“There’s nothing about LGBTQ involved in this,” she said. At a recent school board meeting, she said her only objective has been to protect children from sexually explicit content - gay or otherwise. In public, Monica has denied targeting LGBTQ books. In a series of email exchanges with NBC News, she initially invited a reporter to discuss the article over dinner at her home in Granbury, but in a subsequent message, she said her husband would not allow the meeting, adding, “I have been advised to not speak with you at all.” Her husband also declined to be interviewed. Monica, 51, who has homeschooled all nine of her children and serves as the director of a private Christian education cooperative, declined to be interviewed or answer written questions. “But seeing now that she’s applying those same views to public activism, at a time when so many basic rights are being challenged, I couldn’t stay quiet about that.” “It was one thing when my parents’ beliefs were causing this rift between us and it was just a family matter,” Weston said. Fueled by a growing movement to assert conservative Christian values at all levels of government, activists across the country have fought to remove queer-affirming books from schools, repeal the right to same-sex marriage, shut down LGBTQ pride celebrations and pass state laws limiting the ways teachers can discuss gender and sexuality. In recent months, Weston has watched as the same foundational disagreements that tore his family apart have begun to divide whole communities. Until he saw the video of his mom at a school board meeting. He was done challenging their religious beliefs and praying for them to change. He still loved them and desperately missed his younger siblings, he said, but he was done trying to convince his mom and dad that his sexuality wasn’t a choice or a sin. Weston, who lives with his partner in San Diego, had long ago come to terms with the idea that he would never again have a meaningful relationship with his parents. Weston Brown shared texts that he'd exchanged with his parents with NBC News, including this one with his mother from November 2018.
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