“Pray the gay away,” my nephew said as we burst into laughter. We sat together on the worn couch. He had been tortured in conversion therapy, despite me begging for it to stop. “The therapist is trying to ‘make me normal,’” he said, voice cracking. I wrapped my arms around his adolescent frame, squeezing him in a hug, longing for his freedom to text a crush, to love a boy. Pulling the blanket over his shoulders, I tried to protect him from the world. “They’re nuts,” he said, laughing, showing me how humor can be strength in hostility’s face. — Melissa Garner Lee