Ouch. Being a university educated, half NZ half Malay Eurasian (shock! Miscegenation!) woman of mixed Anglican/Muslim heritage, living in inner city Sydney, Australia – in an area with the highest gay population in the country – I realise from time to time, and with a shock, that I must live in bubble where none of this is strange to me. My brother, living up in the ‘burbs with his partner (unmarried), young son and her two young adult kids from a previous relation, will sometimes drop me tidbits of the casual racism, homophobia and sometimes misogyny of those who surround him, sometimes too close for comfort. The debate that came out of our recent same-sex marriage, so-called plebiscite but really a just a postal survey (!) horrified me, particularly what was said by certain Christian conservative politicians, and often set me off on private sweary tirades. I guess it’s the same, whether you’re in Australia, the US, UK – or any part of Asia, for that matter – racism is ironically colour and race blind – people often fear what they don’t know and don’t understand. It would be nice to believe that your boyfriend’s parents will come round to understanding eventually – but too often people feel too safe inside their moulds to break them.