Homosexuality In America,” -- or-- How I found out I was “gay” at age 16, 1964.

[MikeW]

I think this may be the first thread I’ve started in GS since my Intro a couple months ago. This is going to be like no other thread I’ve ever seen here, so hold onto your hats! For many it will be tl;dr (too long; didn’t read). I’m writing it all out first in MS Word and then will be posting sections of it one at a time.

Several things have prompted this thread.

First I’ve mentioned in this and other forums that I didn’t even know there *were* other “gay” people until I was 16 years old -- and that happened due to a magazine article. << That magazine article and the affect it had on me is mostly what this thread is about.

Seeing some teenagers here in the forum I’ve found myself trying to remember what it was like to be 16 years old. It’s not easy because on one hand although I am *sort of* the same person I was then, I’m also *not* the same person at all. So it’s like trying to remember another life, one lived a long time ago on another planet, far, far away.

This thread is going to be about how I found out I was “gay” which includes the first time I’d ever heard that word used to reference homosexuality. If nothing else it will show how much things have (and have not) changed in the last 50 years.

Even at age 16, it wasn’t like I didn’t know I was a queer homo cock-sucking faggot. I’d begun having erotic adventures with boys near my age even before I went to school at age 6. I grew up on a farm in the US Midwest and I had few near neighbors. But, strangely enough, several of the other boys within walking or easy bike riding distance enjoyed playing sexually with other boys. This was far from hard-core butt fucking but it was exciting and stimulating. It also didn’t happen very often (certainly not as often as I would have liked!) but it did happen.

But most importantly, what you have to understand is that there was no “social context” for these experiences. No one I knew had ever heard of “gay” people -- or if they did, they never talked about it. I was made to understand (through threats and the ways boys talk to one another) that this was something shameful that had to be kept secret. It was a little crazy making because on one hand it happened but on the other hand it was made clear this was *not OK.* It might be fun but it was also illegal, immoral, perverted and could get us into a LOT of trouble if adults found out.

To be honest in my early years I didn’t really think about it all that much. When I did mostly what I thought was something like, “What’s the big deal, anyway?” Why should anyone care that some boys like to get together and make each other feel good? But at that age I was a long way from understanding much of anything about the world around me, let alone the complexities of sexual taboos.

By the time I was a teenager, though, all this became a lot more oppressive in my mind. At age 13 I was often very depressed because it was very clear that my feelings were different from other boys, even boys I’d played around with. Some of that might still go on but the other boys did it because they couldn’t be with girls. It was a substitute and that’s all.

It wasn’t like that for me. I found boys and their bodies fascinating, attractive, a turn on and I fantasized about them when I beat off. A guilty pleasure. I never fantasized about girls at all. I had already “fallen in love” with (crushing hard on) another boy when I was in the fifth grade (age 10/11). This was part of my depression. I couldn’t show how I felt, couldn’t act on it. Worse, it was becoming clear to me this was going to get more difficult as I got older. At some point, I would *have* to start dating girls. Not doing so would look “suspicious.”

By age 15 I was very screwed up in the head in a lot of ways. I was terrified that my past (not to mention my current thoughts and fantasies) would get exposed. In the rural community I was apart of, kids and adults gossiped about one another all the time. I knew I was a queer cock sucking faggot (those were the words I heard) and a pervert. I’m not exactly sure when I first figured out what “homosexual” meant but it was around this time. I looked it up in an unabridged dictionary at school and was shocked to learn that it was considered a “pathology” -- a mental disorder! Learning this left me feeling even more isolated, closed off, scared, insecure and damn near suicidal. The future looked bleak.

However, something happened that changed at least some of this.

My parent’s began living part of the year in Florida and enrolled me in an experimental public high school. I may write more about that later. But the reason I bring it up now is because this yanked me out of the isolated rural world I’d grown up in. All of a sudden I was going to this HUGE high school -- with literally hundreds of other kids. All the kids in my rural school had known one another all their lives (about 30 of us all in the same class since first grade). But now I was in a school where no one knew me. It was scary but at the same time it was liberating. No one knew my secret!

