This is part of Not Quite Pride, a special series exploring how LGBTQ+ people are really feeling this June during America’s anti-queer “state of emergency.” Read the other pieces here, and listen to Outward, Slate’s LGBTQ+ podcast, for more. It was the 1980s in Rust Belt suburbia, my senior year in high school, right as I was thinking about coming out of the closet, just to a couple of friends. In class that spring, another student had said “all homosexuals should be shot.” The teacher treated it as an understandable response to a complex subject. Indeed, she didn’t know if...