I think what you're most "around" is what is most comfortable? People who skydive are most comfortable with skydiving and are likely to bungie jump off bridges. Won't get me doing that!

I remember when I went home with a friend I worked with at Sears in a large city, she was black and I, white. She lived in an "unsafe" ghetto neighborhood and I lived uptown. It was late afternoon but became evening and a party just sort of "happened" at her place. I looked around later that night and I was the only white person in the room (and a "woman"). It gave me an odd feeling and I suddenly had a sense of how blacks might have felt then in an all white environment. I had to keep reminding myself I was with "friends" and no one was likely to mess with me.

I'm not saying you hang out with ghouls or anything Cyran0 :-) but we do get into habits of mind, reading, thinking. Not all high school football players are homophobic assholes but I'm sure there's a good percentage who would qualify. Can't say I want to meet them but I am "happy" to hear about your experiences with them so I can know for sure of their existance. That's the trick I think though, to see and experience, if possible, both sides.

I spent several weeks in my backyard with my brother while he tried to determine if he should try out for the high school football team as a Center. I was there so he could hike the ball to me (or me to him, I forget) but it was not a great experience for me, hour after hour "playing" football from the position no one else would take. I've "learned" to wrestle (you want top or bottom?) and played "Army" where my brother made little parachutes out of Kleenex for his green army men and we went out on the roof and he'd drop them, we'd watch them "float" down and then I would run down and collect them and bring them back up. I always got the not very fun jobs from my brother but he has never been a homophobic %#@&#!. There are the other sort of people out there and they could be interesting or not, depending on our interest in being interested in them?