Although I’d had some erotic experiences with other boys, in a lot of ways I was very naïve. “Ignorant” is the right word. I just didn’t *know* very much. How could I? No one ever talked about any of this. Obviously I knew that queer cock-sucking perverts existed, as I was one of them -- but beyond that, nothing. It wasn’t on the news or in movies or TV shows. Occasionally there would be some reference to “homosexuals” on TV but it was so obscure and hush-hush I didn’t really ‘get’ it. So, except when guys were kidding around and insulting one another, calling each other “queer” and “cock-sucker” and stuff like that, I really didn’t think about it all that much. I knew I had to keep it hidden but that was about it.

In those days the way we found out stuff was through TV, radio, newspapers, magazines and books. Although you could go to the library and search for topics or look at an encyclopedia, everything else was a one-way, top down, information stream -- from an author or government agency or corporation to the public.

It was June 1964. President Kennedy had been assassinated less than a year before. The Vietnam War was heating up. The Civil Rights Movement had been making headlines for years and the first major piece of legislation was about to be signed by President Johnson. “Beatle Mania” was a social phenomenon, the Beatles having just come to America singing “I Want To Hold Your Hand” a few months earlier. This was the beginning of the “British (rock n roll) Invasion” and the culmination of all things Mod. I liked the Beatles and was already beginning to wear my hair a bit shaggy (as opposed to a crew cut) but mostly I was listening to The Beach Boys (after all, I lived in Florida) who had just released, “I Get Around,” a month earlier. All the kids I knew were wearing striped collarless “surfer shirts” and patterned shorts:

[img] http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-xjdEti8bw1Y/UG...rknit.jpeg[/img]

“The Free Speech Movement that would make The University of California at Berkeley (down the street from where I live now) a household name, had not yet garnered national attention. In fact, the whole “upheaval” that would become what people call “The Sixties” was just getting started. Within two years I’d be right in the middle of it as a freshman at college.

So, there I was, age 16, sitting in my parents living room, flipping through the pages of a LIFE magazine, when I came upon THIS:

[img] http://www.dallasvoice.com/wp-content/up...0/LIFE.jpg[/img]

HOMOSEXUALITY IN AMERICA

“A secret world grows open and bolder. Society is forced to look at it--and try to understand it.” Photo Caption: “A San Francisco bar run for and by homosexuals is crowded with patrons who wear leather jackets, make a show of masculinity and scorn effeminate members of their world. Mural shows men in leather.”

:eek: :eek: :eek:

To be continued…

[MikeW]

So here I am minding my own business and suddenly being confronted with a two-page black and white spread announcing in a BIG BOLD HEADLINE for the whole world to see that HOMOSEXUALS exist! For me it was a total OMFG WTF moment. My heart started racing with fear. I turned all shades of red with embarrassment, and began to break out in a cold sweat. Holy crap! This magazine was going to be seen by *my parents*! :eek:

But of course, as terrified as I felt -- as if I, personally, was being outed before the whole world right then and there -- I was also curious as hell. THIS was going to be one interesting read! It was a huge long article, too. Actually two separate articles. But I also knew the last thing I wanted was for *anyone* to see me reading this. I was “freaking out” (a phrase we hadn’t begun using yet) but had to put it aside until both my parents were out of the house. I was just going to pretend I didn’t see this or could care less.

When my parents were gone I began reading. I’m not going to copy and paste the whole thing into this thread. If you want to read it, there is a large PDF (28MB) file of it at this link: HOMOSECUALITY IN AMERICA. There’s also a less readable but easily browsable picture version of it HERE.

However, I do want to share some of the text in thread because it shows how “we” were thought about at that time and presented to the world and one another.

I’ll start by quoting the first few paragraphs seen above, the introduction to the article. My commentary is in red, the bolded text is to point out the prevailing social *attitude* about homosexuals. Underlining is just added emphasis . . .

