A Liberal Paradise Anonymous

Growing up in an ultra-liberal town just outside of San Francisco’s Bay Area, I have become accustomed to the long-running joke in my school that it’s easier to be gay than it is to be Republican. As an openly bisexual Democrat, I would both agree and disagree. It’s true that I’ve known students who have quietly confessed to me that they were, in fact, Republican, and that I’ve heard stories of classes who have laughed a boy out of the room because he dared to suggest creating a Republican club. The situation got so bad that, in 2012, my eighth grade teacher sat us all down and made us take a quiz that evaluated whether your beliefs were more liberal or conservative in an attempt to explain that Republicans weren’t ‘evil’.

It’s not easy to be Republican in my town and I have tried to support my friends who are, but it’s also still hard to not be straight. There are micro-aggressions that no one else is aware of. When I posted a picture on Instagram of my girlfriend, every like that it got felt like acceptance. When I told a girl on my track team that I was going to prom with a girl, she said “oh, so like as friends”. When I told my straight friend that dating a girl is hard, she laughed.

My town, for all of its achievements in...