I really can understand and feel what it’s like to be on the outside and look in. I’m from Austria, which makes some things slightly different, socially and legally. when I was in middle school (10-14 years), I often felt like an outsider. I did have some friends, but I was never one of the “cool” girls and in the first two years, I was happy to just hang with my friends. then, I started being best friends with the most popular girl in class which meant that the other students accepted me and didn’t bully me. but when we, my bf and I, would fight, I would get a reality check (as in ppl slighting me) and I would know that I’m still an outsider, but due to the friendship ppl didn’t dare to harrass me. then I went to high school (14-19 years) and I thought things would change. I tried really, really hard to be friends with everybody and talked to everbody and made an effort to get to know the ppl in my class. but within 2 month, I was an outsider again and had about 3-4 friends in a class of 30 students. I had a really hard time accepting that I was different and why I was different and when I realized that year that I was gay, everything started to make sense. I could finally put my finger on my otherness. now, at age 20, I realise that being gay is only a small part of why I am different to peers in my agegroup, but thats a whole different story. in high school, I was part of a small group of friends who all were strange in one way or another and we were friends simply due to the fact that we didn’t fit in. sometimes, this was a good thing (we understood each others otherness better and accepted it easily), sometimes, it was a not-so-good thing (we didn’t really share interests). I had a really hard time with being an outsider and not accepted, especially when the “cool” girls in my class bullied me for being who I am. they didn’t know that I was gay back then, but they found enough other things to make fun of.

BUT: now, I don’t even want to be part of the cool gang. I don’t want to sit at their table. their usualness bores me and I don’t even really try anymore to make friends with ppl who will never understand me and my social struggle. I met this awesome girl at university who is a lot like me. she went through the bullying and the being an outsider and all of that and even though we don’t really share that many interests, I am having the best time with her because we can talk about everything and anything and she’ll listen to everything I want to tell her and I’ll listen to everthing she wants to tell me and we’ll share our opinions and we can disagree on stuff without being mad or hurt and we have a very special bond just because we went trough very similar experiences. I feel like I could never be friends with someone who always was popular and socially accepted the way I am friends with her, just because they’ll never fully understand me.

So, my point is, I’m proud to stay outside and not look in. Yeah, I want the right to marry as well, but I’ll still be the odd bird and the social outcast and I’m proud to be that way!

(sorry for the long comment, but your post triggered something inside of me…)

And thank you, Penelope and Calliope, for the reality check about the brave new world we’re now in. Clearly it’s in a mixed bag. It’s easy for folks who came out in an earlier, less open time, to idealize and oversimplify the situation for younger folk now. Yes, people go to the prom with packs of friends now, and same-sex prom couples aren’t unheard of. And yet thirty miles south of me, just a few years ago, a transwoman was murdered for being trans. She was 17 years old. In suburban San Francisco Bay Area.

I share your worries, Calliope, and do hope that much more far-reaching, federal-level civil rights protections remain clearly visible as a goal, at least in the realm of our civil rights struggle that’s influenced by the government. One hopes that once we all see that the earth doesn’t hurtle into the sun, several years into these isolated, enlightened patches of marriage equality, such broader-scale protections will seem shamefully overdue. As they have been for a long time.

As to your last concern — ” I don’t want us to lose each other, you know?” — I’m right there with you, sister. I think as long as we talk and listen across the generations (and classes, and races, and more), we just might not.

Finally, violetta: Red Baron prêt-a-porter?

[with apologies to Chas Schultz]

As to the out-laws becoming in-laws: this maybe the saddest aspect of the goin’ legit blowback. Butch Cassidy & the Sundance Kid ( & Thelma & Louise) get all cleaned up and become sitcom regulars or something.

And there is still a sizable queer population in their early 20s who are as ambivalent about marriage as many from previous generations, though perhaps for different reasons. For me, it’s bitterness–why should I rush in to take what you’ve always had and haven’t wanted to give to us? It’s pride, maybe. And also fear of normalization, of a kind of normalization that will only further alienate and marginalize members of the queer community who don’t fit into the neat rubrix of marriage.

There’s a lot of work to be done. I’m so happy that today’s middle-schoolers and high schoolers, especially in more progressive places, like here, are getting exposure to queer concepts in the media and in school and even at home, because that can only make things better. But I’m worried that the larger community is fighting the wrong battles, or at least, we’re *not* fighting some really important battles, and that the result will be further fractioning and prejudice among queers. I don’t want us to lose each other, you know?

It’s bittersweet to know that because of when and how I came out, that picnic blanket isn’t a place where I’ll ever be completely comfortable. But oh how glad I am that the picnics took place – and continue to take place.

I can honestly say my generation is a bit different about being out. The F and D nicknames (I hate them, so I don’t type them) were pulling from the mouths of my peers in elementary and middle school. By high school it was cool to come out. I went to a brand new, highly wealthy urban high school where people had their parents buy them nice cars and prom dresses. I remember when this guy I was completely crushing on came out and I was shocked. Not that he was gay, but that I never got to date him.

I then went to a college where being gay was so closeted. It was a Church of Christ school. Why I went there I’m not sure, but my first girlfriend and I hated ourselves for doing it. As I’ve come out to my friends from both college and high school, I’ve been greeted with a great happiness that I’m being who I am.

As I become more apart of a culture I always loved but never knew why, I realize so many great steps are being taken towards acceptance and understanding. My sister, who’s 12, told me about a program on Nickelodeon(targeted towards her age and older) where characters are openly gay. She even told me about a program that was about being a lesbian.

Times are hopefully changing for the better.