I love those range of responses and your thoughtful reaction to each of them.

I wonder how you would react to my customary, “oh, cool!” response?

I’m usually so delighted to meet another LGBTQ person then I can be a bit less than… restrained.

Regarding different perspectives, when I moved to Detroit a a few years ago, I found myself getting to know a lot of people from the Middle East. The Detroit metro area has two different muslim-majority municipalities.

It’s so true that you don’t know what you don’t know. I had to get to know my neighbors and spend time with them before I could even start trying to understand LGBTQ/Muslim issues. I learned that much at what I thought wasn’t just wrong, it wasn’t even applicable.

Getting to know people up close and personal is truly the only way to begin to try to share perspectives.