Chicken-Fried News: Tolerant tithes

Chicken-Fried News: Green gobblin
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One Oklahoma City University student is thankful for tolerant people who believe he deserves an education and a good start to his adult life.

Freshman dance student Joel Andrew’s parents kicked him out of their home and “cut him off financially after he told them he planned to live openly as a gay man,” NewsOK.com recently reported.

Andrew was homeschooled, and his parents belonged to a fundamental Christian church that would not approve of his lifestyle. NewsOK.com reported that his folks even sent him to weekly meetings with a conversion therapist, who spoke with him about “‘gay’ or effeminate things he’d done that week.”

“Every night, I would pray to God to make me straight. It didn’t work,” he told the news outlet.

Andrew was accepted to Oklahoma City University but wasn’t sure how he would pay for it without parental support. He believed his college career and dreams of becoming a professional dancer were over, but thanks to a friend and a lot of strangers, his dream isn’t dead. A friend created a GoFundMe page to crowdfund Andrew’s education so he wouldn’t have to return home to Michigan.

The effort exceeded its goal of $40,000 not long after columnist Dan Savage wrote about him in his Savage Love column.

NewsOK.com also reported that Savage encouraged readers “to donate to the Ali Forney Center, a nonprofit in New York City that provides housing to homeless LGBT youths” after Andrew’s page was fully funded.

Andrews told NewsOK.com that he and his parents haven’t reconciled yet but he hopes they will in time.

Print Headline: Tolerant tithes

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