In 2001, a friend of mine came out to me. He had never told anyone he was gay. He was 20. He didn’t know where any resources were, despite living near Provincetown and Boston his whole life. Since I didn’t know a lot about various LGBTQ organizations, I pointed him to the now sadly defunct Planet Out (which now redirects to Gay.com), where I thought he might be able to find more people in the community. Then we went to Jacques Cabaret, a piano bar, but we couldn’t get in because I forgot my ID.

A reader emailed me recently and asked me to please please blog about something that she sees a lot, namely, people not understanding why we have all of these LGBTQ organizations, and why they are different, why we need them.