It's their own business.

Which is so mystifying. May I ask, are you a younger person?

We are all people. Living, breathing, crying laughing, loving. We all bleed the same. We all hurt the same.

I was hoping to find a common link between ex-haters that I could use to make more of them. I'm failing in that endeavor so far, but so glad to see so many tolerant people.

One is 28 and the other 14. None of them are homophobic. I wasn't raised to hate or think differently of anyone because of who they are or what color they are, or who they love. My husband is the same. We have raised our children as compassionate, caring and tolerant people.

I hope you say "no."

Just going with the flow of my peers, but I honestly didn't give it much thought one way or the other. I didn't know anyone (that I knew of) who was gay, although of course some were, as I learned years later when they came out. Some it was a "yeah, that figures," and others it was a total surprise.

I continued on not giving it much thought for yearsafterward, and I guess I drifted from being casually homophobic to casually pro equality, again going with the flow without it ever being very high on my radar screen. Just being honest, here, since you asked.

I think what's made me more proactive recently is the birth of my nieces and nephews. No idea what their orientation is, they're still very young, but it occurred to me that if any of them were LGBT, I'd want them to have the same opportunities in life that anyone else has.

But at least they'll have an aunt or uncle that isn't an asshole.

I got through it, but it wasn't easy.

In Mass... everything is wicked

Did any of your friends when you were younger know it or figure it out?

In retrospect I hung out with very masculine girls (not sure where they all ended up) but it seems by association that some of us knew. Also I came out pretty early, I was out in 6th grade so people knew when I was pretty young.

It was really hard the first few years unfortunately I was "outed" by someone who I had told in confidence, they used it to get ahead socially and that was horrible.

So I had to double-up on verbally attacking other gay guys.

Hating gay people and espousing anti-gay hate speech is a horrible thing for your parents and peers to do when you are 14 and confused as hell about it.

Seriously, as a liberal among conservatives and a atheist among Christians for most of my early years, I never felt the need to "conform".

You were lucky.

It was part of fitting in.

I don't know much about you, but if the moniker, "brooklynite', indicates that you are from New York originally, then as he said, you were lucky, because as a youngster who was gay in the middle of nowhere, it was always all about New York or San Francisco. That was, basically, IT for gay men. LA was debateably okay.

I've met so many gay men here in NYC who, like me, fled their places of origin, and state half-seriously that they'd rather DIE than return to those places. Obviously, I'm not a psychiatrist and so I don't delve into the why's with everyone who tells me that, but I intuitively know what they mean, and we typically chuckle about how grateful we are that we're here and not THERE, wherever there is.

Yes I'm from Brooklyn, but in my early years I was living in the ex-pat community in the Philippines. My best friends were the son of a Baptist missionary and the son of an Embassy official from the Nixon days. I did NOT fit in, but I was never willing to conform to the political and social sensibilities of the community.

I'd guess so.

But my mother grew up in Europe, my dad's father was an artist and set designer and they hung with people like isherwood, auden, Huxley and Mann.

Next to James Baldwin and Edmund White. What a great story you have. So were the people your parents knew relatively free to be themselves except in public?

It was SoCal and this was a group of largely expats from England and Germany. My parents were the youngest people in that group. The center of the group was the woman I was named after (she was bi) who was a relative on my mother's side and an artist. That's how my parents came to know Chris Isherwood. I remember playing on the lawn at EMH's house up in the hills as the adults sat and drank and talked.

EMH - do you mean Ernest Hemingway?

Oh, was your family part of that whole Moveable Feast bunch? (Great book, BTW.)

Don't answer if this is too personal, or if I'm prying.

The initials of the woman I was named after. Not really the moveable feast crowd though there was overlap.

Maybe fear is accurate, as well. I think I started getting over it when a whole bunch of my best friends in high school and then in college came out as gay. This would have been in the 1970s into the early 1980s. I got to know my friends first as persons, then as gay persons, and it turned out that their being gay was just one more thing I knew about them. Knowledge and understanding replaced ignorance, and fear didn't stand a chance.

Seems to be a common concern.

