the director of the wisconsin book festival. they can wall so much for being here tonight. i believe this is seven of eight events in this room and also the 30th out of the 32 event just today and the third day of the wisconsin book festival. thank you so much. i could not be more pleased to introduce you to megan overbrook unfollow. we were just talking about her discussion of doubt, how you decide to leave or stay in how you defend yourself in one of those conversations that we need to be having so much more as a culture and i think it opens up so many doors for people. . . .

>> and twitter did something that caused her to doubt those strict church leaders that they are simple and fallible and to feel confident so that's the question she was left with. after a digital joust she started to wonder if they had a point and then changed messages. [applause] >> good evening everyone thank you for being here tonight. i grew up in a very tight knit family in kansas on the third of 11 children, three girls

and a boy's we lived on a tree-lined street with dozens of other kids and surrounding houses. just across the backyard was a church we attended every sunday my mom's family was vocally talented and they often gave me chills their passionate praises to god for his mercy and grace echoing off my ears. i grow proud of my family my grandfather was a well-known civil rights activist and a lawyer who won awards from civil rights groups for go my family had suffered for that work with constant vandalism in the physical attacks on his elementary school age children but that never persuade them from the commitment to racial justice that the new era of my family's legacy began and i will tell you about that now.

i didn't understand what was going on at first is like it appeared one day as a force of nature. my mother's family was a well-known and polarizing presence but it started at gage park it didn't look like a park to me there were no swings or slides or jungle gyms just when the busy intersection my grandfather would drive the big red pickup and the rest consisting of my aunts and uncles and cousins and siblings to follow in a caravan of vehicles. is still a few months shy of kindergarten but i was surprised how we strain is some were compared to the leader watch your kids.

gage park was a popular meeting place for gay men. in hindsight the protest were bound to be intensely negative reaction especially because our message went further as an old-school baptist was determined to represent the scriptural position on homosexuality and took the attacks on the gay community as a whole blaming them for the aids epidemic and that they deserve the death penalty. many letters including those from one of my aunts to say was distorted by god because of their homosexuality and declared aids to be a disease for which the homosexuals take the sole blame and that should be avenged upon while spreading the disease of the homosexual this lgbt people were, morris acceptable that

was just to outrage most leaders and managed to do the same with greater economy. to expose the gay aids pulley they are worthy of death that would become the most message this would mystify me for years of that religious education i was receiving at home i was five years old and i didn't understand why anybody would reject our message or why they would draw counter protesters. i was scared of them at first young punks and disease probably got aids the bible for bad girls to cut her hair but some came out bright red and blue and purple kool-aid hair. and metal interfaces others

had their head shaved others by long black hair that hung in greasy strands like my dad tall and skinny and those running shorts in that style combat boots on their feet and flannel shirts around their waist coming in an angry mob. and try to surround our group of those who made a human barrier between us and them. sometimes they were cops in handcuffs sometimes we were in them which wasn't fair i thought because we were just trying to protect ourselves from them but i held my breath whenever i walked by them so wouldn't catch made them awful people. they urge drivers to honk and yell they threw eggs in beer and pepsi bottles filled with urine. sometimes they would abandon

my cousins and i would scuttle away behind mom or aunt would stand behind us or them from behind my sign and watch them approach to bellow and spit our bodies and our hair. are parents kept a safe how dare they? that's my mom. what made them think they could do this to us? but my grandfather had a different perspective it was proof that god was with us. from the age of five into my early twenties i join protests across the country almost daily they quickly expanded beyond the gay community to include everyone that literally was not part of our church the only true church on the landscape that we were so

confident in our own understanding not only are right but our duty to judge others we protested funerals assisting the deceased were in hell celebrating their death even though the mourners were only a short distance away i was told this is what god instructed us to warn the fellow man so we saw the preaching as of compassion this was the only hope for a doomed world. in 2009 i took that message to twitter to reach more people but what i found is those people had reached me instead so a group of individuals began to ask questions and pour over our beliefs they had internal inconsistencies they gently and respectfully

challenged me. i was baffled when i saw the contradiction. how could this be this unquestionable word of god? the fact we could be wrong that was the beginning of the end of that doctrine. so then i made the agonizing decision to leave the church i be cut off from the only community had ever belong to i will lose my lifelong home on that street along with everyone and every one important in my life and left with the role they spent my entire life demonizing and antagonizing. so now i just made the decision to leave and discussed it with my younger sister grace who also felt the need to leave so we were trying to figure out what to do next.

