Below are excerpts from those articles, the church website and a church video. In , a thenyear-old Drain set out to make a documentary exposing the gay-hating, disruptive church he'd become familiar with while in graduate school at the University of Kansas.
Instead, Drain wound up moving his family from Tampa to Topeka to join the congregation. Drain was raised Presbyterian but spent much of his youth searching for more from his religion, later identifying as a staunch atheist, according to his daughter. He later returned with his family to Tampa where he got a job as a creative director at the Home Shopping Network.
According to his daughter Lauren, Drain talked a lot about making a documentary to expose an extremist antigay church he'd become familiar with while living in Kansas. He went to Washington, D.
He would title the movie Hatemongers. Drain expected Phelps to be a "Barnumesque snake-oil salesman. He's a man who every day spends several hours a day poring through the Scripture. He's doing this out of a heartfelt fear that if he doesn't do it, then the Lord is going to deal with him. Steve and Luci Drain say it was their eldest daughter, Lauren, who made them realize that they needed to move. At 14, she began to show interest in what the couple call "heathen boys.
As turmoil increased in their home, Luci warmed to the idea of moving. Steve and Luci were starting to think that they had been raising Lauren and Taylor wrong. The College Night event will be held in-person at the El Camino College campus to provide students faculty and staff opportunities to meet and learn m All information regarding COVI Top Stories.
College Night returns in-person. El Camino College Academic Affairs proposed offering online degrees to students. Resolution introduced at Academic Senate meeting recognizes the Tongva people. ECC photography leader and professor dies at Institutional Learning Outcomes revisions that align with Guided Pathways proposed. Current and former student journalists honor former Editor-in-Chief for Warrior Life through awards. Steve Drain was filming a documentary on Fred Phelps and the church in 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.
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 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. 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.
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. 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.
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.
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