I appreciate your comment, but my experience has sadly been the opposite of what you describe. Perhaps I've just been unlucky, or maybe I just come off as an asshole, but people in Bay Area LGBT circles have been quicker to find disagreement and ghost me from their lives than any other group of people I've ever met. After the third or fourth time losing what I thought was a close friend over what felt like a petty disagreement I have become very disillusioned with the entire concept of "queer community". I feel like I've grown more as a person through my friendships with the handful of self-described religious people I've met here by accepting and being able to discuss issues where we disagree.
back
2 comments
Some of the bigger communities are sadly like that, intolerance of non-conforming opinions seems to correlate with gaining critical mass.
If (big if) that’s true, then San Fran would be at the extreme in terms of having a queer community so large it can ‘afford’ to ruthlessly exclude as you experienced.
Likewise with diminishing religious groups becoming more tolerant and welcoming.
Then again, some of the teeniest subcultures are notorious for elitism, maybe it’s a bell curve.
Anecdotally, it seems like the Bay Area LGBT community has lower overall cohesion than the communities in other urban areas I've lived in (Denver, Chicago areas). Maybe the communities differ within the Bay Area too; it seems like there is less of an LGBT community in silicon valley than there would be in San Francisco or the East Bay.