Heard on NPR: A North Dakota family breaks the silence on gay marriage

[aeddubh]

Morning Edition has been doing a series on attitudes towards gay marriage in North Dakota. This is the first one I've managed to catch so far:

A North Dakota family breaks the silence on gay marriage

Interesting and thought-provoking. Very heartening the way the family seems to be dealing with it, too.

There was a bit of nuance to the gay marriage debate that often gets forgotten in the news coverage (you have to go to the transcript to get this; the online article is a summary):

GREENE: ... To her back [when she was young, a born-again Christian], love meant convincing people there was really only one acceptable path.

M. HOFFERT: And I was doing it out of love. So I'm trying to understand and remember that there are people - and I'm not talking about the extreme people where I see that religion is a cover for hate. I'm talking about people who are truly thinking, out of love, that they want something different for the people in their lives that they know. And, you know, it's like I'm just trying to assume positive intent and to stop there. It's hard though, sometimes.
...
[at end of story]
GREENE: ... The impression we left with was of a loving family struggling with something really hard. When Melanie got engaged a few days ago, the whole family congratulated her - every member. Wherever the Supreme Court lands on gay marriage this term, the kinds of conversations we heard all this week are going to go on. They bring to mind something Melanie told us in that abandoned church on the farm where she grew up. People can be conflicted about something and still be thinking out of love.

Gives me some hope after reading a very different story recently.

Comments

[stori-lundi.livejournal.com]

I had a rather heated discussion on FB over an article about why people hate gays and discriminate in the light of the Indiana law. There are millions of families like in the second article you posted. They aren't horrible, evil people. They just live in small towns surrounded by people just like them and literally don't know any different. Hating back at them doesn't do any good. You just hope that their kids grow up, move out, and gain some perspective.

[evcelt.livejournal.com]

Exactly.