# @thekansascitystar on Instagram

- **Type:** Image
- **Original URL:** https://www.instagram.com/p/ChXKfY1PrrT
- **Gondola URL:** https://gondola.cc/posts/19115960-thekansascitystar-instagram
- **Thumbnail:** https://img.gondola.cc/tr:w-,h-,fo-auto/thumbnails/e908145b35.jpg
- **Posted:** 2022-08-17T13:15:40.000+00:00
- **Account Owner:** Kansas City Star (@thekansascitystar) — https://gondola.cc/thekansascitystar

## Caption

The hum of the midday crowd swells at a downtown Kansas City coffee shop as barista Edward “Ed” Griffin forms an intricate pegasus from milk squiggles on the surface of a latte.

Griffin, AKA milkyfinesse, gets lost in creating the latte art. But their thoughts are never far from a different, and unhappier, time and place: Protests put on by the infamous Westboro Baptist Church.

The grandchild of Fred Phelps, the church’s late founder, was used as a pawn at 6 years old. Even now that they’ve came out as queer and non-binary and left behind relatives who are still in the church, Griffin is still ashamed of the memory.

Now Griffin is being pulled back into the orbit of that infamous family by way of an ugly surprise. They recently learned their mother took out more than three dozen credit cards in their name and racked up thousands of dollars in debt, in what Griffin reported to police as an identity theft.

Griffin was raised in a family fixated on condemning others based on their interpretation of the Bible. But the true sin, Griffin said, is how Westboro took away their identity and their childhood. Now they’re trying to take it back.

“It was hard to be surrounded by hate,” they said of their upbringing. “Hard to really be denied actual identity. Hard to not be given what one needs to grow and thrive.”

Read more about their journey at the link in our bio ✏ Anna Spoerre

#Kansas #KansasNews #WestboroBaptistChurch #Fundamentalism #KansasCity

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## Tags

fundamentalism, kansas, westborobaptistchurch, kansasnews, kansascity

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