I don’t hate straight people

I’m sure you’ve heard something like this: “I don’t hate queer people. I just wish they wouldn’t flaunt it in public.” Or, “I don’t hate gays. I just wish they wouldn’t shove it down our throats.”

The Tao of Tea shrine in Portland, Oregon, 2019

I thought cliched bigot-sayings like that were a thing of the past, memories of the 1980s and even the 1990s — although as an undergraduate in the early 1990s, I was surrounded by queer people. But that was a bubble.