But that's rural Missouri. As I said in my other comment, urban centers are more or less progressive places all over the country.

I can only imagine how much faster my social stamina would be depleted if everyone around me were constantly arguing about whether it would be better if I didn't exist at all, or if I just went far away, never to return.

Really? I thought diversity was a good thing? I know I wouldn't want to live somewhere where everyone thought the same thing I did. Sounds boring.

Put another way: it's not a matter of living where "everyone agrees with you" but where "not everyone disagrees with you". Those aren't the same!

Diversity of ideas is definitely a good thing, and, unless you hold fringe views, it means a fair number of people do agree with you. If everyone disagrees with you either you're a real outlier or, more likely, there is less diversity of views on that particular axis.

But, say you're a gun nut and the people surrounding you are decidedly anti-gun-ownership - there's no shared goal, and no obvious resolution to your differences. If the people surrounding you make progress towards their goal, it goes against yours. There's nothing to do but fight. And fighting is exhausting.

For instance, a lot of people around here enjoy football--so many, in fact, that it leads people to assume that everybody likes it. I don't. I think it's a fundamentally flawed sport, and not particularly interesting to watch. But since it's so popular, it's all that anyone ever seems to talk about, especially around the time of the big university rivalry game.

After the last pro game in February, I breathe a sigh of relief, thinking it's done until late summer, and maybe the sportos will turn to baseball or soccer or volleyball or lacrosse or water polo as a topic of conversation. Nope. Let's instead immediately speculate on next football season.

Do other sports even exist around here? Can we talk about both Team Whyachi bots getting knocked out of the Battlebots tournament early? Maybe talk about non-Democrat and non-Republican political issues? Maybe you've read a book lately? No? All you know is football? Oh, great; you can also talk about how you go to your conservative Protestant Christian church more than once in any given week.

This is why the spouse and I actually got excited to see a guy with visible piercings and tattoos. And to hear two lesbians with hideously thick Bostonian accents celebrate at a game. It's even sort of interesting to hear grown-ass adults talk about catching Pokemon. When everyone is the same, doing and saying the same thing, it is so tediously boring that it hurts. That is exhausting.

So if people around here are generally hostile towards homosexuality, a gay person must feel worse than I do when people start talking about specific players on specific teams and upcoming scheduled games and the keystone play of some past game and just shut up, shut up, will you please shut the hell up about football for once?!

It makes me wonder how people even further from the norm than myself can even find the strength to get up out of bed in the morning, or, once risen, get through the entire day without destroying some ignorant blatherer with a beam of pure rage exploding from their foreheads.

It's not just about being around people who are different, but having enough different people around you that you can't just assume everyone else is like you. If you don't know that someone is Muslim, and make a derogatory comment about Muslims in front of them, that person might not feel secure enough socially to confront you about it. So they keep their religion secret from you, and you might continue crapping on something important to them, without anyone ever telling you that you shouldn't do that.

If, on the other hand, you live in a city where anybody could be anything, you are more likely to encounter situations where you are the minority in some way, and therefore will probably be more sensitive to how it feels when a local majority tramples over your opinions.

You just have to realize that other people might not share your opinions, interests, and values, and if yours are part of the local majority, other people might just be humoring you to fit in better, or irritated at the constant reminders that they are not part of the dominant tribe.