This is an interesting question. It brought to mind for me this preview I watched on youtube recently titled The Gay Husbands of San Francisco. I think it was some kind of sitcom - or at least the base of one - that might start at some future date on youtube. At any rate, gay stereotypes were in abundance in the characters - the phony social climber, the druggie who lives to party, the young attractive heavy spending kept guy, the overachiever, the functional alcoholic who lives to party, the slut, the innocent Midwesterner recently arrived in town, and then, drumroll please - I saw a bit of myself - the activist. All these characters were portrayed as being liberal - but what flavor of liberal is the question?

I don't know that I am a classic-coming-from-money-Kennedy-family-type liberal - I'm much more the activist type when I'm up to it - countered by hard worker/secondhand pennypincher. Classic liberal - this phrase - conjures up images of misty Massachusetts coastal mornings or fog rolling into either Seattle or Portland or San Francisco, images that are not my current life/reality. And given current living costs in the above, and given their distance from the Mexican border, I can't see that reality in the future for me.

But I also can't see myself not being liberal. I know how easy it is to fall through the cracks and I know the dark side of America. I have to be liberal if I wish to live with myself. But Classic? Nope, doesn't fit me well. The protest signs/protest lines/activism stereotype, and it is a stereotype to some degree dating back to Aids Activism (capitalized out of respect to these courageous souls) in the Reagan era of the 80's - this fits me personally much better. But even with me, it's a one-dimensional stereotype that does not fully describe my world/reality. Rob