After my partner Lenny died in 1999, I lost my New York City apartment, a co-op Lenny tried very hard to bequeath to me.

Long story short, everyone was very very sorry, but ... "You know we love gay people. We go to Pride every year! Unfortunately, the co-op agreement is very clear. You can only inherit if you are a close biological relative or a spouse. There's nothing we can do about that."

So, I was out on my ass, despite Lenny's will, despite everything.

That wouldn't happen today, because I would have been able to marry him. It's just an example of the difference between feeling free and being free.

I lived in Chelsea, surrounded mostly by other queer people, and by very progressive people when they weren't actually queer.

So, I felt pretty free. I wasn't, though. I lived in a culture engineered intentionally and unintentionally to strongly favor advantage cis/straight people.

That really hasn't fundamentally changed, though we've seen a lot of improvement since I was evicted. (I didn't move out voluntarily. I forced them to force me to leave, counting it a pyrric victory that I made the co-op board spend time and money to kick me out of our home of ten years.)

We all have a lot of work to do still in terms of both feeling and being free.