"Do you have kids yet?" Lev asks. A nice safe topic of conversation. One that will remind him that she's definitely taken.

"Nope! And not planning on it. I'm eighteen, it would be really weird for me to have kids. I'm assuming you don't either from how you mention your future wife." 

"Yeah, but I'm a man. Lots of women get married as soon as they're done being Handmaids, but men have to establish a career. And you're not religious, you don't have to be married to have kids."

"....okay so outside of like, Utah, most people wait until they are in their twenties to have a kid. That goes for women too. Also I have no idea what 'handmaid' means in this context unless you're about to make a joke about feudal lords." 

"Oh, sorry, it's a Gileadite thing. Handmaids have kids for infertile couples. --Your total fertility rate must be abysmal. Unless you surrogate?"

"N....o? The average family has two point something kids?" 

"Oh wow how did you pull that off?"

".......uh, by not having a one child policy like China had? I don't think it took much pulling, honestly." 

"Have you ever heard of bitoxiphosphene?"

"I have not but I assume from context that it fucks up people's reproductive systems." 

"It's a pollutant. It fucks up women's reproductive systems. They can't conceive, or they miscarry, or their children are born sick and die young. And even if they're okay when they're sixteen they're probably affected by the time they're thirty-five."

"...guess I can see why it wouldn't be weird for an eighteen year old to have plural kids, then." 

She sounds very dubious about the prospect of having kids at all. 

".......yeah I think I was very mistaken about what your relationships are like."

"Probably! Most people are, though." 

"There are, uh, polyamorous people in Cascadia, but I assumed if you had two and a half boyfriends all to yourself it was because you're very fertile and you could make sure all three of them have kids."

"...I'm enjoying the mental image of men being a scarce resource that women fight over by displaying their fertility like weird reverse birds or something, but no." Even leaving aside that Raine couldn't get pregnant even if she did want to which she doesn't. "And it's not really me having three people all to myself, it's more like four people of which I am one living together and dating in various combinations." 

"If a man had three girlfriends that would be remarkable too! I'd just expect he was wealthy instead." Lev blinks. "Oh! Your boyfriends are same-sex-attracted?"

I'd sure fucking hope so. 

"Yep! One of them is bi and two — or one and a half I guess if we keep doing the half thing — are gay." 

"...I'm not sure how that works with you being a girl but maybe they're better at healing homosexuality in your world?"

And this is why she doesn't talk to evangelicals other than Marlo. 

"Nobody can make gay people straight, which is good, because it's not a fucking disease and it doesn't need curing. 

Lev makes an exception for me because he's weird like that and that's why the thing I have with Marlo is half dating and not entirely dating." 

"...you're dating a me? Wait, other me is homosexual?"

Lev has grown up in Gilead his entire life and is therefore too prim to think the relevant string of curse words.

"I'm dating a you, and other you is gay and also wonderful." 

"Uh, I'm same-sex-attracted but I definitely... like... girls. Maybe some things don't match up? I mean, Sasha's a guy."

How sure are you that your Sasha is a guy, Raine doesn't say. "Some things might not match up," she says instead. 

Right. Like for example the other him is wonderful and Lev is kind of pathetic and gross.

"Homosexuality is a sin either way but probably it matters less in your world because it doesn't matter if some people don't have kids. And you can't really get married in our sense of the word marriage but I think the thing I'd mean by it and the thing you'd mean by it are so different they're completely unrelated anyway. And... I'm not going to try to convert you. I'm not saved."