I Am in a Huffington Post Article on Children and Politics

This week I appeared in a Huffington Post article on children’s voices in the marriage equality debate.

“Libby Anne,” a blogger for faith website Patheos, who uses a pseudonym so that her parents do not read her work and retaliate by cutting off contact with her younger siblings, recently wrote a post that said she spoke out against gay marriage as a child and now regrets it.

“I never spoke before a House committee, sure, but when I was that age, my father was quick to push me forward to speak to reporters in support of ‘traditional marriage,'” she wrote, after watching Evans’ testimony. “I did grow up in a subculture that considered using children as political theater props was a good tactical move.”

Libby Anne was homeschooled and started campaigning with her parents when she was 4, attending traditional marriage rallies and pro-life banquets, and giving interviews to local reporters espousing her father’s religious views. But when she turned 18, she chose a secular university, promising her parents that she would try to convert the atheists she met. Instead, she discovered that one of the central tenets of her parents’ belief system — young earth creationism — was, scientifically, “bullshit,” as she puts it now.

“That shook my world. I was raised with this idea that I was going to be a cultural warrior,” said Libby Anne, who now writes a blog titled “Love, Joy, Feminism,” continued. “Some days it really comes back to bite me.”

Read the rest here!