Tag Archives: culture

“Why don’t you like him?”

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Creepy smiling guy with "I like your hair, it smells nice"
A creepy guy meme.
I now know who the creeper/proto-rapist in my neighbors’ social group.

I was half asleep late Friday/early Saturday, when a vehicle pulled into the driveway between our building and the next one. I heard the voice of the 20-something guy that lives with his girlfriend in the unit behind us talking with several other people of both genders while they unloaded something from the vehicle with the engine still running.

As the number of voices dwindled down to just a woman I didn’t know and the neighbor (I believe she was driving the vehicle and the other friends were from a separate vehicle out on the street, perhaps?). The neighbor suddenly asks, “So are you going to go out with Adam?”

And she replied, “I don’t like Adam.”

“Why not? He’s a nice guy!”

“He always acts creepy around me.”

“Oh, he doesn’t mean anything by it…”

“I don’t like him.”

“Why don’t you like him?”

Ah! There we have it. The classic attitude guys have been socialized to have when other guys of their acquaintance sexually harass, touch without permission, and otherwise creep on girls of their acquaintance.

Otherwise known as, rape culture…

Continue reading “Why don’t you like him?” →

Stripes and stars

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Rainbow flag with a blue field and stars in the corner.
A star-spangled rainbow flag.
Symbols are important.

My coming out process had been slow and incremental. I spent most of my teens wrestling with the idea, trying to convince myself that I wasn’t gay. For a long time I tried to be either bisexual or resign myself to a life a celibacy. I don’t want to get into the psycho-social reasons that some of us gay people cling to a bisexual identity for a while (and the disservice that does to actual bi people). Julie and I became active in a very out lesbian & gay chorus while we were still married to each other. By then a lot of people knew that I wasn’t heterosexual. But a lot of people didn’t. Most of my friends who knew seemed to be all right with it, but no one in my family knew.

I had wanted to come out to the family (and some old friends who were still in the dark at the time) earlier, but had been talked out of it. After Julie and I legally separated and I was finally able to admit aloud that I was definitely not bi, I felt a need to make a definitive statement.

Continue reading Stripes and stars →

Why is it always an “agenda”?

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So, an incident happens in the workplace. One person is late. Another person who is irritated that the other person is late, and is griping about having to wait. A co-worker suggests they just chill out and wait. The grumbler gets a bit angrier and makes a comment to the effect that he is tired of always having to wait for “that faggot.” The co-worker takes offense at the comment, the grumbler gets even angrier and grabs the co-worker by the throat.

Other co-workers break up the scuffle, everyone separates to cool off. The late person arrives and eventually people are back to work.

Would anyone be surprised after such a thing happening in a workplace, that the person who grabbed a co-worker by the throat and referred to another co-worker (in front of witnesses) as a faggot received some kind of discipline?

No, we wouldn’t.

And if the person who had both physically assaulted one co-worker and verbally assaulted another, then goes public and insists it was just a joke, would we be surprised if other people in the industry begin to be a bit wary in the presence of the person?

Then nearly all the rest of the co-workers, including the guy who was assaulted and the guy who was called a faggot try to minimize the incident. “Sometimes tensions get high.” “People say things that they regret.” When that happens, you would expect the first guy to be grateful that people are trying to let him get past it. You wouldn’t expect him to, at a public event, in front of reporters and with TV cameras rolling, to suddenly say, “I’m just glad we’ve all stopped talking about me allegedly calling him a faggot!”

But this is exactly what actor Isaiah Washington did three years ago. It resulted in him losing that job. He dropped out of sight for a few years. And this week he resurfaced and gave an interview in which he says:

“After the incident at the Golden Globes everything just fell apart. It literally stopped. Whatever the agenda, whatever the plan was it worked. I lost everything. I couldn’t afford to have an agent. I couldn’t afford to have a publicist for the crisis management to continue. I couldn’t afford to continue. I went from 2 million dollars a year to residual checks. Zero. I couldn’t get another apartment after I turned in my lease for my $3 million home. I had to put it in my wife’s name. No one wanted to touch the name of Isaiah Washington for three years.”

And everyone is supposed to be sorry, because it was just some silly incident, right? I mean, the poor man lost a 2-million dollar a year job, and had to survive on just $200,000 a year in residuals. All because of one thing he said at the silly awards show. Then the whole thing becomes “an agenda.” Like there was some sort of conspiracy aimed just at him.

