Published in: March-April 2020 issue.
IT WAS MEANT to be a grand social experiment. When Acceptance Across America (AAA) had finished collecting data, crunching the numbers, peering at social media posts, and examining other statistics, they announced their findings: Big Burr, Kansas, was the most homophobic, bigoted town in America. With a target community in sight, they now set out to ascertain whether this kind of bigotry could be turned around. To find out what it might take to change people’s minds, the organization sent a task force of LGBT individuals and their families to live and work in Big Burr for two years.