What If You Saw Things Differently

You’re certain of this, you’d swear by that, and you’d never change your mind about X, Y, or Z. But perhaps there’s room in your point of view for just a smidge of doubt? The tiniest sliver of questioning? Maybe you, like the women on the following pages, do have the capacity to change your mind. And maybe you, too, will discover something wondrous on the other side of your second thoughts.

AFTER THE FALL

How do you unlearn a lifetime of hatred? For Aussa Lorens, it took years of doubt and shame—and the hell of watching her family unravel.

IN MY SOUTHERN BAPTIST FAMILY, one message was drilled into our heads: To be a good person, you must avoid the wrong kind of people.

No one ever explained what it meant to be gay, but I’d heard enough about “the homosexual agenda” to know that gay people were our enemies. When there was a gay character on a TV show, my dad changed the channel. “If they can get you to laugh at it today, they’ll convince you to accept it by tomorrow,” he’d say. If we let them get married, who was to stop them from marrying animals, or inanimate objects, like coatracks? My father preached these warnings from the pulpit—he was an elder at our church—and at the dinner table. I was mystified: coatracks? For most of my young life, I believed a gay person wasn’t just an abomination and a threat, but also absurd—a sick joke.

My father had written two books on Christian parenting, and when he was interviewed on TV, I’d swell with pride. A PR man by trade, he was witty and charismatic, but he could be brooding, too. He had an edge. He was the kind of person you hoped liked you; if he didn’t, you knew.