But that was pretty normal in my peer group. I don't recall being worried that a gay man would come on to me. It was a weird time to come of age, sexually. The women's liberation movement was moving from walk to run at that time, and many of the girls my age were getting used to the idea of sexual agency. Alan Alda and Phil Donahue, the quintessential sensitive guys, were personal role models. I had my share of incomplete passes, until someone I didn't much care for made an aggressive pass at me. That sort of turned me around, and I got a much fuller understanding of how my clumsy attempts were probably being perceived by the girls and women. In an odd way, it modeled the behavior I might need to turn down a sexual advance in a gentle way, regardless of whether the person making the advance was male or female.

When I was growing up I heard how horrible it was every sunday and wednesday night.

High school in the late '70s and college in early '80s.

SU and WE night? Is that some sort of bar reference -- locals' night and ladies' night?

Southern Batshit regimen. They served dinner on Wednesdays, it was good old southern lipids.

Can't help ya there. Was raised as a non-whacky Methodist just outside of DC. Of which I am thankful for everyday, especially as I get older.

I am familiar with with DC/DELMARVA and have been to poodle beach.

Not familiar with Methodist teachings, but as they are constantly attacked by fundies, I guess they're alright.

MD, but lived in NOVA for over 20 years after college. How weird. Just thought of family vacations to Rehoboth back in the '70s, and none of us ever batted an eye. Quaint. Clean. Wonderful shops, restaurants and bars. And very gay.

I mean, by comparison to some other denominations. I was raised Methodist, too, and although I don't attend church anymore, I always appreciated how nonjudgmental the Methodist church was, as a whole.

Unfortunately, I now live in NC, where we made the New York Times yet again:

North Carolina Allows Officials to Refuse to Perform Gay Marriages
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/12/us/north-carolina-allows-officials-to-refuse-to-perform-gay-marriages.html?_r=0

I'd like to offer up a hearty *screw you* to the four Dems who voted with Rs to legalize discrimination:

I did get over all that at a pretty young age. I was in high school in the late 70's. I think I was totally cool about it within five years or so.

One of my female beautician friends had a gay friend she worked with. Partying with them one night, she told me her friend said I had a nice ass! My only reaction was to say, "Damn! Why isn't the nice ass thing working with the women?" I never said so but I appreciated the compliment, guy or not.

It also didn't hurt that some time later, a real good friend of mine came out. Of a group of about 15 or so of us that I can think of offhand, only one guy disowned him. I was pretty impressed that about every one of us was pissed off at the asshole for the way he acted.

instead of getting bowed up and want to kick some "fag's" ass.

be all pissed off about if you're straight?

Which is kind of stupid, but little about gay-haters isn't.

Or maybe they want to show their wimmin they're butch. Same thing.

but...." It's like a disclaimer saying, "I'm not gay because that would be really bad, but I'm with you guys!"

If I'm really cool with all that, why should I give a shit if someone thinks I'm gay?

I do take umbrage when some differentiate me as opposed to "normal people." WTF?

early on.

You know it was a gay disease, and working in health care I was one of the few people who went against the stream. In my mind my gay patients were just as much patients as my straight patients. My AIDS patients were people I had to fight for a few times though. It was hard to advocate for people who were indeed feared.

Fallwell and Robertson went out of their way to blame the disease as "god's wrath," and Raygun said nada about it for seven years. Good on ya for treating the patients like people.

Did you move to a city? Did you know before you left that you were gay?

Just getting out of that culture did it. Even the 'liberals' there would tell really horrid homophobic jokes.

I moved away as soon as I could, from Fargo to NW.

I've worked with several gay men over the years and most of them were very nice. When I was young I had another woman make a pass. I was so shy I was a little embarrassed, but I was flattered, too. She was very pretty.

He had a really cool purple Dodge Charger. He taught me how to drive in it.

Charger could be either old or new. I'm figuring the younger folks had less of an atmosphere of hatred/ignorance to deal with, but am finding out I could be wrong.

My grandma was born in 1924

but my mom was born the same year as your grandma. I bet that had something to do with my upbringing re: repression.

Which explains why I still have to deal with fundamentalist thoughts inside my own head. Parents/church taught me to be ashamed of my body. As you can probably imagine, that had (still does) a negative effect on my love life.

My grandma was a hell raiser, but my mom went fundy nut for a while.

I was raised with a dear friend who is gay so I've always been sensitive to their plight.

Or was s/he closeted?

Like me he is getting old and I guess he feels there is no advantage in coming out. We've talked about it some though. You have to realize we live in a extremely redneck part of the state.
I'm sad that he feels he can't come out, for whatever reason, and enjoy life to it fullest. I'm sure pretending one is something they aren't takes its toll on a person. I know that is true from this relationship I have with him. I don't want to come out for him so I must only talk in generalities just in case.