>> making the decision to leave was yet another impossible question. and? grace nor i had an answer we couldn't leave before mom's birthday and what about their anniversary? it would ruin everything right at this moment and those are things we cannot bear to leave without. that we would forever lose access to once we left. family recipes? movies and old photos? maybe we just wait a little while longer. was partly a stalling tactic thinking that a change would occur but at the first prospect of losing everyone we were painfully aware there was so much we didn't know about her parents lives in her grandmother what did we know before westborough? we had begun interviewing her almost immediately we went

across the backyard to the we would find them upstairs in the church library at 86 she was so quiet and gentle because of the deep curve in her spine she would buy on her bed and grace would lie next to her on the foot of the bed and me at the head we would take turns asking questions and i would try not to show the site of losing her this tsunami of guilt progress started to record everything. the sounds of our monthly birthday parties, bible study, my mother story about my siblings and me when we were young. inside the van on picket trips and my little brothers.

even if they eventually left. all their little boy voices would be gone. an endless stream of photos of a family kickball game. getting ready to walk to school in the morning. my parents holding hands. my family visit to kansas city. milkshake parties and walks to the parks of my nieces and nephews. and a trip for snow cones. in those months every joyful experience that left grace and me in tears gasping for breath. trying to remember what it was like before all of this what it was like to be happy with the inescapable offense of that excruciating death of everyone we loved i began obsessively taking notes to chronicle every moment and

terrified of losing a single one as if clinging to these memories might alleviate the agony as recording at all could keep it from my grasp. nice things said during hugs. how she could always count on me to smell good. on how my curls in his face made it difficult to breathe. how mom didn't mind being smothered by them. dad and how he loves it when he finishes sentences. the name that my brother had given me as a tall there when he cannot pronounce mine. we are very fortunate to have you as a daughter but i wrote it down before he could regret that and take it back. and take down the photos of me that hung on the walls or repurpose my bedroom or spend the rest of his life he racing me from his memory as much as

possible. we began packing her things in boxes we had labels like shoes or books i numbered mine meticulously cataloging every single one i took each piece of jewelry i owned into a tiny white envelope with the date and occasion that i received it if i forgot a detail i copied 63 dvds which of home movies watching scene overseen it all the while i knew what would happen when we left i do the heartbreak they would feel and betrayal i felt it when my brother josh left eight years earlier a poorest loan - - a postmortem that went on for years we racked our brains looking for every sign of duplicity and we had trans for one transformer horror into rage know we were disgusted

how could he? what monster would pretend to be one of us knowing all the while he was going to abandon us forever? it did not think of us to occur to his devastation we cannot see his terror or despair or desperation it was so much easier to cast him as a villain that he was a selfish jerk who only wanted to pursue his own lust he could not imagine the 19 -year-old boy could have a legitimate reason to leave the only church today or consider anything truly was wrong with us. that we would all look back just as i had. they would see me interviewing graham in cleaning out my bedroom and all the text messages and e-mails i had sent because they would remember my tears and refusal to tweet how i could ever have looked them in the eye. they will understand they wanted to tell them everything and i tried so hard to keep

them. that i was begging for change but i wanted to stay. >> shortly after that grace and i left the church and were separated from our family just as we knew we would be paragraph or so that i had to run away and hide forever but i thought everything i had done that was the only way i could survive. but almost immediately i connected with people who help me to see things differently who invited me to work for change to help dismantle the arguments i spent my life defending and repair some of the damage i did when i was part of the church. in the nearly seven years i left i have made amends with the communities they used to target. i have been shown incredible grace by those communities and i'm so grateful to have had the opportunity to turn a largely destructive life into

meaningful healing for so many people. people who raise me from birth to condemn others and those that were trapped in those to have meaningful conversations against ideological divide and most importantly to experience that hateful message of westborough first hamper after a book came out i received a message from the man who when westborough was at its peak was terrified and struggling with the sexuality he said he concerned consumed might churches content almost as a way of self-harm and will be reading your book and here you eloquently dismantle the arguments felt like closure. messages like this remind me as extra nearly painful as it has been the things that i did to others who were vulnerable in the most devastating moments of my life but there is real value in owning our mistakes and finding ways to

turn them into forces for good. thank you for being here tonight i'm happy to answer questions. [applause] >> you still consider yourself christian and how do you worship? there so much clear that there is so much love in your family but i wonder with those social struggles there are so many division between society and the conservative church is there any place you feel that your church has something to say to the culture?

