When my family first started attending Pullen Memorial Baptist Church in Raleigh several years ago, there was a little boy who was about the same age as our youngest daughter. His name was Max and he had a younger sister named Erin. The kids stood out a little because both Max and Erin were African-American and their two dads, Nathan and Dave, were white. I learned at the time from a close friend who knew the family well that the two kids had been adopted out of extremely rough, impoverished circumstances. The term “crack baby” was used.

By all appearances, though, the kids seemed pretty doggone normal and the parents were clearly loving and attentive. I have a vivid memory of one of the dads holding a wriggling Erin, dressed in her finest holiday dress, as Max portrayed one of the animals in the children’s Christmas play.

As the years went on and Max and his family moved away, I heard occasionally through my friend that they were doing well (Max had actually been admitted to West Point!) and took it as a remarkable testament to the power of love to overcome some of the worst things that society has to dish out — namely the grinding poverty from which the kids were rescued and the absurd and hateful discrimination that I knew the family still found itself subjected to regularly.

And then last night, my Pullen friend passed along this amazing story from writer S.L. Price of Sports Illustrated that fills in a lot of the details I had missed in recent years. Unless you are one of the shrinking number of troubled souls still clinging to a closed heart and mind on the question of LGBT equality, I promise you will be unable to read it or watch the accompanying video without feeling a lump in your throat. Indeed, it may happen even if you are — I sure hope so.

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