Intro: I grew up Christian and my junior year in high school (prompted by the zine scene somehow, iirc) I wrote an essay arguing that the Bible does not condemn homosexuality. The next year I developed a crush on a girl; having previously had a crush on a boy and having recently read Lauren Martin's "Mixed-Race Queer Girl Manifesto" I easily decided I was queer. I then spent four years at a very queer college (the last three years of which I also attended an Open&Affirming UCC-ABC church) and have spent most of the two years since then in GLBT-accepting/affirming spaces (both secular and Christian). So while I squee lots at queerness and am always glad to find more of it, queer spaces are in a lot of ways my default, so while I often dislike the heteronormativity of spaces I inhabit (work comes immediately to mind), explicitly queer spaces tend to feel just like any other spaces for me (in that there are aspects to them that make me comfortable and aspects of them that make me uncomfortable).
However, I cried so many times during queer church this morning, and also got choked up numerous times during the parade (specifically the "Sober and Proud" group and the couple with the "52 years together, 3 years married" sign). I hadn't had any excitement about watching the Parade (I'm not a parade person) but I actually enjoyed it so much.
The Festival is somewhat overwhelming by sheer dint of size, and next year we will plan meetups better, but we did pretty well (cell phones are a great invention). I successfully acquired an "Ask. Tell." dogtag (and also a purple pin that says "Kiss me twice I'm bisexual").
I forgot to look at Amy's rainbow shoes, but I give full marks to my rainbow stilletos for not killing my feet despite all the standing/walking I did all day (including walking from the Prudential to South Station with Ari&kidlet).
