I also know a girl who had the “you gotta be cool with the gays” test.

She and her husband (he passed the test) sometimes like to go to gay bars because it’s easier. She’s very beautiful and in straight bars “I’m married” isn’t always enough for a drunk straight ahole. And he enjoys being flirted with a little so in a gay bar he can get a little attention without her having to worry. A pleasant evening for all with no confrontations.

DN – It’s a tough call. On the one hand, integration has been a huge component of how we have won increasing acceptance. On the other, I hate to lose spaces that are “ours”, especially when there’s so much that we are still being denied. Maybe when I can propose to my guy in any bar of my choice (and have it be legally meaningful), I’ll be cool with straights coming to the gay bars to propose.

I have a female friend who used to bring guys to gay bars on a first date. It was explicitly a test — if he freaked, that was the first and last date. If he was game for it, and cool about it, boyo was gettin’ lucky :) I think I’m okay with using ease among gays as a litmus test for het women.

Last thing – I did a strip club crawl when a close het male friend had his bachelor party. One of the most hilarious evenings of my life was the baffled strippers who couldn’t get a “rise” out of me no matter what they tried. I ended up being the designated “guardian of dinner” (aka “don’t let those bitches touch my salad”), half the time in the dressing room. Before long, my buds were claiming they were gay, hoping to get the treatment I was getting. So… sometimes the shoe’s on the other foot just a little !!

I wasn’t in DC before the old Cobalt burned down, but they used to have drag queen bingo every week. Straight people would come and it was fine but I guess the drag queens were getting irritated.

One week, a guy proposed to his girlfriend and the drag queens immediately shut the event down. It restarted later a couple blocks down the street.

In defense of S, sometimes people have long-held views formed at a time when they were incomplete, especially if the ideas were “inherited” from parents or other authority figures, or if they are the result of only casual interaction.

Maybe she’ll come around. Of course, by then, the question is whether there’s a friendship left. The problem is that she probably has no clue about the sour taste she’s left. The only way she fixes that nonsense, unfortunately, is by both being cognisant of the damage done and taking proactive steps to address it… like attending a gay marriage rally without making a big deal of it and casually posting that on her facebook page. There are a million ways of saying “sorry, I screwed up, and hopefully I’m better now”.

My friend M, who is gay, served as best man at a friend’s wedding. The friend, S was marrying a young woman, V that we love very much.
Their’s was a mixed wedding. S is Jewish, and this was his second marriage. V is a Latina, and Catholic. Their ceremony had BOTH elements that represented their respective cultures AND faiths.

Lo and behold, S voted in support of Prop. 8, citing that he didn’t appreciate gays engaging children in the mix, especially at gay weddings. Apparently he believed all those fear mongering ads leading up to the vote.

V was so horrified and embarrassed and my friend M was so hurt by S’s betrayal.
I mean, REALLY hurt.
S’s own marital AND religious background, once upon a time, was banned. Both legally and religiously.
M was good enough to stand up for him at his wedding, but not good enough to have a wedding of his own.
S has since been contrite, but it sure changed things profoundly between them.

I guess to some het folks, they think they can afford to treat gay people that way.

My mind goes back to Marj Christoffersen’s behavior. Her display of hurt and anger at the response from her considerable gay patrons to her support of Prop. 8.
She dared to say ‘but I like you people’ to our faces, but her political bent betrayed a whole other Marj. The one that accepts gay people who have helped make her business prosper (despite how unforgivably bad her restaurant’s Mexican food is), but aren’t good enough to marry or share in the same rights and privileges SHE has.

Even the well meaning, or those who think they are ‘down with’, gays and lesbians, will display the very insensitivity and rudeness they think is okay as long as they publicly say they ‘have nothing against’, gay people.

A lack of consciousness about the gravity of things that affect gay lives, is just as bad as overt anti gay sentiment. The package is neater. That’s all.
But when the package looks nice on the outside, the terrible surprise that leaps out isn’t so much.

I have been very, VERY grateful and work hard at maintaining the trust and confidence of my gay, and transgendered family.
I know what a privilege it is, and what it means to be a part of the inner circle, to be a part of their families, to hold their children.
Especially to be party to some very precious and intimate personal experiences and feelings my friends have.
I wasn’t kidding when I’ve said that I’d rather die than lose all of that. It means so much.
And it’s painful to watch how indifferently, some het people breach such a thing.

Not bad for a guy with an IT degree who can’t find a “real” job, eh? The closest thing I’ve ever been to a lawyer was Air Force security forces years & years ago. I work in a kitchen these days.

You have to want to be that ignorant about something, I think. That’s the mentality of America though. I don’t know, and I don’t *want* to know.