School Is Very Conformist, And

We've Had A Culture War Roaring Away, And The Kinds Of People Who Want To Abuse And Discriminate Against Gay People Who Are Adults Can't Really Lay Their Hands On Us Unless They Want To Be Gay-bashers And Go To Jail. They Abuse Us From Afar And In The Abstract, They Abuse Us With Checkbooks And Ballots, But Their Kids Go To School On Monday Morning. And There's A Gay Kid. And They Feel They Have License To Beat That Gay Kid Up In A Way That I Don't Think They Did When I Was In School. I Think It's Gotten Worse.

I'm One Of Those Gay People Who's Constantly Reminded Of How Fortunate I Am To Live Now And Not To Be Ennis And Jack [from Brokeback Mountain] Or Whatever - Not That I'd Mind Being Ennis For Half An Hour. But It's Been So Much Worse Recently. It Still Is Terrible. In Iran, They're Hanging Gay Teenagers. I'm Grateful For How Far The United States, Even With Its Crazy Christians, Has Come On A Lot Of Issues. And The Fact That I Get Called A Faggot Occasionally By A Crack Addict, While Annoying, Certainly Isn't A Lobotomy And Prison.

...even If Gay Marriage Were Legalized There Would Still Be Gay Men Who Didn't Want To Marry, Gay Men No Other Gay Men Would Want To Marry, And Gay Men Who Didn't Want To Leave The Priesthood In Order To Marry.

Actual Gay People Can Make Many Others Feel Uncomfortable And Paranoid Because They Don't Know And Can't Articulate What Makes A Person Gay, And They Worry That Maybe They Themselves Are Gay.

Christmas Can Have A Real Melancholy Aspect, 'cause It Packages Itself As This Idea Of Perfect Family Cohesion And Love, And You're Always Going To Come Up Short When You Measure Your Personal Life Against The Idealized Personal Lives That Are Constantly Thrust In Our Faces, Primarily By Tv Commercials.