These brawny young men in their leather caps, shirts, jackets and pants are practicing homosexuals, men who turn to other men for affection and sexual satisfaction. They are part of what they call the “gay world” (This was the first time I’d seen the word “gay” used to refer to sexuality), which is actually a sad and often sordid world. On these pages, LIFE reports on homosexuality in America, on its locale and habits (pp. 66-74) and sums up (pp.76-80) what science knows and seeks to know about it.

Homosexuality shears across the spectrum of American life -- the professions, the arts, business and labor. It always has. But today, especially in the big cities, homosexuals are discarding their furtive ways and openly admitting, even flaunting, their deviation. Homosexuals have their own drinking places, their special assignation streets, even their own organizations. And for every obvious homosexual, there are probably nine nearly impossible to detect (!!! Oh really?!!! :eek: ). This social disorder, which society tries to suppress, has forced itself into the public eye because it does present a problem -- and parents especially are concerned. The myth and misconception with which homosexuality has so long been clothed must be cleared away, not to condone it but to cope with it.

So, there you have the gist of it in the first two paragraphs. Homosexuality is a “furtive” “sad” and “sordid” world; a life style that is “a problem” that society must not “condone” but “cope with”. And of course parents are rightfully “concerned” about it.

To me this was terrifying and, at the same time, a true revelation. Up to this moment, I had NO IDEA there *were* other homosexuals -- well, at least not SO MANY -- that they had their own ‘world’, their own bars and such. For sure I knew other “queers” existed but to me all that was rather vague. As for my parents, now *there* was a truly horrifying thought. I’d never heard my parents mention anything about this, ever. If they knew about it at all, it certainly wasn’t something they felt comfortable speaking about. Of course they didn’t. It was all very shameful, very disturbing. Hell my parents hadn’t really said anything about sex to me *at all*. My mom said something to the effect that I needed to “be careful” and “wear protection” so as to not either get a girl pregnant or get a “social disease” (aka an STD). But none of this had come from my dad -- with whom I had a very strained relationship. Coming from my mom it was SO embarrassing, not to mention, to my mind *unnecessary*!! Getting a girl pregnant was the last thing she needed to worry about with me. I mean, come on mom, GET A CLUE ALREADY! LOL!!!

When I turned the page from this huge, dark, interior photo of a leather bar in San Francisco -- an image that, to me, was both scary and tantalizing ( @ WolfEyes ), I was met with a LOT more text to read and some interesting photographs.

One of them that I fond particularly interesting was the back of this young man sitting on a rail (bottom left):

[img] http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y204/Th...ure3-1.png[/img]

The caption below it read. . .

A homosexual sits on a rail in Los Angeles’ Pershig Square, where homosexuals new in town make contacts. A few who frequent it are male prostitutes but most just seek company.

What stuck me about this photograph, and the full page photo on the opposite page . . .



was that there was nothing particularly “unusual” about the guys. The one sitting on the rail looked like he was near my age. I couldn’t see his face but he might be cute! I had a pair of white Levis just like the ones he was wearing! As for the two guys shown from the back on the opposite page, I really couldn’t tell. Was the one on the right a girl in pants or just a guy with long wavy black hair piled on his head? Hell if I knew. But as for the guy in the sweater, that could just as well have been me, or most anyone I knew.

This was fascinating. On one hand it was painting this picture of this “problem” of a dark “sordid” but enticing world. But at the same time, as I read, it was telling US such things as how we dressed and where we could find one another . . .

In New York City, swarms of young, college-age homosexuals wearing tight pants, baggy sweaters and sneakers cluster in ragged phalanx along Greenwich Avenue in the Village. By their numbers and the casual attitude they are saying that the street -- and the hour -- is theirs. Farther uptown, in the block west of Times Square on 42nd Street, their tough-looking counterparts, dressed in dirty jackets and denims, loiter in front of the cheap movie theaters and sleezy bookstores. Few of the passers-by recognize them as male hustlers . . .

The article goes on to describe attire and locations in Chicago and Hollywood, and then continues . . .

