Taylor and me in the backyard, watching us play on the trampoline, or making us treats in the kitchen. The one thing my parents liked to do together was play softball.

During my freshman year, my father started talking more seriously about making a documentary. He liked working at the Home Shopping Network and was clearly doing well there, but wanted to do something more creative and on his own terms. He'd been thinking about a subject for the two years we'd been in Florida, and was looking for a controversial topic that hadn't yet received much exposure. The Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka, Kansas, came to his mind.

My father thought the church's leader and pastor, Fred Phelps, and his followers were full of crap. He hoped an exposé of their bizarre subculture and extremist beliefs and tactics would get people talking and get his own name out there as a provocative filmmaker. Dad even had a title for his documentary: Hatemongers.

A year earlier, before my first-ever school dance, Dad sat me down for "the talk." He told me the responsibilities that went along with being social at my age, and said that if I was thinking about sex, he wanted me to come to him and my mother so that they could get me on birth control. Dad also said I should go to them if I was thinking about experimenting with drugs, because buying them from a stranger was extremely risky, and he didn't want me to end up dead. He had been appropriately protective, but not overly so, and above all he'd been very open and honest. But now, when I went to talk to my father about a particular boy at school named Will, I was shocked at his reaction. He said he had changed his mind about a lot of things and he didn't want me to date at all. Ever since Dad had come back from Topeka, he had become superstrict. There was no dating in the WBC, and he said I, too, needed to stay away from bad influences. My father thought Will was bad news, even though he was in my grade and from the neighborhood. I considered him to be cool because he had piercings and rode motocross bikes, but Dad said those things reminded him of himself as a teenager, and that he would never let someone with such a wild side date his daughter.

Will had been very snide, so my father had head-butted him and broken his nose. I couldn't believe that he had taken it this far and actually attacked him. "You ruined everything," I blurted out, which enraged him even more. Now, he began kicking and slapping at me, backing me into a corner. I was absolutely terrified. Mom and Taylor were home, but neither of them was coming to my rescue. "You think you can disobey me, you little bitch?" "Daddy, please stop," I begged. "We weren't doing anything." I ran down the hall to my room and climbed up into my top bunk, with Dad following on my heels. Seemingly possessed by his rage, he pulled me to the edge of the bed and let me fall to the ground. His face was red and his temples were bulging as he hulked over me, practically spitting in my face. My father was a big, tall guy, and I was fourteen and weighed less than a hundred pounds. He unleashed a verbal attack on me for what felt like hours while I cowered on the floor, trying to protect my face from the spit spewing from his mouth. When his tirade was over, he stormed down the hall and out of the house, slamming the door behind him. When I went to school the next day, I saw Will in the hallway. Several kids were crowded around him, asking him what had happened to his nose. I was mortified, and after making eye contact with him, I continued walking to my next class. A couple of days later, I saw him again at the community pool. He was way across on the far side, but when he saw me, he packed up his stuff and left. Will's parents filed an assault charge against my father the day after the attack, and when my father got the notice, he filed a counterclaim against Will. I didn't attend the hearing, but apparently the judge took into consideration the lewd love notes Dad presented in court and ultimately dismissed the charges. My father even managed to get a restraining order against Will, preventing him from coming within twenty feet of me when we were in school and one hundred yards of me outside the school setting until I turned eighteen.

Somehow, I was still allowed to be on the computer, so I would talk to my friends online, using AOL Instant Messenger. They were upset that I had been withdrawn from school, and they understood that my father had done it to ground me, but didn't understand their role in it and why I was not allowed to see them anymore. That part was kind of hard for me to explain. My father now thought they were evil, too, but I obviously didn't want them to know that. Their parents just seemed to accept that I was being homeschooled for now. Before long, I was cut off from AOL privileges, as well. My father found a conversation between me and a nineteen-year-old boy who had been a counselor at the summer camp I'd attended that past July. My father said it was highly inappropriate and again used the word whore before banning me from the Internet altogether.

When someone from the CPS office called our house to say a complaint had just been phoned in, my father realized what I had done. He was livid, and he insisted that I call the office back and tell them it was just a prank and that I didn't realize the seriousness of my actions, then apologize for wasting their time and resources. I made the call with Dad listening in on a different phone. The whole thing was so lame. No one from CPS ever came to the house to speak to me or follow up in any way to be sure I was in fact okay.

