Would You Still Hand Me the Ketchup if You Knew I Was Gay?

Luane and I live, funny enough, in the most religiously conservative part of our county. Everyone's white, Christian, 2.5 kids, suburbans and soccer games. Churches thrive here. There's Christian camps in the woods. The local Peet's coffee even let one of its employees who's a congregant gather donations for her church with a purchase of a coffee. The No on 8 and Yes on 8 battle was quite fierce right in our own backyard.

There's a breakfast place Luane and I go to pretty often where the staff walk up, know what we want to eat and are always happy to see us, no matter how grungy we may look. They don't know our names or what we do for a living, although a month ago our photo was on the front page of the local paper. We look different in baseball caps.

One time we were there, the guy next to us heard me talk about how we were just interviewed for 90 minutes on KGO radio, the #1 radio station in the San Francisco Bay Area. He decided to let us know his opinion on how gay marriage is ridiculous, blah, blah, blah...Mind you, were sitting having buckwheat pancakes, catching up with Luane's mom for a leisure Saturday breakfast out. One would think that's a safe thing to do.

Alas, with our experiences on the road with the movie in some of the most conservative parts of the country, we have become alert at all times for conversation hijackers. Fortunately, we're grounded in who we are, and understand this is a guy wanting to be heard and helped. He's in essence asking someone to help free him from his own thought bondage. Our work is to be part of this experience for folks, so we handled it with compassion....and still it was unsettling for both him and us. But we both grew from it, I'm sure.

The last time we were in the cafe, I wanted to ask the table next to me if I could borrow their ketchup. They were a straight couple, older. I had hesitated in asking them. I just wanted to eat my eggs, not get into it again with someone, as I realized I had become more hyper-sensitive when I'm out about town in who I engage with in conversation since prop 8. Prop 8 had introduced this "neener-neener" mentality where the yes voters felt they had the right to say what they wanted about gay people and marriage. I'm sure many gay people had either gone back in the closet or something similar. Luane and I won't do that, but we're also careful of choosing our battles...we never start them mind you....we never start them.

So, I have eggs, I like a dash of ketchup, the straight couple next to us has the bottle. I have lots of choices, I choose the brave one and ask the couple for the ketchup. They smiled, were very pleasant and we had a nice and polite exchange. I even returned the bottle with my third thank you. Then, I started to wonder in my head...if they knew I was sitting here with my female partner, my spouse...if they knew I was gay, would they have treated me the same way?

I recognize straight people may be blown away that me, or any gay person would actually have questions like this, but I know I'm not alone. We're all a bit gun shy, just in different ways. I pray for the day that I won't have to be looking around our favorite breakfast place to make sure we're in a safe space. I want that for everywhere around the US, and the world. I hope you want that too.