Homosexuality -- and the problem it poses -- exists all over the U.S. but is most evident in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco, New Orleans and Miami. These large cities offer established homosexual societies to join, plenty of opportunity to meet other homosexuals on the streets, in bars or at parties in private homes, and, for those who seek it, complete anonymity. Here tolerance, even acceptance by the “straight” world, is more prevalent than in smaller communities. Where the “gay” world flourishes and presents so many social compensations, even the persistent pressure of antihomosexual police operations can be endured. Also, in the big cities, those professions favored by homosexuals -- interior decorating, fashion, design, hair-styling, the dance and theatre -- provide the most numerous job opportunities.

So, to me, this was f**king amazing! OMFG, you mean there are tens of thousands of “gay” guys like myself living in big cities!?

On the one hand the article was put forward as a kind of “shocking exposé” on the subject -- YET AT THE SAME TIME -- it was telling ALL of us, including dumb teenagers like me where we were, how we dressed, how we could find one another -- even what we were most likely to do for a living! :eek:

Homosexuals can find some or all of these advantages in many parts of the U.S. but, because of its reputation for easy hospitality, California has a special appeal for them. In the city of San Francisco, which rates as the “gay capital,” there are more than 30 bars that cater exclusively to a homosexual clientele. The number of these bars changes from week to week as periodic police drives close them down (their life expectancy is about 18 months). Some bars, like the Jumpin’ Frog, are “cruising” (pickup) bars, filled with coatless young men in tight khaki pants. They spend the evening standing around (there are few seats in “cruising” bars), drinking inexpensive beer and waiting. As each new customer walks into the dimly lit room he will lock eyes with a half dozen young men before reaching his place at the bar. Throughout the evening there is a constant turnover of customers as contacts are made and two men slip out together, or individuals move on to other bars in search of better luck. As closing time -- 2 a.m. -- approaches, the atmosphere grows perceptibly more tense. It is the “frantic hour,” the now-or-never time for making a contact.

This whole article was a f**ing trip! (Yet another slang term that wouldn’t become popular for another few years.). Yeah, on one hand, we’re being told that we can get arrested for being gay -- scary thought -- but on the other hand it is telling us where we are, how we find one another, what we look like, some of the slang we use, what to expect in a “gay bar,” even describing different kinds of gay bars and ‘scenes’ -- everything from piano lounges to S & M clubs. There were even gay magazines! And, as you can see, in this regard things weren’t all *that* different from the way they are today. The whole ‘butch / fem’ debate was going on even back then. The thing is, NO ONE KNEW ABOUT ANY OF IT.

Up to the publication of this article all of this was simply UNKNOWN to most people -- even other “gay” people. Up to this point, I didn’t even know “gay” meant anything other than ‘care free’ and ‘happy’! For sure, if you were living in a big city like SF or LA or NYC you might know, especially if you were gay or a hustler or a John. But for everyone else outside those realms, all this was a startling, even shocking, eye-opening revelation! For me this was like “how to be -- and what it means to be -- gay 101”!

To be continued . . .

[MikeW]

Within the next couple of pages I began to read about gay men who were hiding . . .

There are many homosexuals . . . who behave like solid members of the community. They hold good jobs in business, the professions or the arts. Many of them have apparently strong heterosexual relationships, get married and have children. They go to church, engage in civic activity, see their psychiatrists. They are there in unmeasured numbers, involved to some degree in homosexuality. The only difference between them and the “straight” world is the fear of exposure and their troubled consciences.

And then . . .

There are also the “respectable” homosexuals who pair off and establish a “marriage,” often transitory but sometimes lasting for years. Unburdened by children and with two incomes, they frequently enjoy a standard of living they otherwise would not be able to attain . . .

So, wow, there are gay guys who out of fear or whatever get married and have kids and act like “normal” straight people and there are other gay men who pair off and build lives together. Fascinating! WHO KNEW!! Certainly not me! :eek:

Then the article starts talking about “homophile organizations ” Yet one more thing I’d never heard of . . .