When I was a kid, being a "N****R lover" was almost as bad, but being gay was even worse.

When you're young and stupid and living in a small Kansas farming community, you make the disparaging remarks, but I also remember being taken aback when a classmate said something about homosexuality is an abomination in just a very venomous voice and thinking what an asshole he was. At a ballgame, I was talking to someone who was telling me about one of the players on the field, and he slipped and called him good looking then backtracked, making embarrassed jokes about it, and I thought, "Well, the guy is good-looking from what I know about what girls my age are looking for. What's the deal?"

Then my freshman year in college, I worked as an office assistant in the foreign language department with a guy who was, I think, a junior. My gaydar is horrible so you can literally be completely "flaming" (if I may use that term), and it's going to go right over my head, but he was pretty theatrical... Literally. I think he was a theater major. Anyway, the school paper and he got together to run an article about homosexuality, wherein he officially came out. Later that week, I was at a party and was sitting on a large ottoman talking to people and realized he was seated on the other end next to me, and I thought to myself, "Huh. For the first time I know 100% that someone is gay, and he's sitting next to me. How does that make me feel about him?" I thought about it and decided, "Doesn't change my opinion about him. He's still an asshole, but I don't care about who he fucks/loves." This was in 1991 by the way.

Later on in the decade, I was a co-worker and friend with a guy who while heterosexual had a lot of gay friends - he sets off their gaydar and usually becomes friends with guys who hit on him after telling them, "Sorry, I'm straight." Once we went over to the house of one of his gay friends. He had just moved in, and when we arrived he hooked his arm in mine and led me around showing me everything. I thought nothing of it, but my friend remarked to me later how surprised he was at my (non)reaction because he admitted to me that he probably would have freaked or shaken loose. I told him that either his friend was comfortable being who he was with me, or he was comfortable enough with me to do it to me as a joke so either way, I was flattered. (And if he was doing it as a joke, no way was I going to let him "win.&quot

TlalocW

That apparently some people thought my best friend in high school and I were gay and in a relationship because we tended not to go to parties, but we would do weird things like climb up on his roof or go out into the country and lay on the hood of a car, look up at the stars, and just talk, so when a classmate happened upon us, it looked kind of weird. I wasn't popular (in fact, I cultivated unpopularity because I couldn't stand most of my classmates), but my friend was very popular and very good looking - he was pretty much an Adonis because while we both lifted weights, he was just more genetically gifted I guess. But he didn't date much (although I often had to memorize phone numbers of girls we didn't know who would come up to him in a mall wanting to get to know him) because he also didn't care much for a lot of our classmates. He was just better at hiding it. In fact, he was the one that told me (after we had graduated) about our rep with some people, and we just laughed because we didn't care what anyone in our town thought about us.

TlalocW

Thanks for the great input.

... who, although a Democrat, could be quite "conservative" in her thinking.

My mom started working in one of many aerospace-related industries in the early '60s. She and my dad had split, and she had to start a career in order to support herself and us kids.

Many of her coworkers were lesbians and gay men - and she quickly bonded with them, just as she did with many coworkers. They came to the house for BBQs and drink-'n'-gabs - just my "mom's friends", like all of her other friends.

It was never discussed - I was quite young at the time. My mom just assumed that as I got a bit older, I would understand that "Connie and Fran" were a couple, that Juan and Julio were "together".

And she was right - I did come to understand that. And it never struck me as odd in any way. They were just people - like all of my mom's other friends.

but it sure wasn't for me.

Thanks for the input!

When I was a junior in highschool I used to hang out with a bunch of other kids that were aggressively homophobic. Fortunately I was never with them when they actually encountered a gay person so I was never a part of any violence. It is entirely possible that I said things that hurt gay people around me that I didn't know were gay I hope not but it is entirely possible.

For me the change was moving from Oklahoma to San Fransisco and being thrown into the middle of what at the time was one of the few places in a
America you could be openly gay. I remember very clearly seeing my first gay couple holding hands on the beach. It happened quite soon after the move and that was the beginning of the end of my fear and hatred for gay people.

Oddly enough there was a time later in my life where I got a lot of grief from people for being unafraid to hang out in gay bars with my gay friends. Such a long way and time from Oklahoma.

