Monte Mader

And I went to Liberty University.

I graduated from Liberty University.

Yay.

I left.

I was out before the pool boy scandal.

Oh, God.

But it.

Even there, it wasn't until I got to Liberty and I encountered other people who were not where my family was from, who were not deeply conservative, who were some of them weren't even Christians.

That's just where their parents wanted them to go.

That was the very first time I encountered any kind of other worldview that wasn't in this very insular community.

And even in that insular community, my family wasn't even the most conservative.

So there was a family we were friends with that owned a gun shop who they would not allow the women of the family to wear pants.

And so when we we stayed with them at one point, they babysat us.

I had to wear skirts the whole week because they didn't believe it was right for a woman to wear pants.

And we had other families that were they would homeschool only because they didn't want any kind of infiltration, if you will, of students who maybe didn't grow up even going to a Christian school who didn't grow up as conservative as they did.

So it was an extremely insular environment.

I graduated high school.

I had just turned 16, went to Liberty.

That was my first experience.

experiencing anyone who had any kind of different belief system than what I did.