Weston Brown's Story: A Family and School Tragedy (Ep. 8)

Episode Notes

Weston Brown was homeschooled in Dallas, Texas and had limited access to the internet, books, television, and the outside world. At age 24, he mustered the courage to tell his parents that he was gay. Their reaction was not unexpected, he said. “They thought that I was mentally ill or demonically possessed.”

Brown had no intentions of battling his parents over their anti-LGBTQ views — until, that is, he viewed a viral video of his mother demanding that a local school board in Texas remove library books that she considered pornographic or that promoted LGBTQ themes. She also urged the Board to have a local pastor decide which books should remain in the schools’ libraries.

In this episode, Brown describes the painful estrangement from his parents and siblings and why he decided to speak out against his mother’s efforts to ban books in public school libraries.

Weston Brown said he was outraged when he discovered that his mother was leading a campaign to ban books with sex and LGBTQ themes from public school libraries. Image by Alan Nakkash for NBC News

ABOUT WESTON BROWN

Weston Brown is originally from Dallas, Texas, works in marketing in the life sciences industry, and is an advocate for education and representation for historically underrepresented groups.

Weston’s childhood and teen years were immersed in fundamental Christian beliefs. From a young age, he was taught to give a voice to the people who were disregarded, elevate the marginalized, and love thy neighbor. However, he was also taught that the government, health professionals, and educators, could not be trusted. He was homeschooled and raised to reject ideologies that go against their faith to include homosexuality.

As Weston entered his late teens and early twenties, he began to question and deconstruct the religious ideas and structures that were instilled in him as a child, most specifically around queerness, gender, and sex. He came out to his parents when he was 23 which become a very public story when his mom’s campaign to ban library books divided their hometown and their family.

“It was one thing when my parents’ beliefs were causing this rift between us and it was just a family matter,” Brown told NBC News. “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.”

Today he strives to be the person he needed when he was young. Someone who would stand up and speak out and protect the kids that feel alone. He now lives with his partner in San Diego, and advocates for the representation of historically marginalized groups with a specific interest in queer and BIPOC youth, as well as engagement with local political movements supporting human rights.