I have always felt strange about my membership in the queer community. Strange like unwilling. And I mostly prefer my straight friends to my queer ones, erg. ufta. Did I say that?

I have reasons within and without for my wariness, but I must say, I have not faced horrible discrimination as a lesbian in America. I am unusually lucky. Mostly, as one of the two major downsides to being a lesbo in the PNW, I find that friends sometimes go missing. There are always reasons, and friends go missing for everyone, so it's hard to say which of my friends go missing because I'm queer, and which go missing because life involves change and natural attrition (or because I'm a bizatch). I would guess, however, that I've lost at least five people I've really loved due to being gay. Not tons by the standards faced by many queers in the rest of the world. But enough to impact this life.

In my part of America, discrimination doesn't often occur directly if you're a lesbian up until you want to get married although it surely occurs in a thousand indirect ways. I doubt this is true if you're a gay male, but there's less outright rage and public violence (although there's plenty of private violence) against women because, I think, women are less threatening and make less money and women's right here coincide with lesbian rights in that we're both less of a worry or fret, really, so why get worked up?

Mostly, I think the loss most lesbos in my region find is the slow or sudden erosion of friendships or community. For me, this has mostly been in the ostensibly 'queer friendly' or liberal community. I have few conservative friends, but those few have been supportive of me; they don't understand or approve, but I'm here and they're here, and that's that (maybe they don't want to talk about it, but they're willing to accept what I got to give if I'm willing to give it...). On the other hand, most of my friends are liberal and 'supportive' but not always although I do still have many such liberal people I adore about the world.

But for instance... I have friends who don't want to talk about this shit. There are always more important things to talk about, and any mention of gay rights or marriage is always a distraction from the god-fucking-awful recession, or the Afghanistan war, or the erosion of Constitutional rights, or the environmental buttfuck we've found ourselves in. And I agree so much that it's hard to articulate the reality I live in, much less the reality that so many other less fortunate queers live in. Straight folk take straight life for granted, just like white folk take white life for granted, I think. Or Americans take American life for universal shiznit. Why talk about this, eh, when there are so many problems?

But as Hilary Clinton seems to have expressed here, whenever we talk about LGBT rights, we are talking about human rights, higher rights, principles to strive for, right?

Another, for instance... my best high school friend isn't married, and when I asked her why, she said she and the father of her kids weren't getting married until gays had the same right. However, she stopped returning my letters and phone calls, stopped talking to me altogether though I never did a damned thing wrong and did many things right, but still... and as far as I can tell, all of her current friends are straight. It's very hard for me to understand. I mean, I really don't know what's in her head. All I know is that she's been no friend of mine, despite her politics.

Of those interested, I guess some are quite up front, and that's good. Others are infatuated with the queer life as it fits into the culture wars, and that's less good. A fair amount of my friends I discover to have never really been my friend. Some of my friends have dissolved into family and not included me as a part of their life's growth and change; or maybe even told me I'm not welcome in their life's growth and change. That's the most frequent form of discrimination I've found. People who don't want me around their babies, or their hubbies.

Most of my over-the-years close friends have made a space for me, wiggle room for my involvement, pockets for greater discussion. Others I just know or trust will find space for me to participate in their lives when new arrangements of time and space occur.

It's not always obvious when a friend has disappeared because their life is complex and full, or when a friend has disappeared because I am not welcome. This is, I think, true for everyone, but I have to say, I think it's more true for queers.

It is amazing that Clinton gave this speech. It is most meaningful for those LGBT folks who live in countries that brutalize this community. It is very meaningful for those LGBT folks in America who suffer in the many parts of this nation that don't feel that human rights apply to everyone, equally. And it is still meaningful to spoiled creatures like me, who are loved by their family, and have inspirational friends who love them, and don't even feel that being queer is much different. (I am, like many straight people, [eternally] single, after all.)

When I talk to my friends, it is mostly about life and gossip and interesting things about existence, and only about identity or religion when it's important. So I feel strange about words that involve my sexuality, which is not the bulk of me, not anywhere near the bulk of me or my interests. But it's still enough of me to be really touched by this speech. But maybe that's because I believe in the true and free spirit of all creatures, believe it's an amazing thing, something to love and nourish and protect.