If you’re like me, you always beeline for Grey’s Bookstore for a free planner at the start of each school year. If you’re also like me, you end up losing said planner two weeks later. But as long as you and I know that this is 2013, it’s all good. 2013’s important, and not just because we have a new Royal Baby and Gaga album.

2013 is a great year to be gay at Georgia Southern University.

If you’re LGBTQ and ever in need of some physical or emotional housekeeping, the folks at Health Services will welcome you with open arms rivaling your favorite diva. There are friendships to be made within Southern’s Gay Straight Alliance (GSA), which is on the cusp of breaking 300 members. The university is offering its very first LGBTQ-themed course (word on the Pedestrium is that there will be many more to come). 91.9 The Buzz plays Macklemore’s “Same Love” so frequently that I’m – just going to come out and say it – officially sick of that gay song. In October, Southern will be having its sixth annual LGBTQ and Allies Conference. Its theme is an apt one: Postmodern Queer.

Like I said: It’s a great time to be gay at Southern.

It’s easy to forget that the outside world isn’t always as cutting edge as Southern when it comes to queer people. This April, Georgia GOP chairwoman Sue Everhart declared, “It’s not natural for two women or two men to be married. If it was natural, they’d have the equipment to have a sexual relationship.” The Supreme Court made landmark decisions on marriage equality and DOMA earlier this summer, yet those verdicts have little effect on the South. We’re in a region where the Civil War-esque debate over federal versus state agency wages on. States are allowed to pithily decide whether or not two consenting adults can wed.

I don’t know what kind of queers Everhart’s been brushing shoulders with (my ‘equipment’ is perfectly fine, thank you ma’am) or why SCOTUS won’t offer us Southern homos a hand, but I do know that this news from the outside can be disheartening to hear.

It’s said that that human eyes can see up to 256 shades of grey, yet EL James somehow elected to focus on a mere 50. The same proves true for the Shades of Gay: We’re so much more than the six colors in our rainbow flag. In the coming term, let us not forget that we are also navy blue, lily white and that our hearts are accented with a fabulous gold streak.