I recently read an article online called "I'm Christian Unless You're Gay," as well as a response to it by a mother. The article was about a very conservative, very Christian community where everyone was highly critical of gays. The author of the article lived in this community, as did one of his closest friends who happened to be gay. The author criticized how religions preach love, kindness, and acceptance and somehow manage to make themselves believe that it's okay to ignore those values when you are interacting with people who are different from you (gay, a different race, and so on).
The mother's response to this article was interesting. She and her son lived in a community much like the one the author wrote about, and her son had been asked to read the article at school. She was outraged that the teacher was teaching them that being gay was okay, only to find out that her son had showed her the article because he himself was gay. She was mad at him at first and he left the house and refused to come home until she read the article. She ended up reading it and found it really insightful and is trying to spread the message.
It is amazing how an article like this would probably be ignored and written off as something stupid that no one needed to read in this community, but with a strong tie who is similar to others in the community, the message can be spread and accepted. The teacher wasn't enough to make it happen on her own, as we can see from the mother's initial reaction. However, when someone accepted in the network has an opinion on a subject, it is given a lot more credibility than it would otherwise get coming from an outsider. However, if it wasn't for the teacher, who appears to be a weak tie and on the periphery of the community, it is most likely that no one would have seen the article at all. As it is proved time and time again, it is important to have both strong and weak ties to get the most unique information, and then to spread it, and get people to accept and understand it.
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