There are still people trying to portray this as some sort of “he said, he said” thing. One of the problems is that Mr. Washington’s story has changed several times. At first he said the scuffle on set didn’t happen. Then he tried to make jokes about the scuffle, but insisted the word “faggot” hadn’t been mentioned. Then he admitted he used “an unacceptable slur” when he was tired and angry, but insisted that he wasn’t really like that.

Then he used the slur again, with a big grin on his face, in front of the cameras. Yes, it was at an awards presentation where just about everyone had been drinking. And also he was denying that he had used the slur, but it was a comment completely out of context, and rolled so easily off his tongue that it gave a very different impression.

And here’s the thing about both anger and alcohol: they don’t force you to say things that you have never, ever thought before. They do lower inhibitions and make it more likely that you’ll say things you ordinarily wouldn’t say. But those things will be things that you think all the time.

So it isn’t an agenda. A lot of people would understandably be uncomfortable being around someone like that after a series of incidents like those. Particularly given how poorly he handled the apology, and even re-ignited the issue when it was beginning to look like it might blow over, it shouldn’t surprise him that other production companies are going to be reluctant to hire him. No one wants a similar incident, right?

Now, to be fair, I’ll admit that there used to be a conspiracy around these things. It used to be the case that a straight man could count on getting away with calling a co-worker a faggot without facing any consequences. Plenty of workplaces still overlook that sort of thing all the time.

For a long time there’s been an unspoken agreement that real men can literally push other people around and call them names like “faggot” with impunity. Because that’s the sort of thing “real men” do when they’re stressed and angry. Other “real men” are supposed to just laugh it off and move on as if nothing happened—because nothing out of the ordinary did.

That “real men” conspiracy is starting to break down. And I imagine that when Mr. Washington found himself in a place where everyone didn’t just laugh and move on it did feel as if people were out to get him.

Everyone is difficult to work with at least some of the time. Those of us who weren’t there don’t know what he’s like day-in and day-out. But the series of events which are not in dispute, including the series of unconvincing and changing apologies, indicates a pattern of behaviors. I suspect, therefore, that there are many, many other incidents over the years of his career that we never heard about. So, of course people are reluctant to hire him.

There’s no agenda. There are only consequences.

Why would you even want…

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Whenever a story is published about some horribly racist, or sexist, or homophobic law or outrageously bigoted action by a government official in certain parts of the country (usually, but not always, a southern state), some a**hole will ask, “Why would you even want to live in __________?”

Similarly, when a story is making the rounds about someone being fired or expelled because they are gay/lesbian/bi/et cetera, the same a**holes will ask, “Why would you want to work for someone who felt that way?”

But when a teacher at a conservative religious school gets fired for being gay, or a student at a conservative religious school is expelled for the same reason, it takes an uber-a**hole to ask, “Why should I feel sorry for them?”

I’d like to deal with each question:

Why would you want to live there? Despite how mobile our society has become, our geographic location is seldom a matter of pure, unadulterated choice. We don’t get to choose where we are born or grow up, to begin with. Not all young adults have the means to pull up stakes and move to wherever they want. There is a constellation of complex social and economic reasons for why we live where we do.

It is easier to land a job with a company where you know someone who is already employed there or has been employed there, for instance. And particularly when you’re just starting out, who you know is largely going to be determined by proximity. You know people because you have lived near them. It’s just easier to get jobs in the area where you already live.

People usually have relatives to whom they feel obligations, as well. Census data shows that the majority of adults in the U.S. live within 30 miles of one their parents, for example. (Interesting side note: if a person’s parents are divorced, 80 percent of the time the parent who is geographically closest is the mother.) Sometimes it isn’t just a feeling of an obligation. There is an extremely strong correlation between how anti-gay a state’s laws and social climate are, and the likelihood that a gay or lesbian person married someone of the opposite sex while relatively young, had children, then came out to themselves and their community and got divorced. In many cases, the only way to maintain custody or visitation rights is to remain in the state.

Not to mention that every place has beautiful places, and at least some wonderful people. So often the reasons a gay person lives in a state that doesn’t have gay-friendly laws are quite valid, if not optimal.

Why would you want to work for someone like that? No matter how good the economy is, we often end up in jobs that are less than our dream job. Sometimes you take the job that is offered, and hope things work out. Sometimes you start out with a very tolerant, professional boss, but because of promotions, re-orgs, transfers, and the like, you suddenly find yourself reporting to the jerk who keeps making fag jokes. And it isn’t always one’s boss that is the problem. A hostile co-worker can create situations that lead to you getting the blame, et cetera.

