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How did we get this far?
#11
I ran away from home when I was 16 due to abuse from my stepfather. I hitchhiked across to the other side of Australia and phoned my mother and told her I was travelling around with friends. I found work as a stripper and pretty soon had my first lesbian relationship. Not long after that, I got a back yard tattoo done and contracted Hep C. I have since cleared the virus 2009. I worked in adult industry for about two years and two things happened. I made lots of money and hated men. During this time, it was very uncool to be a lesbian in the late 70's early 80's. You were shunned upon and it was not accepted. There was lots of gay bashing and there was lots of discrimination. During this time, I had several relationships with other women. I could not stand any more of the work I was doing so I went back home and about two weeks later, my girlfriend followed. Soon after her arrival, she told my mother about the relationship and my mother just could not handle it. She went hysterical. I was mentally weak from all the crap from the lifestyle I was living and I gave into my mother and broke off the relationship with her and started dating men to please my family. My mother cried for days and days and she kept saying to me I will never have grandchildren and all that type of crap. Pressure was put onto me to get married and go to church as it would "fix" me up! So I thought, if I can't be with a woman, then I want a rich man who can at least please me financially as he couldn't sexually. So I found a good man and married him. I had a daughter and a son soon after believing that this would "fix" me but it made me worse. I wanted to be in a relationship with another woman not a man. I was miserable and made myself happy by shopping. I made friends with other women who I secretly wanted to sleep but never did. I only wish, I had the strength to stand up to my family and social pressures and live my life as I wanted with another woman. Anyway, I made my choices and I have to live with the consequences of it.

Thankfully, it is a lot more acceptable here and there are laws that protect you. If I was a teenager now, I would definitely live my life as a lesbian........
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#12
Well as a brief overview of Western attitudes towards homosexuality. The earliest movement towards progressivism was by some of the late 19th century sexologists and psychologists who pushed towards a medicalized definition of homosexuality, rather than a criminal one. Some of them went so far to argue that homosexuality was an unfortunate but harmless affliction. These people gained a lot of traction on the Continent in certain places like Paris and Berlin.

In the early 20th century you have the beginning of activism by actual homosexual people. These tended to brand themselves as "homophile" associations, that promoted a normalizing blending in. They were big in the UK and USA, and they were composed mostly of upper-class, white, rich gays and lesbians. In a sense these were the kind of people who promoted discreet lifestyles and fostering a general indifference towards gays and lesbians. These associations were sort of alienated from the bar culture where much of the oppression of gays and lesbians was directed, they also refused to acknowledge anyone who couldn't fit into being "normal."

In the post war period sexual transgression starts to be embraced by an intellectual counter-culture in the West. The first wave of this is a growing acceptance of pre-marital sex and women's liberation. In the US, especially, you start to see the development of civil rights groups, often based around college and art communities. Then the Stonewall Riots occurred, where drag queens and other bar patrons resisted a police raid. In the US, Stonewall became one of the major turning points which motivated a wider spread activism. "Pride" marches started as a result largely of the post-Stonewall movement.

In the 80s and 90s the AIDS crisis resulted in the foundation of radical movements like ActUp, which promoted condom use and community activism. The development of community centres, information networks, and such were a hallmark of this period.

When the fear of the AIDS crisis started to subside, and gays became mainstream enough that politicians no longer refused to be seen in public talking about us, the push for marital rights sort of came to the centre of the debate. At the same time we have seen lobby groups develop, and have pushes for gay rights in schools and the like.
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#13
Marc Wrote:I came out when I was 16. in 1995....My bf, Lee, was stood outside.. Dad didn't say a word, looked at me, then opened the door and said 'Lee, get in here'.
Then he said to us both 'sit down'.

We sat at the table, then Dad picked up 3 glasses, put 1 in front of each of us, filled them with Whiskey, then said 'Lee, welcome to the family. Now drink up'.

He then said to me 'Dont worry Son, I'll sort it.'

The next day he took me to school, and visited the Head Master, I don't know what happened, but I never had a single problem after that.

Oh, and Dad has hardly mentioned the gay thing since.

Wonderful story, Marc... Wonderful!!! Thank goodness for dads like yours.
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#14
i had a gay dad , so my sexuality was never really an issue ~

so i guess i was pretty lucky in that respect ...
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#15
First, I wanted to thank all the posters here for printing their lives and histories to explain how we got here. Thanks for the original question too, JITNK... Your stories are edifying and make me both cry and make me proud.
You all deserve some Bighug Bighug Bighug Bighug Bighug

My own story started in the last half of the last century. I was a boy brought up in the 60s and 70s in France and England.

As a bi-national family, then later on of the sons in a separated then divorced couple, things were sometimes tough, but I wouldn't say that my childhood and teenage years were difficult. My parents were loving, though not loving each other, and fair. The biggest blow to hit my family in the 90s was something that we didn't even dream of as we were growing up.

For many the 70s and late 60s were the years of sexual liberation (maybe of bulimia for some). My mum who never asked to be a feminist, found herself alone trying to raise 4 boys, and as she had to go to work, she also found power in being a working woman. Let's say that, to some extent, feminism was forced upon her. She devoted herself to her family and never had another male companion in her life. That was her choice. My dad, on the other hand, went through a string of female partners, never remarried... None of them stuck.