Pastor Phelps was holding up two signs. The first one proclaimed GOD HATES AMERICA--a direct jab at Billy Graham's favorite blessing, "God Bless America." The Westboro Baptist Church knew that God hated America because it was a fag-enabling country--so the pastor's other sign read GOD HATES FAGS. Activist movements that supported and mainstreamed gay rights were one reason for our recent accelerated descent into hell. The other was the cheapening of our religious convictions, as evidenced by these kinds of megapreachers and false prophets. As Pastor Phelps barked out his message, he'd take pauses to chuckle and smile approvingly at Shirley and her daughter, Megan, who were imitating his style and shouting the same message with enthusiasm equal to his own.

On the drive home, I told Dad how much fun the day had been. I hadn't seen anything wrong with what the church was trying to say. I was intrigued and wanted to learn more about their message and why they were saying it. Dad explained to me they were just trying to help people understand God's message. I could tell he was pleased that I had taken such a liking to his people and their cause. I was glad that my father was appreciating me, not thinking that I was worthless and useless. He said he would be sure to include me in the next picket event.

Another thing that surprised me was how tech-savvy everybody in the church was. The pastor liked to say the Internet had been invented so that the church could spread God's message. He also said that computers could be used for good purposes, although he believed most people used the Internet for bad and wasteful reasons.

Godhatesfags.com was the primary site, but because hackers were constantly trying to shut it down, there were plenty of others, too-- godhatestheworld.com, godhatesthemedia.com, americaisdoomed.com, and priestsrapeboys.com--to name a few. If there was a new technology, the church had it first. The office was equipped with computers and fax machines, which were programmed to blast out the church's messages twenty-four hours a day. That way, even when members were sleeping they were doing a kind of picketing, spreading the Word of God.

People called us haters because the word hate was so prevalent in our protests. The rejoinders we heard most often from people trying to refute our message were: "God loves everybody" and "God is a loving, tolerant God." But as the pastor told us, these were perhaps the biggest lies of all. In truth, it was God who hated, not us. The pastor was God's mouthpiece on earth, and we were only the messengers. Most of our detractors thought that we went around spewing the same handful of lines from scripture and hiding behind a distortion and perversion of the Baptist faith. This couldn't be less accurate. The pastor might have called himself an "old school" or "primitive" Baptist, but the theology he preached was fundamental Calvinism.

The more seasoned a Christian you were, the more you would understand.

Nobody would want to usurp him by coming up with an independent idea, and the pastor never ran out of ideas. He was a cause monger, always with something on his mind. He read newspapers and monitored Fox News 24/7, trolling for issues. The pastor would start a story at a regular volume, then crank it up a few decibels for dramatic effect before returning to his normal speaking voice.

He was always very graphic, telling us that homosexuals were the type of people who would eat each other's feces, have sex with each other's feces, take "golden showers," and drink each other's semen.

Songs and picket signs were critical to delivering our message the best way possible. The signs, especially, were works of love. The pastor was the only person allowed to make them or decide what they were going to say. He would come up with the slogan and then put the message on the signboard by hand. He was particular about every curve in the lettering, cutting out the letters from construction paper with a utility knife and then attaching them to the poster. It was a long, labor-intensive process. Making even a single sign would take all day. The pastor soon recognized how creative Dad was and allowed him to have a small role on the sign-making team. He had seen his documentary, so he knew that he was creative in the film arena. The movie actually captured the pastor saying, "You are going to make them real mad at you, Steve." The pastor thought Dad's depiction of the church was pretty true and accurate, and the members were all pleased with it as well. When the pastor saw that Dad was able to render signs on a computer instead of using paper and pencil, he asked Dad to show him what he could do. His system was much more efficient--he was able to create four brand-new signs in a day, as opposed to the pastor's one-a-day system. The beauty of the method was that if a current event occurred that necessitated a new sign, my dad was able to print several of them in a matter of hours.

Very rarely did we encounter people who could challenge us on the specifics of the Bible, but when we did, we treated them respectfully. We all carried electronic Bibles, palm-size e-readers of the traditional King James translation, which we'd take out in order to very gently show them the verses that supported each of the points they chose to contend.

