WEBVTT

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I was a blue-eyed,
chubby-cheeked five-year-old

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when I joined my family
on the picket line for the first time.

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My mom made me leave
my dolls in the minivan.

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I'd stand on a street corner
in the heavy Kansas humidity

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surrounded by a few dozen relatives

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with my tiny fists clutching
a sign that I couldn't read yet:

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"Gays are worthy of death."

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This was the beginning.

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Our protests soon became
a daily occurrence

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and an international phenomenon,

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and as a member
of Westboro Baptist Church,

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I became a fixture on picket lines
across the country.

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The end of my anti-gay picketing career,

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and life as I knew it,

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came 20 years later,

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triggered in part by strangers on Twitter

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who showed me the power
of engaging the other.

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In my home,

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life was framed as an epic spiritual
battle between good and evil.

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The good was my church and its members,

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and the evil was everyone else.

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My church's antics were such that we
were constantly at odds with the world,

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and that reinforced our
otherness on a daily basis.

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"Make a difference between
the unclean and the clean,"

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the verse says,

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and so we did.

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From baseball games to military funerals,

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we trekked across the country
with neon protest signs in hand

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to tell others exactly
how unclean they were

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and exactly why they were
headed for damnation.

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This was the focus of our whole lives.

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This was the only way for me to do good
in a world that sits in satan's lap.

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And like the rest of my 10 siblings,

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I believed what I was taught
with all my heart,

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and I pursued Westboro's agenda
with a special sort of zeal.

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In 2009, that zeal brought me to Twitter.

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Initially, the people
I encountered on the platform

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were just as hostile as I expected.

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They were the digital version
of the screaming hoards

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I'd been seeing at protests
since I was a kid,

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but in the midst of that digital brawl,

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a strange pattern developed.

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Someone would arrive at my profile
with the usual rage and scorn,

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I would respond with a custom mix
of bible verses, pop culture references

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and smiley faces,

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they would be understandably
confused and caught off guard,

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but then a conversation would ensue,

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and it was civil --

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full of genuine curiosity on both sides.

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How had the other come to such
outrageous conclusions about the world?

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Sometimes the conversation
even bled into real life.

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People I'd sparred with on Twitter would
come out to the picket line to see me

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when I protested in their city.

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A man named David was one such person.

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He ran a blog called "Jewlicious,"

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and after several months of heated
but friendly arguments online,

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he came out to see me
at a picket in New Orleans.

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He brought me a Middle Eastern
dessert from Jerusalem,

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where he lives,

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and I brought him Kosher chocolate,

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and held a "God hates Jews" sign.

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(Laughter)

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There was no confusion
about our positions,

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but the line between friend
and foe was becoming blurred.

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We'd started to see each other
as human beings,

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and it changed the way
we spoke to one another.

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It took time,

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but eventually these conversations
planted seeds of doubt in me.

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My friends on Twitter took the time
to understand Westboro's doctrines,

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and in doing so,

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they were able to find inconsistencies
I'd missed my entire life.

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Why did we advocate
the death penalty for gays

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when Jesus said, "Let he who is without
sin cast the first stone?"

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How could we claim to love our neighbor

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while at the same time praying
for god to destroy them?

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The truth is that the care shown to me
by these strangers on the Internet

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was itself a contradiction.

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It was growing evidence

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that people on the other side were not
the demons I'd been led to believe.

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These realizations were life-altering.

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Once I saw that we were not
the ultimate arbiters of divine truth

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but flawed human beings,

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I couldn't pretend otherwise.

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I couldn't justify our actions --

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especially our cruel practice
of protesting funerals,

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and celebrating human tragedy.

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These shifts in my perspective

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contributed to a larger erosion
of my trust in my church,

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and eventually it made it
impossible for me to stay.

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In spite of overwhelming grief and terror,

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I left Westboro in 2012.

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In those days just after I left,

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the instinct to hide
was almost paralyzing.

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I wanted to hide from
the judgement of my family,

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who I knew would never
speak to me again --

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people whose thoughts and opinions
had meant everything to me.

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And I wanted to hide from the world
I'd rejected for so long --

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people who had no reason at all
to give me a second chance

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after a lifetime of antagonism,

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and yet,

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unbelievably,

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they did.

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The world had access to my past
because it was all over the Internet --

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thousands of tweets
and hundreds of interviews,

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everything from local TV news
to The Howard Stern Show --

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but so many embraced me
with open arms anyway.

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I wrote an apology
for the harm I'd caused,

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but I also knew that an apology
could never undo any of it.

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All I could do was
try to build a new life,

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and find a way somehow
to repair some of the damage.

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People had every reason
to doubt my sincerity,

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but most of them didn't.

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And given my history,

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it was more than I could've hoped for --

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forgiveness and the benefit of the doubt.

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It still amazes me.