And most of these situations don’t come from those obvious situations. I’ve written before about a past co-worker who made a big stink because I had a single picture of my late husband tucked on a part of my desk where most people couldn’t even see it. None of my conversations or interactions with him ever gave me the slightest clue that he felt that way.

I suspect a lot of these people were in a similar situation.

And except when I was working in a very tiny office, I have never been the only non-heterosexual person working there. And I’ve seen plenty of examples of gay employees in one department being free to be open about the gender of their partners, et cetera, when people reporting to a different set of managers quickly learn that if they don’t keep “that stuff” to themselves, there will be problems.

Finding another job takes time and energy a person may not have, even when they know the employer is not accepting. And if you aren’t a well-connected person socially both within your industry and community, finding a new job is not a matter of simply picking somewhere to apply, sitting back, and waiting for the offer letter. Depending on how specialized your skill set is, finding a comparable job, that pays enough to meet your current financial obligations and provides the benefits you need, can be more difficult.

And no matter how much research you do in advance, there is no guarantee that the new employer won’t have a similar issue with your sexuality under some circumstances in the future.

Why should I feel sorry for them? They should have known what would happen! So a lesbian is a teacher at a conservative religious school. See everything I said about about jobs. Then add in the following factors: when she began her career, had she even come out to herself, yet? Are there as many jobs in her specific field of teaching at secular schools? Does her church have a fairly large population of congregants who are far more supportive of gay rights than the leadership? How did all of that contribute to her feeling about how safe it was to admit who she is?

The one that really ticks me off is blaming the student at a conservative Christian college for not knowing what would happen. First, they’re college age, and by definition not experienced enough to be sure how people might handle their coming out. It’s also even more likely that she hadn’t even admitted to herself at the time she first enrolled at the school that she wasn’t straight. Second, maybe a Christian school was the only option that her parents would support. There are so many reasons that we pick which college to apply to, and getting accepted is not under our control.

The process of coming out, more specifically, coming to terms with your identity when you aren’t heterosexual, and then reaching the point of sharing that understanding, isn’t a simple issue of weighing all the pros and cons, checking one’s calendar, and thinking about how this announcement will affect your other plans. There is usually an incredible amount of frustration, fear, and weariness boiling up inside the mind of the closeted person like steam in an overheated pressure cooker.

The need to stop lying about who you are overwhelms the fear, let alone any caution someone has about what effect the truth might have on one’s next performance review. And being raised in (and working in) a deeply religious community makes all that pressure even worse.

Maybe the question these critics ought to be answering is, “Why don’t you have enough empathy to realize your questions are backwards?”

Not all like that, part 2

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I wrote a while back about being scolded by defensive Christians whenever I post or re-blog something about someone claiming to be Christian spreading hatred and bigotry. In that post, I mentioned that sex advice columnist and gay rights advocate, Dan Savage, refers to those people as NALTs or NALT Christians because of the phrase “Not all like that.” And then he advises that rather than tell us gay people that not all Christians are like that, you ought to tell the other Christians.

Several of those people have taken Dan’s words to heart, and have launched The NALT Christians Project (notalllikethat.org). Which I think is a good idea.

One of the things I really like about this and the It Gets Better Project (itgetsbetter.org) is that both of them set out to fight bigotry and hatred not by attacking people for being bigots, but by simply voicing non-bigotry, acceptance, and love.

Besides looking at the web sites, you can read a bit more about them here: New project to highlight pro-LGBT Christians.

And if you need a reminder about why people of faith who believe in equality and acceptance need to speak up, you might want to check this out: Christian Radio Host: Tell Gay Couples To Die On Their Wedding Day.

Speaking of pink boys, et al

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I love Goldfrapp’s music, and this… this is just amazing:
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Also, if you didn’t read this already, go check it out:

My Son Wears Dresses; Get Over It “To me, loving a child who is different, a target and seen as vulnerable is my role as a father and decent human being.”

Tomboys, pink boys, sissies, and amazons

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Lots of people have been talking about a couple of recent op-ed/blog posts about the recent faddish attention in the media and on social networks focused on gender non-conforming kids. Since as a kid one of the nicest words regularly used by my bullies was “sissy” it shouldn’t surprise any one that I have some thoughts on this matter.

The latest commentary asks us not to treat these kids and the parents who are allowing them to be themselves as if they are celebrities. No child is really equipped to be at the center of a media circus, and all the attention, even if all of it were positive (and it isn’t, as internet trolls quickly fill any comments sections or Facebook page with hateful attacks on both the kids and their parents).

I agree.