A recent phenomenon in American society, the homophile groups actively conduct programs to increase public understanding of homosexuality in the hope of getting more sympathetic treatment, particularly from law enforcement agencies.

In this context they mention the Mattachine Society, an organization that, a couple years later after dropping out of college and facing getting drafted, would have a very big influence on my life. I may tell that story too one of these days . . .

One of the earliest and most active homophile clubs, the Mattachine Society, was started in 1950 as a secret organization by a group of Los Angeles lawyers, ministers and doctors, not all of whom were homosexuals. But by 1954 it had become incorporated as a nonprofit, educational group and branches had spread to other cities . . .

So, for me, this was the beginning awareness that there was a “political” force at work here. I was beginning to learn that there were gay men and women (almost no mention of lesbians in this article at all) who were “organizeing” themselves. The civil rights movement of African Americans for equality was very much apart of that social “millieu”. But the turmoil that would be the hallmark of the 1960s -- not to mention the Stonewall riots -- was still a few years away.

To be continued . . .

[MikeW]

From this point the article begins to get into “the legal” question . . . a very serious concern.

These formal homophile groups share the same problems -- small memberships, insufficient funds and the hostile atmosphere in which they try to promote their cause. Although membership rolls of various societies are held confidential, homosexuals are reluctant to join simply because they fear that their names may reach the hands of the police.

Homosexuals everywhere fear arrest -- and the public exposure that might go with it. In Los Angeles, where homosexuals are particularly apparent on city streets, police drives are regular and relentless. The running battle between police and homosexuals has produced bitter feeling on both sides. Leaders of homophile societies in Los Angeles and San Francisco have accused the police of “harassment, entrapment and brutality” toward homosexuals.

And what the hell was all THIS about ?? . . .

Actually there is no law in California -- or in any other state -- against being a homosexual. The laws which police enforce are directed at specific sexual acts. For the most part these laws make it a crime for two people to engage in any sex activity which could not result in procreation.

It is also unlawful in California to solicit anyone in a public place to engage in a lewd act. Under these laws, the police are able to make arrests. In many cases a conviction results in a homosexual being registered as a “sex offender” (along with rapists) in the state of California.

Inspector James Fisk says that the 3,069 arrests for homosexual offenses made in Los Angeles last year represent merely a “token number” of those that should have been made. “We’re barely touching the surface of the problem,” Fisk says. “The pervert is no longer as secretive as he was. He’s aggressive and his aggressiveness is getting worse because of more homosexual activity.”

So, there you have it ladies and gentlemen! The one *primary* difference between then and now is that homosexuals were being arrested by the thousands in cities for soliciting or engaging in “lewd” (non procreative) sexual acts! And, as you see by the quote from the LA police Inspector, we were considered “aggressive perverts,” a real problem and threat to society!

To me at age 16, this was like, WOAH, WTF?!?! Holy crap!

This was my first inkling that *I* -- little ol’ me, a white boy who grew up on a farm in the rural Midwest -- *was apart of an oppressed class*. :eek: I had never thought of myself as a member of a minority who, just like “colored folk,” had to endure not just imaginary but real, bona fide, legal repression. And to be clear about it, this wasn’t just about getting arrested. It was about being publicly humiliated, having your sex life shoved into the spotlight, identified, outed, branded a “sex offender” and potentially much worse.

Why “worse”? Well because at this time homosexuality was considered a psychological disorder. Your family could commit you to a mental institution for being a queer.

In the 1940s, homosexuals were also involuntarily committed to psychiatric facilities by their families, with the hospitals promising that the patient would eventually leave the facility cured of their "sexual illness." Not only were they not allowed to leave, but they were often subjected to cruel and inhumane treatments, including castrations, torture drugs, shock therapy, and lobotomies.

The surgeon most credited for the rise of lobotomies was Dr. Walter Freeman, who was best known for his transorbital lobotomy, or "ice pick lobotomy." In this procedure, the surgeon entered the prefrontal area through the patient's eye sockets, using an instrument that resembled a common household ice pick. Out of the thousands of lobotomies Freeman performed, up to 40 percent of them were on homosexuals.

