Our duty was to declare God's standards to the world: no adultery, no fornication, no gays, no idolatry.

I had grown up seeing people in school where I felt like I needed to keep them at arm's length, or on the picket line, where there was a tonne of hostility and no time to build rapport with people.

If you can see these people... as human beings and capable of change, there is hope. We should be willing to reach out. Imagine what could happen if we kept reaching out to people like Westboro members?

Loving someone whose ideas we find detestable can seem impossible, and empathizing with them isn't much easier - but it's so important to remember that listening is not agreeing.

In 2014, as a Christmas gift, I wrote an essay for my husband, about our story. Writing that showed me there was value in interrogating my experiences while they were fresh - especially because I was terrified of forgetting.

You know, I had grown up standing on public sidewalks, saying things that people, you know, were very provoked by and were upset by. And - but standing outside that first soldier's funeral, it was eerily quiet.

My friends on Twitter didn't abandon their beliefs or their principles - only their scorn. They channeled their infinitely justifiable offense and came to me with pointed questions tempered with kindness and humor. They approached me as a human being, and that was more transformative than two full decades of outrage, disdain, and violence.

The very first soldier's funeral protest that I went to was in Omaha, Neb.

There's a rich history at Westboro of parodying pop culture. The thing about pop culture is that it gives us a shared language. We were constantly trying to co-opt things that were popular to deliver our own message.

Assuming ill motives almost instantly cuts us off from truly understanding why someone does and believes as they do.

I wrote an apology for the harm I'd caused, but I also knew that an apology could never undo any of it.

Once I saw that we were not the ultimate arbiters of divine truth but flawed human beings, I couldn't pretend otherwise.

Because of the dynamics on the picket line all my life, I had these expectations of people. It was all the things that I had learned about outsiders from the time I was tiny, that they were evil, that if they were being nice to me they were trying to seduce me away from the truth.

Several people I had conversations with were hugely influential. People who found internal inconsistency in Westboro's ideology. It was the first thing that allowed me to recognize that Westboro was wrong.

I remember feeling like we at WBC were a persecuted minority, triumphant in the face of evil people 'worshipping the dead' as we picketed funerals or rejoiced at the destruction of the Twin Towers.

When people are in the thrall of poisonous ideology, it's really not all about deliberate ill will, or inherent hatred, or a lack of intelligence. It's about the unbelievable destructiveness and staying power of bad ideas and about finding ways to equip people with the tools they need to fight them.

My religion, that's who I am.

I'm a Buddhist.

We believe that what we possess we don't ultimately own. God is merely entrusting it to us. And one of the conditions of that trust is that we share what we have with those who have less. So, if you don't give to people in need, you can hardly call yourself a Jew. Even the most unbelieving Jew knows that.

I think our people in Britain have a normative expectation of ethical conduct.

As the political leaders of Europe meet to save the euro and European Union, so should religious leaders.

We from every religion feel comfortable in Britain because there is a host. The Church of England is a good host, it has been a major force in shaping England into such a tolerant society.

Much can and must be done by governments, but they cannot of themselves change lives.

Governments cannot make marriages or turn feckless individuals into responsible citizens. That needs another kind of change agent.