However, visibility is a crucial component of any attempt to diffuse hate. We wouldn’t have any schools that allowed these kids to dress as they wish, or policies to allow the transgender kids to express their gender, et cetera, if the existence of kids similar to them were unknown. We certainly wouldn’t have California passing a law to protect transgender kids in public schools.

We want the kids to be safe to be themselves. The act of being themselves means not hiding. So there is going to be attention, no matter what. When people like myself share links to blog posts of, say, a mom explaining why she let her son dress up as Daphne from Scooby Doo, we’re expressing joy that one kid has supportive parents. We’re telling people we know that we think it’s a good idea that this kid has supportive parents. We’re telling people we know that we think everyone should be accepting of kids like that kid, and parents like that mom.

And those are good things.

We need to admit to ourselves that we have other reasons. I know one of the feelings I have whenever I find one of these stories—whether it be the incredibly cool note a father left his teen-age son saying he’s known he was gay since the age of six and he’s loved him since the day he was born, or the mom whose son wanted to be Daphne, or the mom who was okay when her six-year-old developed a crush on a boy on TV—is envy. I wish that my parents had been as accepting of my non-conformities as a child. The subtext of my sharing of those stories is always going to include a bit of that wistful longing.

Similarly when I read the blog post of the dad who is appalled at news of some other father kicking his gay child out of the family home. As I feel the fierce feeling of protectiveness coming through the dad’s words, I can’t help a few tears coming to my eyes as envy (again) mixed with sorrow and more than a bit of anger at my own father well up. My dad didn’t have that overwhelming drive to protect me from the cruelties of the world—for much of my childhood he was one of the worst cruelties I faced.

So my reasons for sharing these stories is not entirely altruistic. I’m not trying to be exploitive of their stories. Maybe that’s the best we can hope for, that most of us aren’t intentionally sharing the tales for selfish reasons.

Not every boy who likes pink is gay. Not every girl who prefers sports over playing pretty princess is lesbian. Not all of the children who vary from society’s strict gender silos is transgender. No matter how much some of us may see ourselves in each of these kids, no matter how many stories we read or pictures we see or videos we watch, we don’t really know these kids. We don’t know their futures.

But to the extent that we empathize with how they feel, we need to put our attention and energy into making the world a more welcoming place for all of them, no matter who they grow up to be.

It’s not your decision

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I lot of people were sharing a blog post last week by Gavin Aung Than called “BILL WATTERSON: A cartoonist’s advice.” Watterson is the creator of Calvin and Hobbes, and Than being a web cartoonist, has long admired him. I read someone else’s re-blog of the text and tweeted it out to my followers. I didn’t realize that the text was only part of the post. He also drew a comic in Bill Watterson’s style, using excerpts for a commencement speech Watterson gave way back in 1990.

It’s an awesome cartoon and you should go look at it.

In the accompanying post, Than quotes some things Watterson wrote by way of introduction to The Complete Calvin and Hobbes.

As the blog was linked and re-linked, I saw a few people, some of them Big-ish Name types, who seemed to be angry about Watterson’s decision, made years ago, never to license Calvin and Hobbes for any merchandising. There were never any Hobbes dolls on store shelves, never any Calvin and Hobbes lunch boxes or action figures. Just the comic strips, and various books collecting those strips together.

Watterson stopped writing and drawing the strip years ago, and because he refused to license either the characters or the strip, that means that Calvin and Hobbes came to an end.

The angry people take issue with Watterson’s decision (made many years ago) to eschew merchandising deals. If I follow their logic, they think it is hypocritical of Watterson not to license his property because the book collections are a form of merchandising. If he was willing to publish books, then why object to anything else?

I have several responses to that, but I’ll try to keep it to three:

1. Reprinting is not merchandising. The original strip was visual art and text published in newspapers. The books were collections of the exact same visual art and text. Republishing your original art exactly as it was is not the same thing as letting someone else make action figures which may include things you would have never had the characters use, for instance.

When this was pointed out, I saw at least one commentary complain bitterly about the fact that a certain number of unlicensed window clings are out there, showing Calvin pissing on a corporate logo, or praying in front of a cross. “And that’s all we’ve got!” Unlicensed things will happen whether Watterson licensed the characters or not. That is happening outside of his control, and it seems more than a bit illogical to blame him for that.