>> the first part of your question i don't consider myself a christian any more. i am not religious although it's funny to me how much or how many religious ideals are that i learned from religion i still carry with me. i gave a talk that details what those people on twitter did for me how they turned this acrimonious conversation taking place on twitter and turned that around into meaningful dialogue and as i'm writing up a very close attention to everything i wrote in that talk i wanted to say exactly what i meant and nothing more and nothing less so i finally finished after weeks of working on it i close my laptop and realize the last of my argument was that jesus said love your enemies. there are a lot of things in

the bible i have not been able to find a good explanation for. some of the things that i believe that we spent so much time memorizing bible verses. i found much better ways to say those but there are still too many. i shouldn't say ever but i think coming from a place where i felt so certain about everything i am very skeptical of ever coming to a place where i say now this is the answer. and then the second question, i'm not sure. i don't think there is a monolith or a church or set of beliefs. everybody potentially has valuable things to contribute

to a conversation so i don't think we should exclude anybody from that. it seems a little broad. sorry. does that answer your question? [laughter] >> thank you so much for your courage to leave and to write this book. thank you for that. [applause] >> thank you. >> i was also wondering do you think your parents might ever read this book? >> i do believe they will if they have not already. westborough ml with x members is to pretend we don't exist or acknowledge the things we say or do publicly. the exception to that is when something gets attention forgot to mention that ted talk i gave a couple years ago

they were tweeting about it in leading up to the publication of the book there were tweets saying things like i was an antichrist. i do believe they will read it. i wrote the book for so many reasons and one of them i gave breadcrumbs for my family and those still in the church to detail exactly why i stopped believing and how i came to see the destructiveness. i have written in a way hopefully they in their current position that it can be a bridge from where they are to where i am now. and even if it doesn't cause them to read it, i do hope it causes them to reconsider some things and then i write at the end how the church has moderated its positions in

some important ways but there is still a long way to go for i hope i help in that progress. >> i have two alone - - i brothers that not with my sister anymore people react differently so in the church you think x members as a monolith. that they are all on the same page so people have different experiences in the church a different families. so there is a lot of support it's not nearly the club that the church envisions.

>> in those responses that you attracted on twitter the importance of the reason of their arguments but you also talked about the strong sense of community in the pull to your family. as you work with those who work on late monday - - leaving who work on extremism can you talk about the interplay of reason and community? >> i really glad you brought up the community aspect because i come from a family of lawyers. they are very intelligent and analytical and it seems like a

very closed system because as long as you accept the basic premise that the bible is the literal word of god and the only true interpretation than everything else seems to follow for the most part. so it was very important for me to experience on twitter and have conversations with people to find those internal inconsistencies and contradictions. i don't think i could have left without that. but that emotional aspect is the community aspect. was talking to an anthropologist last year who defined shame as the feeling when we violated the norms of our community. for a long time from mother teresa and princess diana died my church celebrated. anyone they identified was sinful it was a joyous occasion if they passed away.

[laughter] well mother teresa was catholic. [laughter] and princess diana was an adulterous. i knew nothing about them other than those facts so they were condemned to hell forever. so this is how i was trained to respond to that i was just modeling the behavior around me so when 9/11 rolled around my little reaction was to say out loud awesome. i never felt ashamed of that because that was my community but i got on twitter in 2009 it was to - - shocking these people i was interacting with the vast majority were very hostile the fact that there

was a group that i was trying to come to know over time there were things that made it unique in my experience. so the fact it was very limited at 140 characters that made me feel safe my interactions with outsiders were always at arms length because it was so limited i was never aware of feelings being in danger if i was in a physical space. it stopped me from using casual insults. my family would throw them around all the time. there was a space for it on twitter and when i did include those the conversation devolved into you don't you will - - no me so i stopped using them because it did not communicate our core message.

