I'm pretty lucky

I've been reading blogs today and ran across this article. It made me realize how differently things could have turned out if I'd come out just a few years earlier. Colleen's story is similiar to many of us - I imagine - that grew up in a fundamental household...I used to like to think that the Baptists were the worst but now I realize fundamentalism on any level is the same...my sexuality wasn't that big of issue because I was so busy finding other stuff to get into as a teenager that I didn't come out until I was on my own and I didn't really tell the family for another year or so and that was fairly uninteresting overall...I managed to be so different on so many levels to the people around me that the sexuality piece of it was just a portion of the bigger picture...and at that point my parents were divorcing badly so there was drama to take the focus off of me...long story short, I walked away from the church and Christianity without much regret - I've never struggled with being a lesbian - in fact, once I realized it, I'd say I embraced it wholeheartedly ;)...but stories like Zach Stark and Colleen's and lots of others make me wonder if I would have had the courage to express my feelings at that point in my life given the opportunity...I hate to say it but most likely not...for fear of some of the very same things that both of them experienced.