And I'm Joe and this is Outlook weekend. Theme this week because this. Public one. Meghan Phelps right used to spend a lot of time on Twitter I would post things like Thank God for a. Perfect curse of God for the abominable sin of being gay and things like that you can cause a lot of offense in 140 characters but that wasn't her intention she was trying to save souls we thought this is the Word of God and nobody else is preaching it and it's our duty as servants of God to be out there warning people of the consequences of their sins Meghan had been born into the notorious Westboro Baptist Church set up by her grandfather who believe that God's love is for was is and dug out all the verses he could find in the Bible that showed God's hatred like Leviticus the shalt not lie with mankind as with womankind it is an abomination his many children and their many children want to few converts and they specialized in picketing I tugged at the funerals of gay people with placards reading God hates fags or soldiers killed in Iraq and Afghanistan thank God for days we believe that everything that happened was at the hand of God and therefore God deserved praise for for all these things all these all these judgments that that he had executed my going to was taken to her 1st pickets at the age of 5 and 20 years it was her main extracurricular activity. Of course you could see the hurt and pain and angry version and what we were doing and even know that was hard to see I also thought it was almost a game sometimes you know trying to make sure that our signs were seen by the people going into the funerals and sometimes it was a higher Journal environment and because we thought the God of attorney was supporting us and everything that we were doing that whole sense of this being this epic spiritual battle was so present that's an incredibly empowering feeling. If you believe that you are doing what God wants it's so easy to dismiss people's criticism and pain and and to justify what you're doing. Pretty much as soon as the internet took off the church got online and snapped up the web address God hates Facts dot com as a section dedicated to all the things God hates a proud look a lying tongue except for as a picket shuttle there have been nearly 60000 so far and on a number section including the number of American soldiers I quote that God has killed in Iraq and Afghanistan a constantly updating figure for the number of people whom God has cast into hell since you loaded this page and right at the bottom of the lest a final number 0 nanoseconds of sleep that church members lose over your opinions and feelings of ease loss of L's loss of eyes of the many people the church loath other Christian denominations Jews are at the top the church believe that they are the only ones who are the ones who are actually living what the Bible requires And so we spent a lot of time looking at other churches other belief systems and seeing exactly the verses that contradicted their beliefs and why they were going to hell and why we could have nothing to do with them when Twitter became a thing Meghan got an account and started firing off little messages of hate people who were annoyed or amused fired right back at her and Meghan loved the sparring she would never back down I was so sure that everything that I was saying was supported by the Bible and you know and again by by God And so I spent a lot of time responding to people and trying to get them to see it from our perspective. But there was one fellow who did something that no one else had haven't managed to do you shake confidence in his name is David Abbott and if to Israel and run a blog called judicious. I knew very little about Judaism like I believed that the Jews had killed Jesus and were going to be held responsible by God for that unless they repented so I had attacked this man David Abbot Paul and when I attacked him he 1st responded you know really angrily as a very acrimonious discussion and clearly very hostile and that was exactly what I expected. But shortly after you know those initial tweet he started to act a lot more friendly and started asking questions and then he asked a question that I didn't have an answer for and that never happened the question. The question was we have assigned advocating the death penalty for homosexuality and he said there are members of your church who have also committed sins that are considered worthy of death in the book of Leviticus Why are you not advocating for the death penalty for those sins and also didn't Jesus say Let he who is without sin cast the 1st stone. For the 1st time I saw you know the hypocrisy and that sign that we just had members of our church who would you know committed sins like this and why why weren't we advocating for the death penalty for that. And then also what was the point of Jesus saying Let he who is without sin cast the 1st stone if not he was directly addressing the death penalty there I was afraid I was afraid of the fact that I I didn't understand which was a terrifying proposition when everything in our our a world was built around this idea that we had the truth of God and it was on question of. Having let that doubt into our life and feeling afraid of what it might bring What did you do I did want a lot of people do when they encounter evidence that they're strongly held beliefs might be wrong which is to try to ignore it but the tout knack to way you feel guilty and you know seditious even like it's this is the established order who are you to question or to doubt the word of God and His servants who your parents and the elders in the church eventually she confided in one of his sisters who was also having doubts and after a month I can izing they decided they had to leave the church which also meant leaving their family and everything that I have a nun Meghan was 26 by then she left with her family what with them in their legal firm spent all her spare time picketing with them it was a big step and then use didn't go down well several of my beloved cousin and so billions and and uncles and came in tried to talk us out of it a little bit as we were packing and just trying to make sure we understood the drastic consequences which would be walked well with the consequences going to be so hell eventually but the church also believes that if anybody who's not living the way that the church. Thinks is the right way is subject to the curses and wrath of God So when we left I was terrified we're going to get cancer or in a get a terrible like head on collision there was danger everywhere it seemed like the sisters ran off to the Hills