Source.

Getting arrested wasn’t just a matter of to getting swept up in a police raid either. You had to be careful, because you never knew if that guy giving you the eye was into you or was an under cover vice cops. There is a whole back and forth conversation between such a cop and his mark in the article.

The article concludes with a ton of grown-up stuff that, as a kid, didn’t interest me much. I read it but didn’t really understand it.

In retrospect, it foreshadowed the kinds of political struggles that would be unfolding in the future. For example, it sites the British Wolfenden report suggesting that . . .

. . . ”Homosexual behavior between consenting adults in private should no longer be a criminal offense.” In its argument, the committee held the view that “there must remain a realm of private morality and immorality which is, in brief and crude terms, not the law’s business.”

The article goes on to outline some of the ways this report was being picked up and used to change state penal codes. It mentions the question of the morality of homosexuality in relation to religion. It mentions the military attitude toward homosexuals:

Homosexuals are unwelcome in the armed forces, where forced segregation of the sexes develops more pressure for deviate activity (as it does in prisons). Many homosexuals are drafted for the service -- and quickly weeded out when they have been identified. Homophile groups have protested the unfairness of a system that forces a man into military servce and then rejects him with a “less-than-honorable” or “dishonorable” discharge because of a psychological condition over which he has not control. But the DOD official explains the policy: “If we didn’t throw them out, we’d be condoning homosexuality. The services’ position has to be that homosexual practices prejudice morale and discipline.”

I wasn’t 18 yet, but in the not too distant future, I would have to register for the draft. If I dropped out of college after that, my sexuality and the Vietnam War would be on a collision course.

The article even mentions a Supreme Court decision to hear an employment discrimination case brought against the federal government by a homosexual, “charging that the government has , on grounds of personal immorality, denied him a job for which he was qualified.”
It concludes . . .

Today, as homosexuals become more visible to the public, there is a need for greater knowledge about them. What science has found out is discussed in the article following.

:eek: :eek: :eek:

To be continued . . .

[MikeW]

Scientists search for the answers to a tough and puzzling question
WHY?

By Ernnest Haveman

That’s what the headline screamed in the second article, quickly followed up by what has to stand as one of the most provocative first paragraphs ever pinned:

Do the homosexuals, like the Communists, intend to bury us? Yes, indeed, suggested a startling front-page story in the New York Times and other newspapers last month. A committee of the highly respected New York Academy of Medicine had come to the conclusion that American homosexuals want far more than to be merely tolerated and ever more than to be ungrudgingly accepted. Their true goal, said an Academy report, is to convince the world that homosexuality is a “desirable, noble, preferable way of life” -- the secret of the greatness of ancient Greece, and in modern times a “perfect answer to the problem of the population explosion.”

:eek: :eek: :eek:

Well, sounded alright to me but the idea that “we” had an “agenda” was W A Y beyond my 16yo world view. WHO KNEW!!! :eek: I could almost hear all the old farts across the country, “Martha! Get my shotgun and lock the kids up in the attic! Those god damn homo fagots are coming to get us!!”

I think it is fascinating that this is the origin of the “gay agenda” scenario.

The author does a superficial bait and switch as he proceeds to drive nails into the brains of his hapless readers -- including my own . . .

The Academy report, and the newspaper stories it inspired, were just another example of the confusion and downright ignorance that surrounded the entire subject of the nature, cause and extent of homosexuality. The Academy committee was dead wrong. Only a tiny minority of U.S. homosexuals would ever beat the drums so sensationally for their way of life. Far more of them regard their homosexuality as an affliction. The lot of the homosexual, as the photographs and article on the preceding pages have shown, is often furtive, hazardous and lonely. Many homosexuals have gone to psychiatrists begging desperately for help in escaping from a life that they had decided was utterly intolerable. Most homosexuals, far from seeking recruits, actually refuse to have anything to do with a man who has never had previous homosexual experience.