But the heart of the objection is revealed in that “that’s all we’ve got!” In other words, they’re angry because they can’t buy those hypothetical lunchboxes or dolls. This gets me to the second point, in which I will paraphrase Neil Gaiman:

2. Bill Watterson is not our bitch. Neil Gaiman famously explained to a fan who was complaining about George R.R. Martin not writing the next Game of Thrones novel as soon as the fan wanted that he isn’t entitled to complain. To translate Neil’s argument here: the people are complaining about Watterson’s decision as if their reading of the strip and/or buying the books constituted a contract: they bought the books, and now Watterson is obligated to do everything in his power to create (or allow to be created) things that they want.

Bill Watterson doesn’t owe us anything. While he was still creating the script, he did his best to tell us an engaging story. That is the only obligation any artist has to their audience: to do their best. He created characters that millions of people loved, and he told stories about them that millions of people enjoyed. How can you complain about that?

3. Bill Watterson’s life is his to live as he chooses. We don’t get to dictate what project he undertakes or what goals he pursues. He chose to end the story of Calvin and Hobbes while it was still doing well, because he didn’t want the quality of the stories to degrade, as has happened with other series which continued too long. In doing that, he was still fulfilling the only obligation he had: he was doing his best. He knew that continuing the story would not be his best. So he stopped.

We can disagree with his choice. We can be disappointed that there isn’t another Calvin and Hobbes strip, or a Calvin and Hobbes movie, or whatever. But we aren’t entitled to begrudge his choice.

You liked his work? You are free to re-read it. You want something new? There are artists out there creating new stuff. Go find something you like, and support a new artist or writer or singer or dancer or something.

I would usually at this point proceed to advise, “if you can’t find something you like, maybe you need to try creating something of your own, not fan art or fan fiction, but something that’s yours.”

Except the sorts of people who feel as entitled as these complainers do, they need to work out their overblown entitlement issues before they can create anything worth our time and attention.

The limits of dreaming

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It’s really easy to get caught up in our disappointments.

For instance, I’m one of the people who is very sad that the health care reform that is going into effect this October is not a real socialized medicine plan. I want a single-payer system, just like every industrialized country other than us. And saying that everyone can go to an emergency room regardless of ability to pay isn’t providing health care! I never want to read again a news story about a 12-year-old child dying of complications of a toothache because emergency rooms don’t treat ordinary toothache, and by the time the complications become life-threatening, it’s too late. I don’t want people to have to hold bake sales and kickstarters to pay for cancer treatments. We spend way more money on our medical system than any other country in the world and we have the worst coverage.

I’m disappointed that only 13 states (plus the District of Columbia and a couple of counties in other states) currently have marriage equality. I’m disappointed that we’re more than a decade into the 21st Century and there is controversy about the fact that courts say that the law ought to treat gay people the same as straight people. I’m disappointed that only two states have banned so-called “gay reparative therapy” for children. Further, I’m disappointed that kicking one’s children out of the house for saying they think they’re gay isn’t considered felony child abuse, subject to arrest, imprisonment, and having the rest of one’s children taken away.

I’m disappointed that I’ll never get to read that new Dirk Gently book (and whatever other books might have been written) because Douglas Adams died at age 49. And while we’re on the subject, I’m disappointed that Charles Dickens died before he finished the Mystery of Edwin Drood, and that Mark Twain died before he finished the Mysterious Stranger.

I’m disappointed that Doris Day has never won an Academy Award.

Not all my disappointments are big, societal problems, obviously.

My point is that it is easy to get lost in the weeds of disappointment. While some of our disappointments can be quite serious issues, even life-and-death issues, it’s good to take several steps back from those weeds to remind ourselves that there’s an awful lot of good and lovely stuff in the garden of life.

When I was a deeply closeted teen-ager, the very best future I could hope for was that maybe I could hide my non-heterosexuality and possibly find a woman who found me tolerable. I thought it much more likely that I would live out my life alone and unloved. I never dreamed I would meet and fall in love with a man who loved me enough to promise to stay with me the rest of my life (and did). Or that, after his death, I would meet and fall in love with another man who loved me as I was, and that we would not only be able to live together, but do so openly, and eventually stand in front of an assemblage of our friends and loved ones, exchange vows, and legally be pronounced married.

When I was in high school, two classmates who were accused (in separate incidents) of being gay were threatened with expulsion, kicked out of their homes by their parents, and wound up living with relatives in other cities. While many families still kick out their kids (or send them to therapy) if they admit to being gay, we also read stories of kids coming out in high school, junior high, and even elementary school with the full support of their parents. Many schools have straight-gay alliances and policies supportive of non-heterosexual kids.