Soon, the men ran down the picket line to the scene, scaring off the college kids. I finally saw Bill lying on the grass with his face covered in blood and one of his eyes swollen shut. I burst into tears. How dare someone beat up an old man! He was an elderly gentleman exercising his right to freedom of religion and freedom of speech. I knew we angered people, but that didn't mean they could physically assault someone for his beliefs. That was truly against the law and against any ethical standard. Denying one person's right to free speech was essentially denying that right to everybody who takes that freedom for granted. We saw and heard things all the time we objected to, but we never resorted to violence. I felt knots in my stomach that somebody had dared to mess with us on such a cowardly level and that they had then run away. But I knew God would have the final judgment on these bullies. We were God's only people.

We were not forbidden to watch TV shows. In fact, when it came to the media, my parents probably did less censoring than more conventional parents, who were often afraid of the language and content in the network shows. My girlfriends and I enjoyed watching South Park on Comedy Central. We loved the show's crudeness and its parodies of other religions, especially the episode that lampooned Scientology. I thought that the fact that we were teens who were out in the world and not tempted by evil proved to everyone that we were truly God's example.

We were probably the only ones in the country who believed God had acted properly and justly when he caused so much carnage, death, and destruction on that day. Everybody else thought it was terrorism, but we knew it was the wrath of God.

The church had a way of justifying everything that happened, good or bad, as an act of God. When my father was unemployed, Shirley had said it was because he wasn't committed enough to his beliefs. When he found work, that was also God's choice. It was a direct reward for his faith. "Your dad submitted himself to the church, and look what happened," Shirley said to me. That was the reason you didn't really question things. Everything Shirley predicted always ended up coming true and making sense, so why challenge it?

Just when I thought it couldn't get any worse, Dad came to me and told me I needed to talk to Mom. "Your mother is a contentious woman," he said. "All she does is start arguments." My father said to do it for my mother's sake. Nobody else knew about the fighting but Taylor and me, and Dad knew it was my duty as a newly baptized member of the church to report the rule-breaking arguments that I witnessed. "I want to spare your mother the humiliation of being publicly admonished if the church finds out," he instructed me. "Please just tell her to stop." I found Mom when she was alone in the kitchen cooking dinner. I was embarrassed and scared that she'd be mad at me, but I knew I had to do it. "Mom, I need to talk to you. Dad wants me to talk to you about something." Turning toward me, she looked like a deer caught in the headlights, sensing that I obviously had something important to discuss. "Dad's been worried about you for a long time," I told her. "He asked me to talk to you in hopes that it would help. He feels you are way too contentious, and if you don't change, he will have to tell someone in the church." The conversation was incredibly emotional. I was crying as I told her that she was not allowed to bring things up against Dad anymore, even in the privacy of our own home. Mom was upset and angry, but I told her that Dad had asked me to speak to her because he was afraid that if things didn't change, she was going to be humiliated in front of the congregation. I hated being caught in the middle. Dad was putting me between him and my mother, and he was also making me a conspirator in his sin by asking me to keep their arguments secret. After that, in my mother's eyes I had taken Dad's side, so she seemed to favor Taylor. The arguments continued, even after that. However, I honored Dad's desire to protect Mom. To be in full compliance with the church's standards, I would have had to bring up my parents' arguing to the elders. Then, Shirley and Margie would have suspicions about the conduct in our house, which would then call into question both of my parents' memberships. I knew I should be telling on them both, knowing the consequences of my secrecy might be an eternity in the part of hell reserved for evil coconspirators like me. But that was the risk I took.

My parents monitored everything: my e-mails, my Internet use, even my cell phone history. Every single second of my day was monitored. Any time I drove anywhere, I had to carry my cell phone so my parents could call me. If I wasn't at school, I was doing chores for the church or my family. The chores increased substantially after my brother Boaz was born.

