How can it be that in the tiny span of 50 years we humans ceased centuries of fighting, then accommodating, then fighting once more, over who we were or should be? How did we finally relax enough to let our journeys take billions of different courses? How did we realize that rather than continue to relegate each minority identity into entrenched suburbs and hinterlands to supposedly protect the main drag of ‘the norm’, we could live as a glorious mix? When did we finally give up the language of ‘acceptance’ and ‘tolerance’ – and the hierarchy it implied – and choose just to be?
After all, we had been forced to wave our flags so hard to fight for our rights – whether for sexual relations with consenting partners of our choosing, or to have recognized partnerships, or simple bodily autonomy – that it sometimes felt those flags were glued to our