Funny how life works.

So actually seeing gay people in the flesh was enough to show you that they're just people. Thanks for your input.

It went much further than just seeing them though. I was unable to avoid them once I got to San Francisco.

The attitude there towards gays was much different in San Francisco they were not reviled like they were in Oklahoma . it was such a difference in attitude that it forced me to question my own feelings.

After that it was actually meeting outwardly gay people and realizing there was nothing to be afraid of that did it for me . I quickly realized that not only where they perfectly normal but that being around them had no effect on me whatsoever, I didn't turn gay just because I was around them or even when I was hit on by gay guys . in fact I found out it was quite the compliment with no ill effects whatsoever.

After figuring that out, the mystery and fear was gone, and at that point I started making real friends that were gay.

I will forever be grateful for that move it got me out of a state full of hate and judgement and opened my eyes to a lot of great friends over the years.

day they were born. And very few honest answers.

Near everyone who responds will act as though the grew up on board of Star Trek The Next Generation.

As for me? I was accused, regularly, of being a dyke when I was in middle and high school. And I didn't protest against it because it was untrue. I protested against it because it was considered a bad thing to be.

So far, I've figured that respondents grew up in an admirable environment very different from mine.

"Different" is always a bad thing to be among kids. But I have hope that many don't care if the difference is in orientation.

Thanks for your input!

You don't waste time hating on people you never run into. Hatred of 'others' is very much tied to wanting someone to scapegoat for bad things. If you never see 'others', it's hard to ascribe evil to them. I might have grown up in a more homophobic environment if there were any homosexuals around who were 'out'. So it's not so much being 'saintly' as simply having no real contact that we knew about. It's kind of like asking us if we grew up hating, fearing, or disliking penguins. We never really saw any, so why should we have any particular feelings toward them at all? While I'm sure I met and maybe even knew homosexuals when I was young, the first time I knew for sure I'd met any was in my sophomore year of college, by which time I was already considering myself a liberal, so it would have made no sense to start hating or fearing them at that point in time.

from portraying us as boogeymen, especially in the last 30 years. I recall books in the house warning against us when I was a kid. I figured since I didn't fit the stereotypes (limp wrist, etc) that I wasn't one of "them" and would grow out of it, as the books geared toward kids always claimed.

hand me downs from my older sister when she moved from reading sci-fi and fantasy on to romances. Duane had gay or bi protagonists, as well as entire cultures that were far more open to any orientation, so my written introduction to gay folks was positive, but as I said, I still never knew if I met any in real life til college, so I didn't spend much time thinking about them as a class of people with specific societal problems to overcome til my early 20s.

On the internet, you're flawless, your kids are straight-A, insightful and enlightened, you grow perfect tomatoes, and no one knows you unashamedly watch honey Boo-Boo

it's the absolute truth

you sure do cut to the chase. lol

But I do think some of the responses on here are genuine.

AS I noted in my original comment, everyone in school casually used the word 'gay' as a substitute for saying something was lame. We just didn't really give it any thought as to what it really meant, or spend any time thinking about gay people.

My memory is hazy.

But we were taught from an early age "don't ask, don't tell," and that really was important for the safety of some friends and family.

Three of my grandparents were fully accepting, one was of the opinion it was a disorder, but not a sin. He's also the one who was upset I was marrying, in his words, "a Mexican girl" and he didn't attend our wedding. But he got over that.

I remember being cautioned not to gossip because my parents' friends might "lose their jobs...or worse."

or brown people or black people or Jewish people, etc......that is the absolute truth

I am a boomer

I was raised to be a redneck. It took at first, when I was in high school. I recall the KKK even had their flyers passed out in my school. But when I actually knew black guys and Jewish guys, (and asians and greeks, etc) they were just like me, and I learned to be less judgmental as a result.

My family was disappointed.

so the minority kids I knew, their dads were enlisted like mine, so we were truly "equals" - although we were all suspicious of the officer's kids

I spent some time in England growing up, and gay folk were not nearly as demonized there as they were here.

I never knew any Jewish folk back then, but my parents didn't hate anyone so neither did I.

AF boomer brat, and yes, my NCO dad had coworkers of all kinds, black, jewish, asian, etc. us kids were raised to be no better than anyone else. being a military brat exposed us to many things most kids weren't, and i think i'm better for it.

and her husband absolutely detested Japanese people (his brother was killed at Pearl Harbor), but those were things that just made you squirm as a kid, in total embarrassment, when you visited them in the summer.