I was still coming up short in my struggle to win my parents' approval, and this overwhelmed me with anxiety. I was babysitting Boaz while doing the household duties, running errands, and doing the grocery shopping. Every two weeks, I was given $300 and a list. I'd go to the local Walmart where all the church members shopped, a fifteen-minute drive from my house. My route to the store was determined by my parents, and I could not deviate from that course in the slightest. I had a time allotment, and if I ran even five minutes late getting home, I would get a phone call asking where I was. If I took a left instead of a right, I was steering into evil. I loved having Taylor with me on these shopping trips and took her as often as I could. In the store, she and I would load up the cart with everything on the list but nothing else, no impulse items. My purchases could not exceed $300, so I focused on generic store brands and sale items. We had to be so careful. Taylor and I spent an entire hour just shopping. When we got home, Mom would review the receipt and the purchases. If I forgot a loaf of bread, it had been a failed mission. "I can't count on you for anything," Mom would say. "You didn't check the list. We printed the list for you, and you still didn't bring home bread." If I brought home a jar of mayonnaise, she'd say, "We already have mayonnaise. Why do you think we need two jars when we already have one?" She'd always focus on my mistakes instead of praising me for the things I did right. I couldn't seem to please my father, either. He gave me more positive feedback than my mother did, but usually only when I did things for him and the church. Taylor and I helped him a lot with his editing, spending countless hours working with him on his videos of the pickets. I also helped him design and build the picket signs using Photoshop. On top of that, I apprenticed with him for his remodeling projects. I would get a sense of pride from our accomplishments, but he was often backhandedly critical. "That's helpful, but this is how I would do it," he'd say, shortchanging me. "You take twice as long as I do" or "This isn't up to par" were two more direct complaints I'd hear from him. I couldn't impress him, no matter how much I tried. "Why can't you pick it up? Why can't you just get it?" he'd scold. These nitpicking comments would make me so anxious that my mind would go blank, and I couldn't absorb what he was trying to teach me. I would forget steps or just get them wrong. Of course, Dad would then call me flighty. "Where's your head?" he'd ask me. "Your head is in the clouds." I was always being compared to the Phelps girls. Both my parents required so many adult responsibilities of me, but they never complimented me or said thank you. Instead, my mom was constantly calling me rebellious, which made me resent her. She was a very passive person, except when it came to me. Like a lot of teenage girls, I could get upset at my mother more than any other person in my life. Sometimes, it annoyed me that she wasn't stronger or more willing to show passion or an opinion. She never wanted to stick her neck out for me. She and Dad had moved me to Topeka, practically the dead geographical center of the United States, to save me, and she still didn't give me credit for all I had done to save myself. "Why can't you be more like Shirley's girls?" she'd say. "You're so vain, Lauren. You always stir up strife or look to start an argument." All the while, she'd have nothing but praise for Shirley's girls. "They are so obedient, and they love their mother." I cried when I told her that I wanted to be as close with her as Shirley was with her daughters. Just as she wanted me to be like Megan and Bekah, I encouraged her to be more like Shirley, who really indulged her girls. She gave them first dibs for pickets and interviews, made sure they were financially set with everything, and bestowed them with praise.

I was starting to freak out when my cell phone rang. It was my mother, wanting me to pick up my brother from day care. I told her I couldn't. When she asked why, I was forced to explain where I was so she could come pick me up. Her interrogation began the moment I opened her car door. She asked me if I had been visiting a boyfriend. She demanded to know how I met him, did I have sex with him, was there a chance I had gotten pregnant, why did I do it, did I want to go to hell, did I hate God, was I a whore, and would I rather be a whore or a Christian? She upset me so much I cried, but even worse, she told my father. He was furious. "I feel like I should hit you," he growled. "But it won't do any good. I will humiliate you enough to be memorable." He proceeded to tell everyone in the church about my transgression.

Members would call me over at a picket to talk to me about what I had done. "Do you realize you are tempting God and tempting hell? God can kill you any day for doing things like this," some of them told me. I found it hard to believe that I was the only girl who had ever felt this way about boys, but that was the way it seemed. I hadn't known I was going to be stranded by a flat tire and get caught. Now, I knew my car crisis had been a message from God expressing his disappointment in me.

If the pastor wasn't the defendant, he was the plaintiff. I had the feeling he loved suing people who came at us, anybody who tried to limit our First Amendment rights. I heard that he once had two hundred cases pending in federal court at one time. The pastor had a reputation for taking grievances to litigation, and they didn't have to be related to free speech and freedom of religion. Years before my family arrived in Topeka, he sued Sears in a class-action suit for $50 million when they couldn't locate a television set he had purchased on their layaway plan. Six years and many court appearances and adjournments later, he settled for a payment of $126. Lots of people who filed complaints against the church might find themselves served with a complaint of their own from Phelps Chartered.