of South Dakota to try to hide but I didn't have a car accident on the way and they didn't get cancer and I began to realize that only send us that badmouthed and condemned to hell could actually be very nice who came upon this wonderful couple that were running the bed and breakfast we were staying at and then we brought so many wonderful people a Jewish family in Los Angeles and another Jewish family and Montreal and seeing how much goodness there was in the world with such a wonderful and hopeful experience and really was able to change our perspective from the you know doomsday view of the world that that everything is going to be destroyed and to now feeling like it's a privilege it's a privilege to live in the world and to to not try to make up for or try to repair some of the damage that we did all those years we were the church. I look back at that now and then just appalled by how little we really cared about what we were doing to people. Do you feel you were brainwashed at the time definitely not because it was really important to me to make sure that there was a good logical scriptural rationale for the things that we were doing I didn't feel like I was just accepting it without questioning you say at the time you didn't think you're brainwashed do you know right now I'm I don't usually use the word brainwashing but you know I do think we were indoctrinated Why don't you use the word brainwashed just because it's it's unnecessarily pejorative you know my family that they're not evil or crazy. I think their supreme lean misguided it's too easy it's too easy to look at the picket signs and say Those people are monsters and I don't think that's true and I don't think do you mean I see them as the answer I think that it was when I started to see people outside the church as human and then started to see my family as human rather than this group that was just divinely led by by God uniquely led by God that made it so that I was eventually able to see outside of it but nearly 5 years later Meghan and her sister haven't been able to patch things up with their family I know that they think that we are evil you know that we are deliberately trying to to hurt them and but that's not our goal we're just trying to get them to see what we were blind to for so many years when we were there and hoping that and you know eventually something will will get through was it was leaving I hate to think of it in those terms but but yes I think it was it was the right thing to do and I never want to think of it as an exchange or something like we you know gave up our our family for for the world I don't see it that way because I again I hope to have him back I really do. And now has a job with an issue as company and wax with Norn Foresman Tong de radicalization and how to engage people across ideological divides. What's happened to faith I still believe in God and not sure about God I know that I don't believe that the Bible. The Word of God there's too much in it that I can't find a good moral explanation for but I don't know I don't know what. You're listening to Outlook weekend this is curses to the monthly kind. I naturally and Mergen and Tim grew up in southern India surrounded by women his dad had died when he was young leaving him his mother and 2 sisters but some woman he thinks was still a mystery and when he got married he was puzzled by his wife's behavior. In the mother would die and someone to have a minute here one day I saw something she is trying to run away from me hide something from me which made me while you were quixotic while you were you this lady Viola recently got married away she's running away from me then it was. Running a meeting going up and down then she told me it's none of your business get lost from here then I found out she was trying to hide a piece of your lady Nick lot from me which To be honest with you I would even use it to clean my Wakil that piece of very unhygienic cloth was a rack that his wife was using as a sanitary pad underneath when he came to know that Ok right it's a menstrual issue we're going to have a chat with me wife I told her not be live it close to the city it's not a far journey let me go quickly get to some center in a can so that you maintain your health and and I do Nick with she said Ok my dear I'm aware of it you know the television ads but if you're going to buy a spin on Sen knocking the neck on my milk I can't under house so the question of affordability so then they realized yes this is a serious issue that some soul searching has to be done and wondered how many women were in the same position as his wife and discover that only one in 8 Indian women were using sanitary pads he couldn't let it go he asked himself what they were using instead so named Then he said then and the little that that able to really disgusting shocking thing you know more than I started doing my research I thought those were only rare exotic bits of Watan claw so when I started travelling through all the country looking to many parts of the country different states you're just more intriguing more shocking more weird moment. I saw people using leaves sand sawdust ash and all kinds of Saudi to see nonsensical things then you can see world will affect the state of women's health but to. It is a poly the Unitech infection this if left goes into the complications it wasn't really are not to limbs field he was a welder by train 8 he'd always had an interest in design and he had the idea of designing a sanitary pad that would be much cheaper than the major brands you know this is a to boot you don't talk about these things and none of the women he asked would help him with his experiments he decided that he'd just have to try out his designs himself if you can't find a way to mimic the menstrual cycle. Of Football God came to rescue going to butcher shop fish to some animal blood put it in the football that are designed to be in uterus then it punctured a book a couple of false put into it then what it within myself did make you know them and then I tried with Metro song then walked cycle brand trying to slowly. So when I plumped I know a certain amount of the animal blood the result of the 2 then with the clutch to see the impact how much blood comes out in the single almost time that it take to spread so I lose to. Me. Animal blood drops people noticed but didn't think it was an experiment so I know this crazy man will only. Close us with good. Shock came from a life he said I can live with you she served notice to me and said Ok right. I am leaving Nick shock course my mom then the religious religious told me and