As usual, so much of what Don has to say resonates strongly with me. Maybe there is more commonality among age-group peers than among people who share a gender or orientation!

On the other hand--Don, I hate to disagree with you, but yes, I think Walmart CAN be "all bad." Try Costco next time--they pay their employees, and they provide health insurance!

Yes, Sheila, but somebody told me Costco never wateres their petunias!

Okay, I have to admit that so far it has been Sheila and Don - our oldest contributors - that have wondered if they still belong on the site. Of course, my immediate reaction is "Hell YES, you do!" but that's because I know the master super secret plan that Alex and I devised. Maybe we should share it, Alex?

You quote a good spot from my post, Don. I do want to know about “drag queens, bears, dykes, faggots, gender queers, twinks, and transgender men and women. I want to understand the reasoning behind radical queers and establishment yuppies.” I want to understand and I want to talk to them and about them. And I want you to as well. I want you to expand your horizons a bit by talking to some of those more left-leaning folks and hearing their ideas. I want them to hear your reflections as filtered through the eyes of a man in a biracial relationship, pushing 70 and living in Indiana.

Long story short = everyone here was picked for a reason. We've turned down dozens of offers to blog on the site and we made sure that our handpicked group of contributors each offered something special that none of the rest did. That, I think, is one of the plusses to The Bilerico Project... Our group of bloggers can challenge your convictions, give you something to cheer or boo about, or help articulate what you're already feeling about a subject. We span the types here now - I tend to think of Jessica, Gina and Mattilda as three of our more liberal contributors - while Joe, Matt and Don tend to be a little more reserved.

So I'd just say it's fine to have reservations. I understand your nervousness, after all your readership just increased dramatically. But you were one of our readers' favorites before - and I'm sure you'll continue to be. As will Sheila. Keep blogging local issues - that's fine with me! I want to hear everyone's stories - local, national, or personal.

Think of this as a salon where you can sit down and start a discussion - on the topic of your choice. And then we don't have to compare ourselves to Wal-Mart anymore. *grins*

Don, I'm about 30 years younger than you and many people (certainly including my students) would category me deep in the heart of Zonus Leftus. And yet, in many ways, I don't "quite fit[] the mold that I think most of my colleagues think should populate sites like this one" either. Really, I don't We should have a talk about politics at some point.

I don't have any plans to leave, and I hope you stick around too. You're one of my favorite contributors on Bilerico. Bilerico would be boring if the contributors all brought the same talents to the screen. I like to hear what you have to think, and it doesn't particularly matter whether or not we agree.

I think your analogy to Prairie Home Companion is a good one. Bilerico is going to maintain an Indiana focus even as it goes national. How could it otherwise? So go on and talk about your aging, decrepit Indiana self! :) I'll be listening.

OK, I took yesterday off (except to spread the latest Queen Latifah rumor), so I'm late to the thread. Yeah on what Bil said, although I don't know if that's all that much of a secret what we're doing here. Lots of people from diverse backgrounds (no Communists yet, though). Yeah, it's going to be liberal-centric, but it's kinda hard to avoid that when looking for politically engaged, intelligent, creative, and self-aware writers amongst the LGBT folk. But a few of the categories you mentioned are in fact filled like "lesbians young and old who feel that their deep personal faith in Jesus Christ wasn’t necessarily incompatible with their sexual orientation" (Rev Irene Monroe is a Christian minister and a doctoral divinity candidate) and "anyone else very much to the right of twelve hundred miles into Zonus Leftus" (not naming names, but there are quite a few centrists in the new group of contributors, and, well, Michael Buckley could hardly be considered a member of Zonus Leftus). And I've already been in contact with several other older queers, although it's quite a bit harder to get them to agree to blog here.

But I suppose specifics isn't the point. The point is the big idea that we're after here, which is going to be a tough one to deal with. Most group blogs have diverse bloggers from all sorts of backgrounds, but they work together because they agree more or less on 95% of politics and culture. We're working the other way around - sure, the contributors come from diverse backgrounds, but they generally have one thing in common, and they're here because they don't agree on 90% of everything. And that means that people are going to be challenged, and you're going to end up doing some of that challenging, Don. It's a mix and it's a grand experiment, but we'll have to wait and see how it turns out.

I'd also like to add that there's a paucity of very young contributors - Bruce and I are the only ones under 30. But I'm not going to be very pro-active about correcting that one.

Moral of the story is that I always like reading what you have to say here, and I hope you don't feel unwelcome. We've been getting a few of those comments from the radicals as well, that the establishment types here are too overwhelming. Trust me, they're feeling a lot of the same things. But I think that's going to be part of the territory here with what we're doing - everyone, including the contributors, is going to be outside of his/her/hir comfort zone.

OK, and if you do need someone to take the other side of "we're not all about sex", Don, I'd be more than willing to advocate "Yes, yes, yes, oh God yes! We're all about the sex."

Oh, one more thing, I mentioned but didn't really say that we are looking hard for more members of the gays' "greatest generation". We're trying, Don!