Thanks for reading, @RichardWrites! And for sharing your thoughts now that you've finished it. Some attitudes about LGBTQ+ issues have evolved in the last 25 years, especially in more urban areas, but I think as recent political news proves, not as much as we'd like, and there's an enormously coordinated effort to roll back even that much progress. In more rural areas, I think the progress has been very small overall. Maryland may be a fairly solidly blue state (although we did have eight years of a Republican governor in the very recent past), but that's almost entirely because of the Baltimore/DC corridor. If you get outside of that, it gets very red, very fast. Luckily, we do have very progressive laws (some of the best in the country) so women and queer folk enjoy more protections than in many other states, but even those will be put to the test over the next four years. I'll just say that I am very grateful to live in Maryland right now, and I'm still scared about what is about to happen.