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I spent my first year away from home
adrift with my younger sister,

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who had chosen to leave with me.

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We walked into an abyss,

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but we were shocked to find
the light and a way forward

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in the same communities
we'd targeted for so long.

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David,

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my "Jewlicious" friend from Twitter,

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invited us to spend time among
a Jewish community in Los Angeles.

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We slept on couches in the home
of a Hasidic rabbi and his wife

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and their four kids --

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the same rabbi that I'd protested
three years earlier

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with a sign that said,

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"Your rabbi is a whore."

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We spent long hours talking about
theology and Judaism and life

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while we washed dishes
in their kosher kitchen,

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and chopped vegetables for dinner.

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They treated us like family.

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They held nothing against us,

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and again I was astonished.

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That period was full of turmoil,

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but one part I've returned to often

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is a surprising realization
I had during that time --

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that it was a relief and a privilege
to let go of the harsh judgments

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that instinctively ran through my mind
about nearly every person I saw.

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I realized that now I needed to learn.

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I needed to listen.

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This has been at the front
of my mind lately,

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because I can't help but see
in our public discourse

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so many of the same destructive impulses
that ruled my former church.

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We celebrate tolerance and diversity
more than at any other time in memory,

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and still we grow more and more divided.

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We want good things --

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justice, equality, freedom,
dignity, prosperity --

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but the path we've chosen

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looks so much like the one I walked
away from four years ago.

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We've broken the world into us and them,

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only emerging from our bunkers long enough

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to lob rhetorical grenades
at the other camp.

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We write off half the country as
out-of-touch liberal elites,

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or racist misogynist bullies.

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No nuance, no complexity, no humanity.

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Even when someone does call for empathy
and understanding for the other side,

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the conversation nearly always devolves

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into a debate about who
deserves more empathy.

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And just as I learned to do,

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we routinely refuse to acknowledge
the flaws in our positions

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or the merits in our opponent's.

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Compromise is anathema.

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We even target people on our own side
when they dare to question the party line.

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This path has brought us cruel,
sniping, deepening polarization,

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and even outbreaks of violence.

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I remember this path.

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It will not take us where we want to go.

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What gives me hope is that we
can do something about this.

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The good news is that it's simple,

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and the bad news is that it's hard.

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We have to talk and listen
to people we disagree with.

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It's hard because we often can't fathom

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how the other side
came to their positions.

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It's hard because righteous indignation,

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that sense of certainty
that ours is the right side,

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is so seductive.

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It's hard because it means extending
empathy and compassion

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to people who show us
hostility and contempt.

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The impulse to respond
in kind is so tempting,

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but that isn't who we want to be.

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We can resist.

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And I will always be inspired to do so
by those people I encountered on Twitter,

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apparent enemies who became
my beloved friends.

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And in the case of one particularly
understanding and generous guy,

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my husband.

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There was nothing special
about the way I responded to him.

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What was special was their approach.

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I thought about it a lot
over the past few years,

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and I found four things
they did differently

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that made real conversation possible.

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These four steps were small but powerful,

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and I do everything I can to employ them
in difficult conversations today.

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The first is don't assume bad intent.

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My friends on Twitter realized

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that even when my words
were aggressive and offensive,

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I sincerely believed
I was doing the right thing.

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Assuming ill motives
almost instantly cuts us off

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from truly understanding why
someone does and believes as they do.

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We forget that they're a human being
with a lifetime of experience

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that shaped their mind,

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and we get stuck
on that first wave of anger

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and the conversation has a very hard time
ever moving beyond it.

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But when we assume good or neutral inent,

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we give our minds a much stronger
framework for dialogue.

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The second is ask questions.

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When we engage people across
idealogical divides,

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asking questions helps us
map the disconnect

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between our differing points of view.

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That's important because we can't
present effective arguments

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if we don't understand where
the other side is actually coming from,

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and because it gives them an opportunity
to point out flaws in our positions.

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But asking questions
serves another purpose;

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it signals to someone
that they're being heard.

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When my friends on Twitter
stopped accusing

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and started asking questions,

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I almost automatically mirrored them.

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Their questions gave me room to speak,

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but they also gave me permission
to ask them questions

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and to truly hear their responses.

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It fundamentally changed
the dynamic of our conversation.

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The third is stay calm.

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This takes practice and patience,

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but it's powerful.

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At Westboro, I learned not to care
how my manner of speaking effected others.

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I thought my rightness
justified my rudeness --

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harsh tones, raised voices,
insults, interruptions --

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but that strategy is ultimately
counterproductive.

00:11:11.305 --> 00:11:15.189
Dialing up the volume and the snark
is natural in stressful situations,

00:11:15.189 --> 00:11:20.198
but it tends to bring the conversation
to an unsatisfactory explosive end.

