“Did you hear about that Sandy Cairns thing?”

“Nuh-uh,” he replied with interest.

“They got her on a recording—some kind of debate about gay activists—anyway, she was comparing homosexuals to terrorists and went on and on about how they’re the downfall of the country. Talk about political suicide.”

“Oh yeah—yeah,” he jumped right in, “no, you can’t be in any kind of public position and have your own opinion about that stuff. She’s done—she may as well pack it up.”

It was worth a try, she thought.

A lifelong conservative, her father had become more and more disenchanted with politics and society with age. At times, he seemed to skirt acceptance of the liberal if only by surrender to the changing times. She had brought up the state representative’s controversial statements hoping to catch him during a weak moment of open-mindedness.

Her family was in the league of bubble-dwellers who interacted almost never with actual homosexual individuals. They were only able to damn anyone or anything by keeping it separate from them. They had too much love in their hearts to look someone squarely in the face and level the same revulsion that they leveled at the intangible during their sitting room rants.

Unwilling to oust her own closet adoption of libertarianism, she abandoned the conversation.