Or how about “Straight, but not narrow“? I like both those phrases, which I just learned from this article about a high school senior who created a Gay-Straight Alliance at her school, caught hell from her peers for years, but ultimately turned around the typical homophobic culture there. Gutsy kid. I never would’ve been able to do that, not even in college.
In 9th grade, when I was still under the spell of my dad’s anti-Semitic rantings, I told a kid a joke about Jews that I’d heard. He looked at me flatly and simply said, “That’s not funny.” I was stunned. A year later he became one of my best friends. And when we were seniors, he confronted me again when I called another kid a hurtful nickname.
Funny how I’ve never forgotten these two small instances of someone gently but firmly not going along with the crowd, standing up for someone else who was being put down. It’s always been so easy for me to think “What I say won’t make a difference” when mainly I’m feeling insecure and fearful of rejection. I’d like to think I’m beyond this now, but there are probably instances where it still happens. I best crank up my internal radar to see if it is.