Hey, now, don’t let all the frat boys fool you. I did grad school at UA and found the town to be surprisingly gay-friendly, on the whole. You didn’t even have to avoid the Strip, since Egan’s is pretty aggressively anything-goes. The town seemed to me to be much harder on women and persons of color than gays.

I do agree with Caroline @ 13, though. I *vastly* prefer seeing gay PDAs to straight. I remember what a shock it was to first go to a gay bar but now that I’ve been in the gay community for years that’s just my normal, so I’m more comfortable seeing gay couples together and being all romantic and kissy. I do understand why straight people would feel awkward at first because even my gay self got a big ole shock to the system that first time at a club; we’re all set to heteronormative, after all.

I really think dumping straight people into that kind of situation would be quite beneficial to get rid of the initial shock factor. When I see gay couples holding hands on the street it’s rare enough that I will definitely notice (and be happy about it) but it’s not fun being stared at for something so minor; it shouldn’t stand out the way it does, even in a reasonably progressive city/country for gay rights. The only way I can think to ease that is to actually expose straight people to a mass of gay couples sometime early on. There’re a lot of people around my age (20s) who insist that they’re totally cool with gay people blah blah blah but you know they’re going to get very uncomfortable when actually around gay couples. It’s not their fault and I went through the same ‘this is so different from my normal’ experience and it’d be good to have a means of overcoming that initial weirdness. Of course, ideally none of this will be an issue if we raise children who see gay as normal but there’re the older peeps to consider.

Anyway, I’m getting away from the PDA topic a bit here.

I’m from Mesa, AZ–the most Mormon place outside of Salt Lake City. Last Christmas I was visiting my folks, and decided to meet up with some friends at a steakhouse in nearby Scottsdale (rich, white, boob-job/fake & bake central).

When I arrived at the restaurant, it was surrounded by police cars. Apparently, some fratboys at the bar spotted a gay male couple in the dining room, took exception to their right to live, followed them to the parking lot, and beat the sh*t out of both of them.

Creeped me out… That could have been me if I’d arrived 20 minutes earlier (I was actually 30 minutes late due to traffic).

I had lesbian friends who were run off the road, gay friends threatened with baseball bats… Let me tell you, the world is definitely NOT a friendly place for us gayfolk.

“Delores Spraggins of Birmingham and her daughter June seemed to speak for the majority in both the red and the blue state. “There is a lot of hatred in the world. Love is good wherever you can find it,” Spraggins said.”

BeaTricks:

Heh. I meant “self-righteous” in my previous post.

Oh I think you had it right the first time.

Eric, they want “freedom”, but only to put on the mantle and admire or something.

They don’t want anybody actually USING it - that’s more than they can handle…

To be fair, plenty of things are illegal that we don’t put people in jail for. In addition to felonies there are violations (stuff that merits a ticket or other feeble slap on the wrist) and misdemeanors (stuff that might get you anything from a ticket to a fine to community service, depending on the situation).

Nobody would jail someone for speeding, and yet speeding is still illegal, and for good reason.

Hey, baby, that’s when the Taser comes out and the fun begins…

Take your pick - handheld or robotic version.