Why I love Portland

So one of my best friends forwarded me an email that she received, the note enclosed to me was kind of a “can you believe this?” message and a story about her making a joke about not being as straight as you’d think to the sales clerk selling her jeans at the GAP who didn’t find nearly as funny as she did… and how that’s her life in Midwest suburbia.

The email was one of those floating around the internet letters that someone (from Arkansas, surprise surprise) wrote to ABC in regards to their promoting the “homosexual agenda” because of an episode of The Practice that addressed the gay marriage debate and they felt that the show made the conservative person look bad for disagreeing. There was all the usual sputtering that they were going to make sure everyone knew how ABC was so evil and blah blah blah……

So she sends me this message, then follows it up with a second email saying “Please don’t forward that, it’s a small world and I still have to live in my neighborhood.” So we messaged back a forth bit, and that she has to deal with this sort of thing a lot, that people just assume because she’s a suburban mom in a very conservative state that she agrees with that sort of bullshit. She said that she even had a 5 year-old child tell her that their mom didn’t approve of her belly ring. Which of course my friend had the wonderful response, “well that’s ok, she doesn’t have to get one.”

I get a little bummed sometimes because while I have the best circle of friends here in Portland, my best friends live all across the country, and sometimes I miss those heart to heart girl talks, or singing along with the Indigo Girls in the car (Noland’s really not into that, although he will occasionally humor me.) But while I don’t have any of those close friends here, at least everyone in my circle of friends here holds the same basic set of principles and beliefs that I do. I can’t imagine anyone that I know sending something like that and thinking that I’d want to read it. We don’t of course agree on everything, and there are probably some people in that circle that think things that I would find surprising, and vice versa – but I do know that no one I call a friend would think that this sort of bigotry was something that I, or anyone I know, supports and especially promotes.

So my friends, both far and near, know that even if I don’t always say it or act like it…I do appreciate you being part of my world!