are you GAY?

While on the Andamans I've spent most of my time with my fellow diving course students. One was special in particular. A beautiful girl (an actress/model), well educated, with spectacular poetic English and noble manners.

Earlier this week we had another catch-up correspondence on Facebook where I mentioned a guy I was dating. This was her respond:

"ok alon, u said, u r dating a guy? u mean u r my gay friend?? :) if yes, europe is the right place to be in because ppl dnt consider u out-caste like in america or most other countries. i'm so excited to know this, for some reason!! does ur family know??"

So why am I writing about it anyway? Because I was shocked!
Beside the fact that I was sure she knew I was gay (how can it be more obvious?) every now and then I come across amazing people that never had any interaction with the "scene" or with "gay/queer people" and I get a reality shake.

Since I'm spending most of my time in a very particular environment and even more particular circle of friends around in Europe (or Israel) I tend to forget that in many places LGBT is yet to become visible or even far beyond that - do they exist?

"what do you mean by gay-friendly? do you mean I need to live with 2 gay men?", 2 weeks ago, a random phone call from a girl trying to arrange viewing. Dublin, Ireland

"I've only seen gays on TV. OMG, this is sooo coool" Elleni, a good friend of mine from Ethiopia

Here's a funny example for the extreme opposite:


It also reminds me that Doron purchased the domain cure-homosexuality.org and we're still discussing what should be there. It will probably be how silly is when people want to change the nature and try to help people who search for "How to cure homosexuality"