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When my husband was still just
an anonymous Twitter acquaintance,

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our discussions frequently
became hard and pointed,

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but we always refused to escalate.

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Instead, he would change the subject.

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He would tell a joke or recommend a book,

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or gently excuse himself
from the conversation.

00:11:37.722 --> 00:11:39.807
We knew the discussion wasn't over,

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just paused for a time
to bring us back to an even keel.

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People often lament that digital
communication makes us less civil,

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but this is one advantage that online
conversations have over in-person ones.

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We have a buffer of time and space

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between us and the people
whose ideas we find so frustrating.

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We can use that buffer.

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Instead of lashing out,

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we can pause, breathe,

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change the subject or walk away,

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and then come back to it when we're ready.

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And finally ...

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make the argument.

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This might seem obvious,

00:12:17.766 --> 00:12:20.289
but one side effect
of having strong beliefs

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is that we sometimes assume

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that the value of our position is
or should be obvious and self-evident,

00:12:27.111 --> 00:12:29.291
that we shouldn't have to
defend our positions

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because they're so clearly right and good
that if someone doesn't get it,

00:12:33.684 --> 00:12:35.216
it's their problem --

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that it's not my job to educate them.

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But if it were that simple,

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we would all see things the same way.

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As kind as my friends on Twitter were,

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if they hadn't actually
made their arguments,

00:12:46.604 --> 00:12:50.177
it would've been so much harder for me
to see the world in a different way.

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We are all a product of our upbringing,

00:12:53.852 --> 00:12:56.597
and our beliefs reflect our experiences.

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We can't expect others to spontaneously
change their own minds.

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If we want change,

00:13:02.326 --> 00:13:04.639
we have to make the case for it.

00:13:05.408 --> 00:13:09.585
My friends on Twitter didn't abandon
their beliefs or their principles --

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only their scorn.

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They channeled their infinitely
justifiable offense,

00:13:15.181 --> 00:13:19.519
and came to me with pointed questions
tempered with kindness and humor.

00:13:20.067 --> 00:13:22.234
They approached me as a human being,

00:13:22.234 --> 00:13:23.848
and that was more transformative

00:13:23.848 --> 00:13:28.192
than two full decades of outrage,
disdain and violence.

00:13:29.282 --> 00:13:32.898
I know that some might not have
the time or the energy or the patience

00:13:32.898 --> 00:13:34.224
for extensive engagement,

00:13:34.224 --> 00:13:36.284
but as difficult as it can be,

00:13:36.284 --> 00:13:38.776
reaching out to someone we disagree with

00:13:38.776 --> 00:13:41.485
is an option that is
available to all of us.

00:13:41.485 --> 00:13:45.427
And I sincerely believe
that we can do hard things,

00:13:45.427 --> 00:13:48.246
not just for them
but for us and our future.

00:13:48.767 --> 00:13:51.268
Escalating disgust
and intractable conflict

00:13:51.268 --> 00:13:53.434
are not what we want for ourselves,

00:13:53.434 --> 00:13:54.474
or our country,

00:13:54.474 --> 00:13:56.404
or our next generation.

00:13:57.654 --> 00:14:02.029
My mom said something to me
a few weeks before I left Westboro,

00:14:02.029 --> 00:14:06.540
when I was desperately hoping there
was a way I could stay with my family.

00:14:07.179 --> 00:14:09.676
People I have loved
with every pulse of my heart

00:14:09.676 --> 00:14:13.186
since even before I was
that chubby-cheeked five-year-old,

00:14:13.186 --> 00:14:15.981
standing on a picket line holding
a sign I couldn't read.

00:14:16.449 --> 00:14:19.199
She said, "You're just human being,

00:14:19.199 --> 00:14:21.216
my dear sweet child."

00:14:22.134 --> 00:14:24.403
She was asking me to be humble --

00:14:24.403 --> 00:14:27.610
not to question but to trust
god and my elders.

00:14:28.168 --> 00:14:31.893
But to me, she was missing
the bigger picture --

00:14:31.893 --> 00:14:33.606
that we're all just human beings.

00:14:34.386 --> 00:14:37.361
That we should be guided by
that most basic fact,

00:14:37.361 --> 00:14:40.436
and approach one another
with generosity and compassion.

00:14:40.741 --> 00:14:42.866
Each one of us contributes
to the communities

00:14:42.866 --> 00:14:45.762
and the cultures and the societies
that we make up.

00:14:46.225 --> 00:14:51.044
The end of this spiral of rage and blame
begins with one person

00:14:51.044 --> 00:14:55.488
who refuses to indulge
these destructive, seductive impulses.

00:14:56.027 --> 00:14:58.696
We just have to decide
that it's going to start with us.

00:14:59.078 --> 00:15:00.490
Thank you.

00:15:00.762 --> 00:15:03.102
(Applause)