On a bright March day, in a small tour bus, on a tiny table there sat a cell phone. That cell phone was ringing, but there was no one there to answer it. It finally stopped after the fifth ring and went to voice mail. After thirty-five minutes of periodic beeps the owner of the cell phone finally came to its rescue. If cell phone’s had feelings this one would be relieved. The beeping was making its battery run down faster. The owner of this tired cell phone sat down on one side of the tiny table and looked to see who had called her. Under the heading “missed calls” were two names and a number. It read, “Mom and Dad – 310.820.4444”. This cell phone belonged to Spencer Carlin. She briefly thought about calling her Dad back. She knew it wasn’t her mother. She felt bad about missing last weeks call with her Dad. That was the only reason he would be calling at this time of the day. Her mother had made it very clear that since she chose the life that she currently had that there would be little communication between them. Spencer thought hard about her mother for the thousandth time this month.

It had all been okay, her mother had planned out everything. The problem was that it was her plan and not Spencer’s. She had been happy to just go along with her mother for lack of a better plan. That is until she had met Ashley Davies. Her mother very obviously had, had an issue with Ashley from the moment she found out that the girl might be *****. She tried everything to convince her daughter to find a new friend including pointedly excluding Ashley from important events such as birthdays, to no avail. Then the girls had started dating. That was what really pushed Paula’s mother buttons. She felt the need to protect her daughter from the huge influence that Ashley was obviously having on her. It never occurred to her that Spencer was in this relationship entirely of her own free will or that her daughter might actually be ***** or bisexual. To Paula being ***** was wrong and against everything that her Catholic upbringing had taught her. That is not to say that there weren’t Catholics sympathetic to the ***** community or who were a part of it. It just meant that Paula Carlin took her view of what the bible meant very seriously.