Dan Savage shares an insight from the IGB project:
When I was a kid, and I was odd, the default assumption was that I was odd, not that I was gay. Now when a kid is odd in a Greensburg [Indiana], gay or straight, the default assumption is gay. Because my job requires me to be in constant communication with people all over the country who are writing in to "Savage Love," calling the podcast, I think I’m a little more conscious of what’s going on out there in the boonies — but even I didn’t see that. And that’s a bitter pill for those of us my age to swallow. Us out there leading our lives and being successful have actually kind of made it worse for 14-year-old gay kids in Greensburg, Ind.
But what is the alternative? That's my question. Jim Burroway fleshes out Dan's point:
[T]here is something of a divide within the gay community between those living in gay meccas and the rest of us living elsewere.
There is a huge part of me that would love to live in San Francisco, L.A., D.C. or New York. I love visiting those cities, but I also know how easy it is to get caught up in a bubble and loose footing with what’s really going on elsewhere in the country. If people in gay meccas talk about gay communities outside of their bubble — and that is a big if — the talk too often goes in one of two directions: either that of course gays everywhere enjoy the freedoms found in the meccas, or that of course gays everywhere else are being burned out of their homes or cowering in their basements.
That’s why I believe that living in a retrograde state like Arizona is actually an advantage to me. I do think that if I were to move to a major gay enclave, that I would develop a sort of laryngitis and lose an important part of my voice that comes from living in an area where we can’t take a lot of things for granted — but also where we aren’t exactly powerless rubes living in constant fear in our semi-closeted existences.
The Dish 