But I was raised to think of them as inferior to whites. I grew up in SC in the days of separate water fountains for blacks and whites. Separate water fountains, separate schools, separate seating areas in the theaters, separate everything. It was like something bad would happen to you if you came to close to black people, but I didn't know what it was that would happen. I think I began to feel that this thing just wasn't right when I saw photos of protesters being hit with fire hoses and attacked by dogs. By the time George Wallace stood in the doorway of the University of Alabama, I was pretty well convinced I didn't want to be on any side he or his kind was on. I married in !967 and was able to be with my Air Force husband at his postings. During that time i met and worked with people of color and hispanic people, some of the most fun people to work with ever. So I think I've evolved beyond my racist upbringing. I certainly hope I have.

But then, many decades ago when I was a young girl I lost a beloved aunt to suicide...because she couldn't face being gay but not being accepted by the world. I've grieved, I've missed her my whole life, and I grew up knowing that sexual orientation does not determine one's value as a human.

Not out of fear, hate, or the like, but just ebcause that was one of the insults we used to rib each other. No thought to it, because, well i can't claim to have been any sort of enlightened wunderkind. but once i did get around to thinking about it, I realized how fucking dumb it was - I knew people who wee gay, it didn't bother me at all, but i was using it as an insult?



Stupid Shit Teenagers Do.

But mainly as a tool to deflect from discovery.

Middle school, with all of it's weird social rules, hormonal and sexual confusion (even for us straight folks), and insecurity is a pretty ripe breeding ground for lashing out on anyone that is seen as different. Plus, it was the 80s and homophobic jokes were all over the place in movies and comedy. By the time I hit high school though, I thought it was pretty immature, and by the time I finished high school, I had a couple of gay friends, and at least one teacher, so homophobic jokes and insults pissed me off at that point.

From a very early age I knew that I myself was different than most other people (or at least I felt that way). I think I reasoned early on how hypocritical it would be to make fun of people that were 'different'. This was in the late 70s.

Also, both my parents were liberal teachers their entire lives and placed a lot of value on embracing diversity and tolerance.

My oldest friend from HS is gay, he was out in the 80's. Most of my other HS friends are also gay, though they came out in college.

I was in a Rocky Horror cast senior year, and being hetero was seen as kind of odd.

I lived 20 minutes away from San Francisco though, and it was considered gauche and stupid to be a homophobe.

Because I was afraid that maybe I was gay and I grew up in a family and culture where being gay wasn't acceptable. When I was in college a guy wrote a really nice poem and shared it with me by reading it to me. He was gay. I was afraid that he was coming on to me and I was dismissive toward him and basically avoided him for the remainder of my time there.

How did this change? I became more comfortable with my own sexuality. I didn't feel that having a gay friend or having a guy share a poem or his feelings meant that he was coming on to me. I began minimizing in my mind the stupid slurs that people make like 'fag' or 'homo' or whatever. I also began seeing how those slurs are often advanced by guys who fear, like me, their own sexuality in some ways. It became kind of funny to me, as I began seeing the loudest homophobes as truly gay. My deepest advancement, I feel, developed years later, when a gay friend invited me to an annual gay art show.

At first I tried thinking up excuses not to go: I'm too busy with work, I could catch up on sleep on a Friday evening, all that kind of stuff. I had to confront within myself that the real reasons had to do with all that fear from the past, of being thought of as a homo or fag or effeminate or any of those awful slurs. I decided to go thinking it would just be a brief appearance there. I wound up having an fantastic wonderful time and stayed till the very end.

A few weeks later I talked with my gay buddy about it. Told him that I'm so glad that I've matured a bit as a person, and told about all my fears going into the party - that 'someone from the business community would see me there and think I was gay' all that kind of stuff. And how my fears were so silly and they were put to rest there at the art show. My buddy said 'Yeah, that's why we hold that event, it's for you!' That really made me laugh at myself and feel much more comfortable around others of different sexual orientation than myself.

I appreciate your thread.

For sure as a Senior, that the guys making comments in gym were either like you or just assholes. The ones like you obviously figured out that by me not joining in that I had no interest in disparaging others. The assholes just continued to be assholes.