processed me evil spirits it's undesirable to have you with this relate at the local custom is they take you to your name tree and your side down so you'll be chains the local . Place to heal you. Of trauma happened to me. So my wife my mom my me left all alone in life. What today will give up on his quest in order to save his marriage or stick with it and be lonely and of the night of the. War Within myself whether it is the welfare of one individual. Of millions of women in the country my no conscious it to me if I can be sacrificed if it is going to help in the long run then there's nothing wrong then I decided to took the plunge. And threw himself into the task he got out of the village where people thought he was crazy and holed up in a nearby town where he spent years creating a path he was happy with and a machine that could manufacture it his idea was not to build a big factory with money he didn't have but to sell the machines to women who could then make the pants themselves for their own use and to sell for profit the machine was decided in such a way that anyone educated illiterate they could understand and start using it in just an hour but even after my successful invention certified by the scientists still people were not convinced it again took an ear and a half for me to manufacture a couple of machines Kerio to the rural religious gathering people telling them what it is how it will work how people pulling little money can buy a machine that people started using it then he asked at last a girl right how do you feel using my my brand my make off and what he said was I was not even. Well that I'm reading you're not going have totally followed it so then I thought yes I had met the victim encouraged he made another $250.00 machines and took them to the north and east and parts of India then more regions expressed an interest and more the machines were hit. This message at least the president of India when the annual awards for best entrepreneurs and their annual awards some Nikken my name was recommended for the best entrepreneurs and when it was announced it was instant media flashing my fears my war is over the irony is after 5 and a half years I got a call on my mobile the wife huskily says Can you remember me it's my wife's wife's and she came back after seeing the glory the pride the prestige I have gained or a period of time then after some time my mom can so my wife my mom my village people who wore look under them criticise or Streisand me and so I was not good at unlimited money coming to me then its oil from coming back together life comes a full 7. 10 years on the machines have been bought by women's groups all over India who are now running their own sanitary pad businesses they can make $100.00 or more plants an hour and sell them at a fraction of the price of commercial mines and I want to watch them has sent his machines to another 25 countries he's a man with a vision that. My vision one. To ensure at least a 1000000 women will get employment through this so that they become self-sufficient sophistic and to make a country that the use of Senator napkins he said on 5 percent to take a 200 person only 2 statements that's what I have in mind and trial and. With Outlook weekend as another kind of curse we haven't talked about the kind that is difficult to get away with on the radio. Just Tom curses a lot she can't help it she has to Rhett's a neurological disorder that causes a variety of takes physical and verbal without meaning to shill suddenly say a word or phrase that's unconnected to anything she's consciously thinking about sometimes it's very rude indeed though this being the b.b.c. We've cut out the obscenity. 90 percent just get people to retch don't have any swear involuntary swearing take speaking 10 percent do and I'm one of that one of the 10 percent who do have some swearing texts stand to take swearing doesn't come from biscuit any emotion or you know there's no rage associated So it sounds it sounds very different it's just the noise in. My biscuit include saying biscuit have a lot Happy Birthday Happy Birthday and it also includes lots of just general squeaking noises biscuit and complex raises or simple words biscuit anything but I have every ever known about or experience has the potential to become a vocal tic and in addition to the noises and words biscuit and I make a lot of involuntary movements Biskit so I bang my arms Biskit against my chest Biskit and bend my legs suddenly which makes it very hard for me to walk sensibly. She falls over a lot as a result and has to wear pads on her hands and knees to protect herself but it's the feeling on the inside when she's about to say or do something uncontrollable that causes her the most discomfort a friend of mine just explained to as you imagine if he shook her fizzy drinks coffee. Nothing then didn't take off the top hat and that sort of surging sensation this can be uncomfortable to skip Happy Birthday Happy Birthday biscuit it's easy off a little bit when I'm asleep when I'm very deeply asleep but sometimes sometimes I do wake myself up suddenly you know shouting or throwing myself around people forget that I get as a surprise by some of the things I say or do how as a. Wife particular words become text is a complete mystery to me sometimes they'll ask something for a day or for one and it won't ever come up again and some words are really repetitive like biscuits for me has been around for almost 2 years send send. Direct says that of a mystery all together it's thought because by a combination of genetic and environmental factors and it usually starts in childhood which is what happened to Jess who was confused when she started to move and speak in a way she couldn't fathom I felt frightened by it and didn't feel Biskit didn't feel able to talk about it. I thought I was bad or you know that there was something you know that was something wrong with my personality or with me that was you know it made me feel it made under my desk it undermined my confidence things got much worse in her twenties and she finally got a diagnosis when I had an explanation for that made it much easier not just because I could learn about it and understand it for myself Biskit but also because I could explain it to other people and that's been the most powerful thing for me in terms of limiting Biskit the impact of my takes place it is to be able to explain them and articulate what's happening biscuit and break down the fear because lots of other people are just frightened and once you can once you can explain then that opens up understanding. I have a real. Div