Reply #93: Oh' I see. You've made a bullshit assumption that I'm straight.

[Touchdown]

... and then extrapolated that into a "It's a gay thing. You wouldn't understand" dismissal. At least you have a fucking partner, Drama Queen! Mine left me for a woman. You are not angry or frustrated. You are histrionic.

You have MS. That is unfortunate, and my sympathies. I certainly understand your outrage about the law denying DPBs in Virginia. I got the shit beat out of me 25 years ago for being a faggot. The "law" did nothing about it. Your cross is not bigger than mine.

Back to the subject.
In "Gay Friendly L.A.", I was called a faggot on a daily basis in grade and Jr High school. The local news always showed the drag queens whenever there was a pride parade.

Then my later years in HS, my family moved us to "Blue State Washington", where we planted roots in the most fundy infested city on the eastern desert. It was so welcoming to hear that burn in Hell sermons from those who weren't even preachers. Eastern Washington might as well be Idaho. This is where I got beat up... in BLUE STATE WASHINGTON... for not having the luck to be in the western liberal rainforest, but the unluck of being in the fundy paradise of Yakima. The place is a fucking dump.

I went to my first gay bar, and met some wonderful people in San Antonio.. RED STATE TEXAS! And I felt welcome and free.

I had my first sexual experience with another soldier in the anti-gay ARMY. My 2nd through my 6th too.

I marched in gay ride parades in Kansas City Missouri... another red state. I felt welcome and free there too. We shouted down The Fred Phelps clan in the early 90s when none of the rest of you even heard of him. We sent him and his brood scurrying for their van.

I live in Colorado... the infamous "Hate State" of Amendment 2 fame. Lost to history is that also in 1992, another anti-gay ballot measure was NARROWLY DEFEATED in bastion of blue Oregon. Oregonians dodged a bullet, but only barely. I still remember the petitioner's name. Lon Mabon.... did you? Colorado gays were galvanized by the passage of Amendment 2 and became the most politically active and outspoken in the Rocky Mountains. The Pride celebration in Denver draws 40-60,000 each year. Colorado was also the 3rd state to de-criminalize sodomy in 1972. Tell that to BLUE STATE Massachusetts, who still had theirs on the books when the SCOTUS struck them all down.

I have 5 very good friends, all gay, who live in Florida. I am not about to avoid visiting them because they have the disadvantage of their jobs moving them to a state that bans them from adopting children. They are there, they are fighting, and I love them.