We all experience some loss of the "untrue" friends but the community you gain is such a payoff of the most beautifully diverse and unique culture that I've always been so grateful to be gay.
Another thing - and this may take a while - but you need to hear it: I used to be so ashamed until I really came out. In college, Amy and I really came out - joining all the clubs, marching-the-streets type stuff. We had this truck we inherited from her homophobic conservative brother. We "Gayed" that car up as much as we could short of painting it rainbow. It had like a hundred pro gay, pro choice, pro liberal, bumper stickers all around it. Scared me really, as we were going to school in North Country, where I read that some psycho had shot and killed a lesbian couple camping one night because he felt they were mocking him. But the only responses we ever got for our efforts were 150% positive. Notes, smiles, thumbs up, - one time our car was written about in the newspaper!
But, when it came time that we went on our first trip together, both our families spent all Christmas vacation begging us not to ride the "Dykemobile" south. They told us the world was different there and people are crazy and we were gonna get shot and this and that was going to happen. It got to the point where I felt like a smoker facing lung cancer (if it all did go down I'd just feel stupid for not heeding the warnings). In short, we went with a gay flag hanging out the back window. And we saw other gay flags waved back to us all over the country!
My point is that yeah, there was one time on the interstate where a couple kids wrote a note "thanking" us for AIDS. But when we got close enough to them later (to videotape their asses) they cowered and turned off the highway. (Maybe by that point they'd Goggled that lesbians get HIV less than any other "group" tested?) We've often seen a head scratched over our "A woman without a man is like a fish without a bicycle" sticker. But it's like an education. Sometimes, it takes a minute. In the mean time, I used to stuff notes left on our windshield thanking us for our "courage" in the armrest and eventually the glove compartment (because there was no more room). I met and spoke to hundreds of people in pleasant exchanges based on mutual beliefs. I am as out as I can be and rarely do I experience anything but love this way. In short everything good in my life I got from being gay between opportunities, to enduring and incredible friendships, to the love of my life and two beautiful children I've been so proud to design. It's a worthy trade off. Trust me.
So - don't be scared. I'm not saying there aren't people out there who'll want to hurt you for it, but I am saying there are a lot more on your side than you'll ever know if ya don't.