When I was in my 20s, I was working on a science fiction story in which the President of the United States was an openly gay man, but I set it rather late in the 21st century, and even then, he had only become President because he’d been appointed a second-tier cabinet member, and in the course of a cataclysmic disaster, he was the only person in the line of succession left alive. We don’t have a gay president (and we don’t have any gay cabinet members), but we did have an openly gay man seeking the Republican nomination for President last time around. He appeared on the primary ballot in six states, and in some of them got more votes that candidates who got a lot more media coverage. More importantly, this last election cycle sent six openly gay candidates to the U.S. House of Representatives, an openly lesbian candidate was elected to the U.S. Senate (winning a statewide election), plus 74 openly gay, lesbian, or bisexual candidates were elected to state legislatures, and dozens were elected to city councils, school boards, and other government posts across the nation.

To sum up:

Just 40 years ago, the best future for myself I could imagine was I would be good enough at hiding my true feelings so no one would ever suspect I was gay. It was inconceivable to me that I could actually marry the man I love!

Just 35 years ago, it was inconceivable to me that ordinary schools would allow gay kids to attend openly.

Just 30 years ago, it was inconceivable to me that an openly gay or lesbian person could win elected office other than representing a “gay neighborhood.”

So, which thing that we thought was impossible years ago is going to happen next?

A once familiar land

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I spent the weekend visiting my Mom for her birthday. Just under a year ago she moved back to the town where I attended High School—a town I haven’t lived in for 28 years.

I’ve visited regularly throughout that time. My grandma lived there until her death a few years ago, along with numerous cousins and my Aunt Silly. A few years ago my sister and her two kids moved back. So I have visited for various holidays, birthdays and the like, and/or stopped in on my way elsewhere. So it isn’t that I am completely unfamiliar with the place and the changes that have occurred since I left.

For some reason this weekend left me feeling more of a stranger to that place than any previous visit.

I’m not entirely sure why. I have some suspicions. This is the first time in many years that my husband, Michael, wasn’t with me (he had stayed in Seattle to rest and recuperate). He’s never lived in that town, so I was always more familiar with the place than at least one person I was hanging out it. Being with my husband anywhere is always like we’re carrying a bit of home around with us, so no strange place feels entirely alien if he’s with me.

This was also the first visit in a long time that I didn’t at least stop at Grandma’s house. My aunt moved into Grandma’s house after Grandma died, and so I’ve continued to have a reason to visit the house. While my aunt has changed a lot about the place, it’s still Grandma’s house on Grandma’s street. I saw my aunt this weekend (she came to Mom’s for cake and ice cream), but I didn’t go by her place.

This isn’t a case of me suddenly realizing the truth encapsulated by the cliché, “you can’t go home again.” When I left to finish my college degree, I had every intention of returning to that town, or a very similar community, to settle down. But I fell in love with the city. I can’t imagine living somewhere where there aren’t multiple supermarkets open 24 hours, for instance. Let alone living without multiple theatre companies, the opera, and all the other things that come with a culturally vibrant city. And while Seattle isn’t exactly known for its racial diversity, with about two-thirds of residents being white, that’s a big difference from the 92% white demographic in Mom’s community.

Maybe it is the slow accumulation of little changes over those 28 years, making once familiar places look less and less as I remember.

But I don’t think it’s about the town changing, it’s the other way around. I’ve changed a lot, yes, and even more importantly, the world has changed.

Coming out of the closet more than 20 years ago, and realizing how little freedom to be myself I would have if I returned, played a big role in the alienation of my affections for that town. I don’t remember anyone who was living as an openly gay person when I was attending high school and community college there (there were people that everyone suspected and whispered about, of course). Now there are several gay and lesbian people living there, and at least one gay teen support group that advertises meetings and activities. But it did not escape my notice that the recent referendum to extend marriage rights to same sex couples was rejected in that community by a margin of nearly 20%.

But it’s not just about me being gay and unsure how welcome my husband and I would be if we moved there. Nor is it just the practical financial matters (there aren’t many jobs that require my skills and specializations). It’s so much more. I like not having to bite my tongue as strangers make racial comments about the president. I like walking through a parking lot and not seeing dozens of deeply conservative political, religious, and anti-science bumper stickers, and absolutely none of the other kind. I like living in a community that believes in and enjoys investing in infrastructure and schools and social services. I like living in a community that knows that a lot of its tax dollars go out to less-populated parts of the state, without resenting the people who use them.

I’ve changed. That town as changed. One can argue about which one has changed the most, but it’s not just about how far down our paths we’ve gone, but also about direction.

And I know we’re not headed toward the same goal.