It is amazing what a well placed "whatever" or "so" can do to a seventeen year old who insists on picking on a kid.

As a teenager in the 60s, personal experiences were already leading me to the conclusion that sexual orientation is determined by genetic composition.

Last edited Fri Jun 12, 2015, 01:58 AM - Edit history (1)

(that I was aware of). I remember all the disparaging gay references high school boys would use to put down other boys even though the latter were probably not gay. I guess I had a fear of gays, of being seen with them (if I had known any) and of being suspected of being gay myself. Then in about 1973 I became the new guitarist in a band that backed a soul singer named Nancy Hyde. Unknown to me at the time was that Nancy's manager had booked her into a chain of large gay clubs which we toured. Nancy's sound was very popular in these clubs and she'd already developed a following. The first club we played in was one in San Francisco called the Cabaret Club, a three story building with a couple of restaurants, an enormous dance floor, and a theater with a stage where our group appeared. The first few nights I felt pretty uncomfortable and spent most of my time between sets in the dressing room. I was afraid that if I circulated in the club I might be thought of as gay and maybe get hit on. But to my own surprise it stopped bothering me. It really was like any other club except for the fact almost everyone was male...and there were hundreds and hundreds of people who went through that gigantic club. Nancy told us that she'd seen John Lennon in the audience one night. As a musician, that really freaked me out to think he was listening to my playing. The club owners housed our band in a large apartment in downtown San Francisco during out stay. Lots of gay people went in and out of that apartment to meet with the club owners, who lived in another part of the apartment. Everyone was extremely nice, polite, and attentive to our every need. It was a pleasant change for club owners to treat us musicians like human beings who mattered. Some of the gay men I saw were very effeminate, something I couldn't help noticing. Some showed nothing that indicated their sexual preference that I could discern. Anyway, it was in living for weeks with all the people of this gay club, at the other Cabaret club where we played in West Hollywood, and at others that caused me to stop caring about sexual preference. They were people like any other. Most of all, they were all uniformly kind, polite, and very nice to us musicians which left a lasting impression on me.

This thread is moving so fast I haven't had time to thank everyone individually. I'm heartened by the responses and wish I'd been in one of those families that would have accepted rather than shaming me.

Thank you all.

It makes a better world to be accepting rather than being judgemental.

human rights are for everyone period end of conversation .

I've found no uproar around her sex change in the 50s. The thing that changed is politics, mostly in the last 20 or so years.

Although my gay friends did change my parents minds. Which turned to be a good thing since one grandchild is gay, at least that we know of. We were talking about him one day and dad said I've thought he was gay since he was a little boy. My parents love him unconditionally. But I think me having so many gay friends helped them get over any stereotypes they held.
I consciously raised my daughter to know people of all kinds of backgrounds, so literally from birth she has strong adult gay folks in her life. In fact she married a great guy and credits our friend Jack as an example of what a good man is, I was a single parent and jack helped raise her.

I remember meeting a kid who soon became a good friend - he was gay, we were both 16. He was just fun to hang with, yak on the phone with, friendly, razor-sharp sense of humor, and even at that young age a gay activist - he worked with AmFAR. By the time I started developing opinions about this stuff, I had too many friends and colleagues and neighbors who were gay even to think it was that big a deal anymore.

As far as hate, fear, or dislike, no. Nothing like that ever came up.

to 'know' of gay people. I saw your post a while ago and have been thinking about your question. Perhaps I wondered about them but really can not recall. Guess it was not a big deal to me.

He came out my sophomore year of college, and actually became a decent guy. I'd always thought he was a bit of an ass, mean to his girlfriends, and so it made sense. He simply wasn't happy being in relationships with women. He became a lot happier with his life after he stopped dating women and started dating guys, and a lot nicer in general when he wasn't being miserable living a lie. I went with him to the campus LGBT meetings off and on in support, and a few of the parties (and damn did that group throw good parties.)

Somewhat similar to your experience, I just wanted to hide the feelings I had. I was hoping my "problem" would just go away, but eventually I realized it never would.

That was hard for me, I imagine for you as well. I convinced myself there was probably a "brotherhood" or something that would accept me as-is. Boy, was I wrong. They''re as vapid as anyone else.

It's helped that my family is very accepting. I'm fortunate enough to have very liberal parents and relatives, and I can supplement that with friends.

Too many people lack that luxury.