Mum was also a devout Christian, a faith in which she found strength, and no doubt some solace. She was a good Samaritan and a good friend, always welcoming strangers and people who might have been feeling down and out. Her values came from a good place and I shall always be grateful to her for the things she tried to instill in all of us. We received a good upbringing and good schooling.

Little did she know, however, that she would end up harbouring two gay boys... At first when I started having relationships (and I was one of those boys who at 21 had never been kissed, although I had many female friendships) my mother didn't see that I was well over the age to start having feelings for someone else. I could have gone on being the virgin son. Handy for her, but not realistic.

My younger brother of two years was already quite a busy guy in the love sphere and had presumably started living his life as a gay man... I was still struggling to become myself and lose my virginity. It actually wasn't hard for me to keep my virginity, I didn't strive to lose it, I believed that I'd some day find the one I loved and marry them (or form a relationship) and lose it, as was fitting, in wedlock. Foolish, I know, especially by today's standards.

The pill was available for women, people could have sex young without the fear of starting a pregnancy. It was a time in which fun could have been had, but, in my case, wasn't. I went to do my military service at 22 at a time when I officially had a girlfriend. Somehow I knew this wasn't quite right, but she and I were in love and it seemed to get me through a tiresome year of military instruction and lots of music (I played in the band). No one questioned my sexuality in the barracks. If anything, they envied me.

Attitudes towards gay men and couples, though far from perfect, started evolving in France when François Mitterand became president in 1981. A whole new generation awaited this eagerly and passionately. He did away with the death penalty, and in time things like domestic partnerships emerged as soon as the spectre of AIDS started appearing. These partnerships had to be fought for, but I didn't need one and didn't do anything particular about them. I felt totally unentitled at the time, since my girlfriend and I had broken up and I was single again.

The decade just before the 80s had been a decade of wild sex and partying, the 80s put a lid on all that and people started being interested in making money and acquiring goods, since sex was becoming taboo. Nevertheless, sex was still quite easy for most people, pregnancies could be planned, but little by little AIDS changed the way we had sex. I spent those years in total abstinence. 18 years later I woke up, but in the mean time we had lost my gay activist brother to the dark plague....

His death, and many other people's very much influenced the way we considered gay couples, gay sex, gay partnerships. The need for the PACS (a civil partnership) had to emerge so that gay couples would not be the vicitims of unfairness when one person in the couple happened to fall sick and die. People died in those days, like flies; there was no cure and when the drugs started changing things a bit, people were still dying.

My brother deceased in the early 90s, a victim of a disease that he should have known about maybe better than anyone else in the community. After all, he was a journalist and an activist. He started up the French branch of Act-UP when the governments in the States and over here were not taking responsibility for what was potentially a very big disaster. We even had a huge contaminated blood scandal which made a lot of ink run.

In the mid 90s I was just about coming to terms with my sexuality and thinking I should do something about it when my brother's illness was disclosed to us and it pushed me further back into the closet. I'd started telling my mother about me being gay when I was 21, but she didn't want to hear it. I had no idea that she'd made a lot of research to understand it all by the time my brother died. Losing him was an immense trauma on the family and, of course, especially for me. The one who had been fighting for more visibility, for more right to love, for more equality had gone, our champion for gay rights, and suddenly things seemed to be impossible once more. I'm sure you can understand what a blow it was after having lived through a golden age of hedonism such as the 70s had been... I'd not used my right to live that life but maybe it's what preserved me in the end. I might not be here had I indulged in the type of romance and sex I craved.

After 18 years of willful but also partly forced celibacy, I started realising that I had a right to love and be loved. I started writing on a gay forum (which no longer exists) and that's how I met my partner, a man slightly older than myself, who was married and had 6 children, a former Mormon. What's more he didn't live in France....

Couldn't I make things a bit easier? Well, I wouldn't want to change a thing. He's got a divorce. His children are all grown up and mostly having children of their own. (yes, I know, I'm a surrogate granddad too, lol. 9 times now.) We live in two countries but definitely ARE a couple. My friends know, my family knows, no one seems to care. My mother gave us her blessing... that was before she died, last year. She saw I was happy at last. The only thing that is making it difficult is the differences in status for partnerships in France and England and the fact that we'd like to have equal marriage rights. For a long time it seemed as if France was lagging on behind (it still is) but now the government has changed, this might happen sooner here than in Great Britain... That'll be interesting. What I think counts is for our marriage to be recognised in both countries equally, and maybe in more than those two countries, if Spain, Portugal, the Netherlands etc...don't change their laws by then.

In retrospect we owe an awful lot to the generation of gays and lesbians who lost one or two or more partners, friends, brothers and sisters, and to the families who finally saw what some members of their families were going through. It's been a hard battle (and an on-going one) but it was worth it. AIDS delved a huge hole in a generation but helped to forward the rights that we are no longer fighting for, and for those we still need to defend. Some would want us to go backwards and would like us to disappear but being gay is probably as old as mankind. It's not suddenly going to go away, even if it does go underground again. I hope we won't have to. But the fight for equality is not over yet, and even if we gain those rights for ourselves, we'd still have to free all those for whom those rights as still just a dream.
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