so all these things happening on twitter to know people over time and developing a rapport , it affected me in ways i did not anticipate and i missed it until now i'm on twitter this is a few months after i had gotten on and i saw how people responded and sharing memories of her passing away. at a birthday party actually was one of the monthly birthday parties at the church surrounded by people i was sad well and murphy died and the celebration started but then it got worse. remember a famine in somalia. i felt i was becoming part of

this community and started to feel ashamed i couldn't feel ashamed until i was part of another community. i just want to reason that it was essential but so was this other piece so the tendency of humans is to see people that they are irredeemably evil if you isolate them because they thank you are evil so we don't want that kind of hatefulness and you don't want to convince other people to join them so have that language as much as we can for whatever individual has for the patients to feel safe enough to engage with people like that more likely we are to change hearts and minds. people say that this is unique

somehow. may be in particular with the specific things they do but i don't think my reaction was anything other than completely human and there are many other examples of other nationalist like david duke was his godfather who left the movement after engaging with jewish people. and darrell davis is a black jazz musician who convinced 200 members of the kkk to abandon the movement. there is a lot of examples of the strategies being powerful with that community aspect. the person that you demonized shows you is not who you thought they were and it has his cognitive dissidents that

actually does cause people to change their views. >> see you cap people at distance on twitter when you first got on their and responding to all these different things, did you have guidelines or free will with what you are allowed to do was there some way looking over your shoulder when you were discussing what was being said? what was the interaction within your family and the guidelines that they had that you were given free will? >> i was 23 at the time i was still at home my desk was 5 feet away from my mother's

so i guide on twitter after i read an article on cnn. i was the only one on twitter for a year or year and a half. i would always read my post in front of my mother initially but then i saw that as a way of communicating with people that did not require distortion. so i try to explain but that is not what i said. [laughter] so yes so i would reach out to people directly so it's something that i would do i be cooking and dinner and my

iphone the one hand or standing in the picket line constantly answering questions from people even from the picket line and as a family of lawyers who taught me these arguments that i had been taught from the time i was tiny and i had the answer if i didn't have an answer i go the older people they would give me the answer. they would give me chapter and verse to explain a position. so again this is why i felt very safe because we have all the answers. this is the truth of god and it is unquestionable and i had never ever had the feeling of being bested so when i came to this point and had these conversations came from a jewish man named david he was asking me questions for a year

i started off attacking him he responded very negative at first then he started to ask questions i started to ask in response my purpose was to better counter his arguments but in the midst of that extreme nuances he finds this internal inconsistency i was flabbergasted literally. i had 20 years of an answer so i started to approach the question at my mother and in hindsight you can see on their faces they would reiterate the verse that justified the position but not the contradiction. it was mind blowing.

so occasionally i would have people would say that she pulls up her phone in the tweets and say there's something wrong with that i basically said that's one reason - - one response in the twitter handle as long as there wasn't that many spaces left but for the most part after a while i was trusted and i felt safe doing it. since i left i've heard that things are a little more tightened up in that way. >> hearing about your grandfather antiracism work was very fascinating.

can you tell me anymore about him quick. >> i go into a lot of detail in the book he went and moved the same day as brown v board of education and took that as a sign from god he should go to law school so for him some people look at that work that he did against lgbtq people and their rights and there was no tension because he saw those positions to be from stricture as quality under the law those to the stranger because god has made the one blood on the earth that god

never said it was an abomination to be black or female but these protected classes with antidiscrimination laws but he would say that being gay homosexuality is defined by conduct but abominable conduct. ungodly conduct. so for him this is what the bible says so this is what we find in the bible so it is unquestionable. >> but that's the reason he went to law school. >> even before that he went to a school at university and left because they excluded

black people. which is amazing because he grew up in the deep south and did not go along with it. >> i glanced at your wikipedia bio before i came here i think it said you went to university was that before or after twitter quick so how could you avoid the students in the academic life prior to that? unless it was online. >> washburn was before twitter and it was definitely is not you will look for or find intellectual freedom because it's a mile and a half from my house and we protested there

every week at least it was one of the earlier targets. we spent as little time there as possible. and we went to public school also before that. so people wonder how could you be exposed? we read secular books and listened to secular music there were very few restrictions on what we could consume. people would say how did those things not influence you? the best analogy i have come up with is before you are ever exposed to any ungodly ideas or portrayal, you understand , you are taught in detail why

