if a lesbian can be open to dating nonbinary people and still be considered a lesbian, can a person who identifies as straight date a nonbinary person and still be straight? or would that make them queer?
This is assumed to be a writing question, but in the future please make it clear in your ask that it is, so we don't open the floodgates for unrelated-to-writing stuff. This is strictly a writing advice blog.
There are a lot of people who define "straight" as being into a gender other than your own. This isn't necessarily the mainstream interpretation, but it is one interpretation. In terms of writing, if you do have a straight character dating a nonbinary character, I'd have this definition or explanation mentioned in the plot.
But whatever label is probably fine, just as long as the dynamic is understood by the audience as representative of itself, and not necessarily relationships like this as a whole.
Within these relationships, at least when the straight person is cis, there are a lot of varying comfort zones, more so than there are for nonbinary people dating lesbians (regardless of whether those lesbians are trans or not, although, I personally wouldn't feel comf dating a cis lesbian --- YMMV).
The main difference between a nonbinary+lesbian relationship and a nonbinary+straight relationship, is just that there's a slightly more advanced understanding from folks who are already in the community, and there's also a lot of history with regards to the term lesbian meaning women who are into women, not necessarily exclusively.
While I've never dated a straight cis person personally (well, one date, once, it was experimental) I know that when I've dated trans lesbians, we've always had a conversation at the beginning about the labels. The first person I dated who ID'd as a lesbian asked if I was comfortable with her using that label while dating me. She explained that for her, it was more of a "queer woman" type of identity, and that she wasn't into men specifically. I said it was totally fine with me, because I see it as a reflection of her and her overall experiences. I think that if I'd had an issue I probably still wouldn't have tried to convince her to let go of the label because it feels out of line to me.
I generally see queerness, as an identity, as being about who we are, more than strictly who we are into. We still get persecuted with or without our partners. Single people aren't inherently more privileged than people in relationships.
But I don't think people who are in these relationships who have strong feelings about the orientation of their partner are remotely in the wrong, either. Those are real and valid feelings and it is completely reasonable and worthy of respect to have boundaries about who you date based on their orientation not meshing with the comfort zone of a trans person.
Overall, I'd say that this could go any which way. Labels are deeply personal. Some of us also want to talk it out with trusted queer loved ones or a partner (queer or not) and some of us change labels based on the relationship. It happens. And people can also have a fluid experience. Go with the flow, really.
But in terms of representing this in fiction, I think you need a sensitivity reader who is nonbinary, and community connected enough to have a general vibe of how others in the community feel on this.
There's a lot that can go wrong with this kind of rep, and a lot of topics that make a lot of people feel vulnerable, which should be handled with grace and delicacy.
