Straight, not narrow.

I wanted to blog about a surprising conversation I had at the gym on Friday. Before I did that, though, I wandered over to Kamrin's and saw that apparently Friday was "Blogging for LGBT Families."

Whoops, I missed that, but my post is related, so I'll just be a little late to the party. Like Kamrin, ours is not a LGBT family, but as Hillel said, "If I'm not for myself, who will be for me? If I'm only for myself, what am I? And if not now, when?" I'm a firm believer that Family=Love. I don't care to put limits on that. I feel the same way about marriage, but that's another rant for another day (Since when does the phrase "family values" mean denying someone else the right to be a family?).

Most of my friends at the gym are Conservative. Many are Christian Conservatives. Don't ask because even I don't know how I do it. Some days, I can't.

Friday, though, one friend really surprised me. Ellen is usually on t.v. there while we work out. One of my friends turned to me and said something like, "I love her. She's awesome. I hated that her other show was cancelled. People were pissed off because she's gay. It was funny. Who cares?"

No, that's not a mind-blowing conversation. We didn't uncover the mystery of life or anything of the sort. But I'm used to homeschool groups that send out a call to arms insisting people gather at the capitol in an effort to "save" marriage (because as our divorce rates show, we heterosexuals have done such a FABULOUS job). I'm used to reading the posts to those lists about how evil the school systems are for teaching tolerance. I'm used to reading calls for a boycott of Wal-Mart because they made one measely donation to a group that supports all families (a number of Christian groups initiated an influx of mail that made Wal-Mart vow never to do that again). True, the women at the gym aren't part of that scene, still, I was surprised to hear such a comment.

Sometimes, people can see through the rhetoric. Sometimes, people can tune out the fear-mongers. Sometimes, we really can all get along. And sometimes, I have to smile quietly to myself.