they are wrong. it's like being inoculated against those ideas before you are ever exposed so you memorize those chapters and verses why they are wrong and take you to hell so when you see them as not see something to emulate but you shrug it off like or. criminal. adulterer. whore. we didn't believe in evolution but if it came up we would just parrot the answers had besought that way. we can do that. that is fine. but we don't have to believe it. >> i heard you speak on the radio yesterday. you got on the subject of how

the country is very polarized politically and i think we all probably have relatives or friends that are on the other side of the gulf and we cannot communicate. i thank you went over four or five steps that it's possible to get over the gulf. >> that is the ted talk that i mentioned it's what those people did for me on twitter and those steps have a lot of power to bridge the divide so literally stealing the best ideas from the people on twitter but those four points do not assume bad intent because if you assume they are evil or delusional that you stop listening to them or hear where they come from and if you don't know what they believe it's difficult for you

to find a way to reach them. and the second was to ask questions and asking questions is a way to signal they are being heard so that makes people more heard and it's like you give them permission of exactly how i experience that with those people on twitter. the third point is to stay calm with these intense ideas that you both feel strongly about it can feel like an attack people have a deeply held value so it can be very difficult but this is one of the ways that online communication can be powerful

because you have a moment and could take time and step back where you feel you have to respond immediately. you can stop and consider what words you will choose to communicate your ideas and decide not to respond and then the fourth stop that may seem obvious but if you believe something strongly the reason behind it should be obvious to any well-intentioned person. and then to defend it so those

i mentioned in the talk and now the fifth to be patient because people don't change in an instant eventually it is an instant but it takes time and it is a deeply held belief to hear that first contradiction so the first thing i said to the jewish in that moment you want me to say that activity is okay and i won't do it. and then to acknowledge we saw the contradiction. and then to see how

immediately following that conversation things started to change for me and challenge things i was taught by the elders in the church in the ways i never had before. all because of that little bit of doubt and it takes time to unravel. be patient. >> i was raised roman catholic and lost faith because of the contradictions so if you are willing to share specifically so what was the first night like when you left? >> yes. but the jewish guy cap asking for our picket sign calling for the death penalty for gay

people. that is the punishment called for in the book of leviticus if it's good enough for god then it is good for us but we said we are not casting stones we are preaching the word and he points out the obvious but your calling for the government to cast stones so what does that mean? and that set me back on my heels and then said and what about your mom? didn't she have a child out of wedlock and is a data sin that deserves the death penalty?

anytime anybody brought up that we would say the standard of god is not sinlessness but it is repentance. she's okay and doesn't deserve these punishments because she repented and acknowledges it was wrong but if she had been killed that my family would not exist she would not have had the opportunity to repent or be forgiven so this is a realization all my god. the arguments we had they seem to sound right but the inherent contradiction was there the whole time i miss that how did i miss that? like it does not compute. that was one of them one of them that really blew my mind that at westborough their protesting the embodiment of

compassion the definition of what it means to love thy neighbor to forgive them when you see them sitting you're the only hope to offer to change to turn around to avoid the certain destruction. so we claim to love our neighbor but then on the other side there came a point in our ministry we were praying for people to die for god to curse people that was aust so scripture lead derived where they prayed for the enemy's children to be fatherless in the wives to be widowed clearly calling for the death and to curse him on his enemies not realizing of course the direct contradiction of the new testament where jesus said love your enemies pray for them and then the apostle paul says bless them that persecute

you. bless and curse not. you are specifically said not to curse. when i came to that realization i literally felt like i was deranged. how could i so strongly and passionately believed both of these things at the same time? in hindsight i have learned a little bit about psychology since i left. [laughter] its way our brains compartmentalize the information. they're both from the bible so it was unreal. >> my sister and i stayed in the home of my wonderful friend who was both of our high school english teacher who was really wonderful they let us stay in their basement the first night he would hurt

me if i told you not to follow him on twitter. [laughter] but he stayed up with us for a couple of hours per i thought he would leave us to our despair but he stayed up with us and that was so important to finally out loud more in our family what was happening in just the whole fact that her whole lives had been to figure out. he was absolutely wonderful. >> thank you so much for your talk it has been interesting and inspiring. what are some things you have done to make amends with the community from the past? >> of course financially

