Looks like there is hope for us yet!
I locked myself in my bedroom and cried the first time I read the memo.
It was January 2008. Two weeks before, I had sent a text message to a former high school teacher that read simply, “Oh no. I may be turning liberal.”
I had recently switched my political party affiliation from Republican to Independent, and, though not a complete swing to the left, I knew it was a big move for a small-town, Southern Baptist, Oklahoma woman.
My former teacher called me immediately and excitedly offered her congratulations.
But what she somberly told me next — and what the old memo she e-mailed me two weeks later proved — was that religion and politics are so strongly bonded in Oklahoma that anyone who disagrees with the religious right is made out to be despicable.
I realized that, in the minds of too many Oklahomans, the “L-word” will do nothing less than send a person straight to hell.
Outside the box
This teacher was infamous in my small hometown in north-central Oklahoma.
She was the one who told students to not use the word “gay” as an insult.
Continued...
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