queer-youth

You had to be willing to fight in order for a love story to last a life time.

The one undeniable benefit of having spent some time in the closet is that it nurtures a talent that you can fall back on any time: lying convincingly. Sometimes I worried that queer kids in the twenty-first century coming out at twelve, or even younger, would never develop that valuable skill.

The eye of youth is very observant. Youth has its moments of keen intuition, even normal youth -- but the intuition of those who stand mi-way between the sexes is so ruthless, so poignant, so deadly, as to be in the nature of an added scourge...

Gay kids aren__ a __lot point_ that you can play with. Gay kids are real, actual kids, teenagers, growing up into awesome adults, and they don__ have the books they need to reflect that. Growing up, my nose was constantly stuck in a book. Growing up as a lesbian, I was told over and over and over by the lack of gayness in said books that I did not exist. That I wasn__ important enough to tell stories about. That I was invisible. Why are we telling our kids this? Why are we telling them that they__e a minority, and they don__ deserve the same rights as straights, that they__e going to grow up in a world that despises them, that the intolerance of humanity will never change, that they__e worthless. It__ not true.

For the first time in my life, I said the words, __ need a drink.

Love is a wild fire that cannot be contained by any mere element known to man.

Together, in that room, our childhood notions of love melted away. We discovered love was not a fairytale. Sometimes there were no happy endings, and when there were, you needed to work like hell to keep the happiness alive.