The same experience here, plnelson.

Both my wife (of 32 years) and I have been involved in various aspects of the arts, she primarily in writing and poetry, and me in music, although she is quite a good musician and I've been doing one form of writing or another all my life. We have a number of gay and lesbian friends, some of whom are quite prominent in their fields, which range from theater arts to law.

Unless one lives under a rock, in this city one could hardly avoid meeting gays and lesbians (whether one was aware of it or not!), even if one wanted to. I just recently saw the statistic that Seattle's gay and lesbian population numbers 12%, second only to San Francisco with 15%. Somehow both cities seem to be thriving quite well, thank you.

If they weren't so bloody nasty about it, I could almost feel sorry for the homophobes of the world. There's no place they can go to avoid one of the Facts of Life:   there are a lot of gays and lesbians in the world and it's beginning to look like Kinsey's figures actually were considerably closer to the real percentages than the miniscule numbers that Akenaton prefers.

The anti-gay marriage argument is based on nothing more substantial than narrow-mindedness and prejudice.

And, of course, the unspeakable "B-word."

Don Firth