There’s this stereotype that if you are gay, the answer to all your problems is skipping off to a big city where you can live an open and free life in an accepting environment. The sentiment isn’t always worded this blatantly, but it’s out there. Usually, when people find out I’m a lesbian they say something like, “Oh, well, at least you live in New York City.”

I am currently seeing this really great girl. She’s smart, sweet and really fun to be around. We agree on a lot of things. We both hate the death penalty, love pizza and enjoy hanging out—sometimes illegally—on rooftops overlooking New York City. There is one thing, however, that we just can’t see eye-to-eye on. It’s not, as you would think, what to do on Saturday or where to have dinner or which baseball team is the best. Surprisingly, the issue that we butt heads on the hardest is gay marriage.

I was recently in the car with a friend of mine, discussing my girlfriend and, I’ll admit, I was talking about my sex life. I don’t remember exactly what I said but I know it contained the phrase, “Then we had sex.” At this point my friend, a dude, took it upon himself to inform me that, “Lesbians can’t have sex.”

Rather than jam a tube of lipstick in his eye, I said, “Lesbians absolutely have sex.” We spent the rest of the car ride arguing about this, my friend repeatedly telling me to look up of the definition of sex in the dictionary. He was sure, he said, that it would contain the word “penis.”