Fred Phelps’s Son Is the Subject of a Documentary About His Abusive Childhood and Escaping Westboro

Caitlin Dickson

Nate Phelps, son of the late, hatemongering preacher Fred Phelps, is the subject of a documentary-in-the making about his abusive childhood and how he escaped life in the church.

Terrie Johnson was 52 years old and ready to die.

She’d known since fourth grade that she was gay, but to the conservative, Southern Baptist community in which she’d been raised, Johnson’s feelings were wrong. She lived much of her adult life in public, speaking on behalf of her church to Christian communities around the country, but she was hiding in plain sight. She’d married a man, had children—choices she doesn’t regret—but she was living a lie. Finally, she reached a point where she could no longer continue the charade. She made a plan to commit suicide. Instead, she came out of the closet.

Not all of Johnson’s family members were supportive of her revelation. Most of them weren’t. But her son, Brad, had her back. His mother’s story reminded him of someone else who had escaped an extreme religious upbringing, one far more dire: Nate Phelps, the son of “Fag”-hating Westboro Baptist Church founder, Fred Phelps. As a Kansas native, Brad had long been familiar with—and fascinated by—the hateful antics of the Topeka-based church. He’d heard about Nate, one of four of the 13 Phelps children who defected from the church, and who was speaking about his new life of LGBT activism. He wanted to tell Nate’s story and, in the process, he thought Nate’s journey could help his mother.

When the Johnsons reached out to Nate Phelps, they weren’t sure whether they’d even receive a response. Now, a little over a year later, they’re more than halfway through filming “Not My Father’s Son,” a documentary about the abuse that Nate and his siblings suffered at the hands of their father and how Nate finally escaped it. This week, the team created a Kickstarter campaign, with a trailer for the film and a short appeal from Terrie, clad in suspenders and a purple paisley bowtie, for donations.

“We’ve been doing this on our own time and our own dime,” Brad Johnson told The Daily Beast. “Now we’re tapped out.”

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http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/06/09/fred-phelps-s-son-is-the-subject-of-a-documentary-about-his-abusive-childhood-and-escaping-westboro-baptist.html