Right in the middle of this chaos, a British journalist and documentarian by the name of Louis Theroux came to film us for three weeks, and Shirley welcomed him warmly into our midst. He was very funny and charming, with a great British accent. He went by the informal pronunciation of his first name, "Louie." Although we found him really ignorant of the Bible and religion in general, we real y liked him, so we didn't mind when he'd ask us loaded questions that he thought would make us slip up. He hoped his documentary, which he had already titled The Most Hated Family in America , would reach an international audience. Although Louis was staying at a hotel in Topeka, he and his crew practically lived with us during waking hours. Louis went to al the pickets and Bible studies and followed us around anywhere we went. He could go to Sunday sermons, interact with us on pickets, eat meals with us, and film anything he wanted. One afternoon, he even went on an outing with us at a local bowling alley. The only thing he couldn't do was shadow the pastor, although on a couple of occasions, he managed to ask him a few questions about scripture. The pastor was dismissive, and referred to Louis's questions as "stupidity in spades."

We knew Louis was a journalist and respected that, even though we thought he intended to offer a more objective opinion about us, rather than the gonzo-style comic piece that he ended up creating. But we were fine with the result, in any case. He was going to hell either way, and sadly for him, he was now going to a hotter part.

All of us flirted because we liked a little positive reinforcement once in a while, despite or maybe because of the fact that we were never going to be with anyone. For whatever reason, I always seemed to be held to a higher standard than the other girls. I was twenty-one years old and had never had a boyfriend, or even kissed a guy except for Brian.

My father stepped forward, as if sensing I couldn't take the suspense any longer. He made no introduction, no preamble. In a strong clear voice, filled with the conviction and certainty of his words, he stated, "You have been kicked out of the church." I was shocked and horrified, unable to think of anything that would make his statement untrue. I couldn't figure out how or why it was possible that I'd been banished. At this very moment, I was being simultaneously disowned by my family forever. That part went without saying. Without the slightest hint of emotion, my father commanded me to pack my things. At exactly 10 p.m. on that cold winter night, he told me that I had to leave, that he'd booked a hotel room for me for two nights in order to give me time to find my own place. I looked at my mother, desperate for her to snap out of it and intervene. She was still pacing back and forth across the kitchen tiles, her eyes welling up with tears, but she didn't say anything and didn't stop my father. All I wanted to do was die, right then and there.

The next day, I called my father to see if he had had a change of heart. "Is this it, Dad?" I asked. "When can I come home? I am sorry, and I love you." I tried to present him with a few options. "Can't you just ground me?" I asked him. "Can't you just say I can't take care of the kids for a while?" I wasn't sure why he took my call at all, but maybe he just wanted to be sure I unequivocally understood my fate. He was absolutely ice-cold. "Why are you calling?" he asked me, like I was an annoying telemarketer. "What's the point? I have nothing to say to you." He was serious. The church had decided, and there were no options left for me. His tone made me understand for the first time that I was dead to him. It was as if I had never existed.

Later that day, my mother called to tell me I was never to come to the church again. I asked her, "How will I know when I'm right with God if nobody sees me?" She didn't have a direct answer, but she said I could listen to the sermons online if that helped.

One time, I saw my father in the St. Francis cafeteria and realized that my mother was in the hospital as a patient. I figured it was probably something related to her recurring back problems. My father would never have come to my workplace unless there was a medical reason. I did a double take when I saw him. He looked me straight in the eye, then turned around and walked away. He wasn't even courteous enough to acknowledge me. I was a nurse, a person, and his daughter. He looked at me with an expression that let me know that I was not even human in his eyes. It was the scariest feeling I ever had. I suddenly thought that I had no importance, that I was nothing but a ghost. I was not a source of comfort to him whatsoever. That I was his daughter and a Christian--none of that mattered. There was no way I could have gone to see my mother in her hospital room.

My study sessions with my boyfriend's mother were scriptural investigations that went well beyond the rigid dogma of the WBC, and I discovered that the Bible was fluid and alive. She never shut me down or reprimanded me for asking questions.

I apologize equally to the families of AIDS victims and homosexuals whom I disrespected. I will never be a political activist for gay rights, but I like gay people and have lots of gay friends, too. I don't judge them, and I don't believe anyone else has the right to judge them, either. I also won't be a political activist for abortion, but I am perfectly okay with everyone living his or her own life and making his or her own choices.