Son of Timatollah

In the course of linking to this, Mike Silverman, in this post, says with near-perfect aim:

My own take on this experience is that it is possible to live a good life in America if you are gay. You can manage -- through a combination of luck, skill and grace -- to get into a situation where you are surrounded by accepting family, friends, and neighbors, in a city or region where you are fairly well-integrated and working at a decent job where being gay is not an issue. Even if you win this luck lottery, though, you are still way closer to the knife's edge then any heterosexual person. There are powerful people who make hay by denouncing you in the most hateful ways, and the legal system is at best a rusty shield and at worst a sword aimed at your heart. You never are allowed to forget that you are tolerated rather then accepted by large chunks of your society. It takes a great reservoir of human dignity and pride to erect a levee around yourself and your family in such a situation.