Rural living.

[LWolf]

226. I like both.

For the most part, I like the quiet, the wide open space, the natural landscape, the smaller community, and the open friendliness, neighborliness, of the people. My account was a simple and accurate telling of one errand after work, and of my neighbor. It's real.

I also like to visit the city when I can for the "cosmopolitanism." I'm aware of the positives and negatives of both. I didn't write this OP to put anything or anyone down. Unlike the other posts about rural people that I've seen recently.

Being gay in a small white christian environment can be very difficult. Most of my middle school students stay in the closet until they get to high school. Our local high school DOES have an energetic glbt/straight alliance group. Many of my straight students join it when they get there; being a small community, they come back to tell me all about how high school is going.

Currently, I have one student who is out of the closet, and she is accepted by her peers, and comfortable with them. To be honest, the only advocating I've had to do for her is with her other teachers.

I also have a former student, at high school right now; he came out to us here at school but not to his parents. He came out to them when he got to high school. They are in denial, have accused me of somehow influencing him to think he was gay, and threatened a law suit. He's in pretty bad shape right now. That's not because of his peers, though, who have formed a solid net of support around him.

That's one of the drawbacks of rural living; it's dominated by organized religion, and often fundamentalist extremist religion. There are also ecumenicals, agnostics, atheists, and a whole variety of other non-christian faiths around; they just aren't as loud, and often not as organized.