love wins

MY 20-YEAR-OLD DAUGHTER, Brittany, had left the computer on in my bedroom. She’d been using it to chat with friends. The chat session was still on the screen.

Maybe I shouldn’t have read it, but I’m a mom and I couldn’t help myself.

“We’ll meet you at the WreckRoom,” Brittany had written at the end.

My husband, John, Brittany’s stepfather, walked in.

“Have you ever heard of a place called the WreckRoom?” I asked him.

“No,” he said with a shrug. “Why?”

“Brittany’s going there tonight.” I looked up the WreckRoom online. What?! It was an all-ages gay nightclub on Thirty-Ninth Street, the heart of

Oklahoma City’s gay neighborhood.

That couldn’t be right. Why would Brittany want to go there?

I’d grown up in a very conservative church environment and raised Brittany the same way. Where I came from, the Bible was crystal clear about homosexuality. Someone who lived that way was out of