- As Chens piece goes on you see Megan Phelps emotions change throughout the piece, she starts out being a very pro god woman and was very anti homosexual as seen here “Phelps rope believed that AIDS was a curse sent by god (Unfollow Pg.1)”. As the story continues she starts to move in the middle of her emotions and maybe think that her church could be spreading lies and that they are wrong. Then towards the end of the story she leaves the church ” I couldn’t bring myself to do the things we where doing and the things we were saying”(Unfollow Pg.30). Finally at the end of the story she steps away from all the church related activities and lives with C.G. a man she ,meet that went against the church.
- Social media effected Phelps initial response a lot, she was able to spread her message at a very fast rate and gain publicity very quick “Your dead wrote rituals == true repentance” she would argue with people online all the time which gave the church a lot more popularity. Then when Phelps started to merge off from the church she used social media to say that she was sorry about all the hate she caused, “tweets of encouragement and praise poured in” because of social media she had a negative impact and later on was able to apologize to everyone.
- This story deals with a lot of hate speech, in my opinion if a more filled down tone had a positive affect on Phelps-Roper then maybe she would have acted differently earlier in her life. Other people would disagree and say that she deserved all the hate speech which in some ways she did, but maybe if people had a conversation with instead of yelling at her she would have had a different approach later in her life.
- If I where to meet Phelps-Roper today I would most likely ask her what path led you down to spreading hate for many years even when you had some resistance in saying hate you still said it anyway. I would ask her this to get a better stance on what her life and emotions were like up to her leaving the church.
