Ex-homophobe pretends to be gay to learn about empathy

Timothy Kurek was raised to deplore the gay lifestyle, but after watching a lesbian friend break down in tears after her family shunned her when she came out, he decided to learn about empathy the old-fashioned way: Walking a mile in the other guy's shoes, or, in this situation, spending a year frequenting bars in the "gay-borhood" of Nashville and faking out his family with a faux "coming out" speech. Whether you suspect that Kurek was actually flirting with the gay lifestyle and then recanted, or this was genuinely a prolonged social experiment conducted by someone with no credentials, it's yielded a forthcoming book Kurek calls his "apology" to the LGBT community.