contributing to different group groups. that feels important. i have spent a long time volunteering in these communities. the 12th month after i left the church i spent follow volunteering at the jewish federation that was a huge target of the church but i spent a lot of time with law enforcement trying to find ways to use those experiences to help people that are working on hate crimes and the radicalization and terrorism. said basically any opportunity that i have to help people. eventually my sister and i want to start a nonprofit at some point and suggested we call it the westborough foundation. [laughter] and i really love that idea

because part of the reason i kept my name is to change the legacy of that name so i love the people here westborough not think of protesting funerals or celebrating tragedy but people who are there to help people when they suffer for that that was a wonderful plan on his par part. >> where do you get your strongest sense of family now? so just asking for advice that you can impart on us while engaging with people with whom we strongly disagree at a time that politics stresses us out we just lose the energy on this important topic so what about self-care in a healthy way?

>> i can't remember if i said this but i married one of the people i met from twitter. [laughter] that's a whole part of the story. we have a one -year-old daughter now. actually she just took her first step right back there. [applause] [laughter] that my husband's family is incredible. he has a brother with three children and his parents, it's amazes me i met him on twitter and i fail - - do we fit so perfectly together but also i love his family so much both of his parents just happen to work in mental health. [laughter] so this is a wonderful gift but they are incredibly supportive and having my

daughter is obviously something that i think about my mom all the time i did even before so not having her around to talk to her about everything like having my husband's mom to be so wonderfully supportive to be just a warm and supportive person is great. and now getting the strength? sometimes you just don't have the argument or to reach out but i still reach out to my family i do it anytime i feel moved to which is pretty regularly. but there are moments where i feel that i want to but i just can't. it's too painful.

is not like you just leave and things get better it is continual. the rejection is constant and active. sometimes it's just too painful and not even i can do it all the time. but being aware it is an option is important. it seems like there is such a sense of hopelessness that there's no point of even trying. so just moving away from that in small ways a little bit at a time. those four steps that i mentioned are skills. you have to take time to develop and implement in your own life. it takes time and effort. so don't assume the small things are not worth doing because it's not like those people on twitter wasn't

talking to them every day but it the fact ultimately it was just a few people over time willing to engage. so just be willing to see these opportunities and don't feel like it's an obligation because very quickly will be overwhelmed and say i cannot do it. >> do you address a specific argument with your family? >> when i address my family sometimes is just to tell them things that are happening in my life. more often it is making an argument but it depends. for a while it was about the

specific contradiction about praying for bad things to happen to people and that has changed since i left when i first made the argument i took those passages and i made another analogy to say david had multiple wives that is not an example and why? because that contradicts what jesus and paul says about marriage so why do we take this example we have these other specific commands not to do that? initially they would just double down and then about eight months after that my dad gave a sermon about that message of love your enemies. i don't think i ever heard a sermon about that in my entire life before then. shortly after that they stopped. every week there was a flyer that went out on friday that would list all of the soldiers that died that week if it was

15 of them there was a thank god for 15 dead soldiers we pay for 15000 more. that second line disappeared. so i know that they can be reached there are still arguments to be made even from their own perspective that would help them to continue to moderate from those more extreme ideas. so anytime i see that pic i have an aunt who tweets so i have stepped away from our praying for bad things and they say they don't celebrate the bad things. but then i have an aunt who will do a retweet of some of the bad thing that has happened her only comment is half. ha ha you can see that old

spirit is still there so that's not biblical or scriptural. but then to say what can i say to help them change for the better? >> can be heard of the book escaping the rabbit hole written by a person who made a lot of money in the internet business and decided he could retire on spent time debunking chem trails and conspiracy theories. the conclusion of his book which parallels yours is be patient and ask questions. have you ever read that book i thank you have a lot in common. >> i haven't but i will add that to my list. thank you for that.

but it makes me happy to hear any time somebody takes those positions do not believe it is hopeless to communicate with people like that or conspiracy thinking it can be hard to get through to people with those ideas that communicating asking questions and taking the time can change things. thank you for that. i think we're done. thank you. [applause] [inaudible conversations]