So, we’re going to try and “take over the world” like the Communists after all but that is only because we all so f**ing miserable!

To be continued . . .

[MikeW]

I’d grown up feeling shame and guilt about my sexual feelings, not to mention fear of exposure. Being this way certainly wasn’t something I would have “chosen,” so I often wondered, “Why me?”

So, here it was. This magazine is telling me, and people like me, -- not to mention everyone else -- that science says we’re psychologically f**ked up. I didn’t know whether what they were saying about homosexuals being miserable was true or not but I could believe it. I certainly was much of the time.

As for having a psychological disorder, well, how else was I supposed to think about it? NO ONE I knew was saying anything positive about being a homo, when they said anything about it AT ALL. Which was like never. Not about this.

So I didn’t know it but at that very moment I was very vulnerable, very susceptible, impressionable. The words in this magazine sitting there in my lap, and my own inner conflicts, were all that I knew about being “gay.” It was easy for me to think, wow, maybe these feelings really are some kind of sickness . . .



I’m not going to go through the whole article in detail but it is truly a mammoth mind-fuck. It talks about how no one chooses to be gay. Except there might be some lazy good looking young guys who fall in with the wrong crowd and get “taken care of” by homos.

Well, that was a career choice I hadn’t thought of till that moment! :eek:

It goes on to say that homosexuals specialize in seducing young boys. :eek: :eek: :eek: It says “Zoologists observe homosexual behavior in nearly every species of animal; anthropologists find it in human societies in New York City to the South Seas, and historians find records of it in the civilizations of the past.” Hmmm… well, that’s interesting. It mentions some of the, “noted confirmed homosexuals of history . . . Plato, Michelangelo,, Leonardo da Vinci, and probably Alexander the Great.” :eek: Like everything I’m reading here, THIS IS ALL NEWS TO ME! Woah, no shit?!

My blood ran a bit cold as the good Dr.’s outlined how “nature and society combine to encourage homosexuality.” Boys being boys and all, which I knew a little something about, being one myself, and their not having access to girls, well, and given those nasty adult homosexual men who prey upon and exploit their horny adolescent urges -- yeah that all made a totally creepy kind of sense.

By this time, I was feeling like I needed to hurl.

One Dr. is curious how come so many young guys play around with other boys but so few of them actually become homos. Well, now there’s a question I’d like to know the answer to! What’s with THAT, anyway?

At first this expert says it is largely random chance… like whether one has a bad case of acne or a stutter and can’t get dates with girls. Then he goes on to say . . .

. . . Some boys feel so guilty about any kind of homosexual feelings or acts that they feel forever ostracized from the rest of society and can only cling to the gay world. Some come under the community’s suspicion or are actually caught: then, after they have been branded as homosexuals, they find it impossible to get a date with a girl and cannot return to the standard pattern of sexual and social life. But over and beyond the influence of happenstance and society, says Dr. Gebhard, there seems to be little question that some boys are predisposed to homosexuality. All medical and psychiatric authority agree.

Born that way, yup!

Our great-grandfathers, when they dared think about the problem at all, believed that homosexuality was inherited: some men were just born “queer,” with a woman’s disposition in a man’s body: they constructed a “third sex” which was an aberration of nature. This view was based largely on the mistaken notion, still held by many people, that all homosexuals have effeminate, “swishy” manners and would like nothing better, if only they could get away with it, than to dress like women, pluck their eyebrows and use lipstick.

Well, true, I had played dress-up in one of my mom’s old dresses and put on lipstick and stuff, but it wasn’t like something I wanted to do every day or even at all NOW! :eek: . . .

In actual fact, there are many effeminate men who are not homosexual at all -- and indeed the Institute for Sex Research has even found that some transvestites, men who like to dress in women’s clothes, are happily married and lead perfectly normal sex lives.

Wait, “transvestites?” WTF? :eek:

On the other hand, says the Institute, fully 85% or more of homosexuals look and act very much like other men and cannot be spotted for certain even by experts. [b]Often the only signs are a very subtle tendency to over-meticulous grooming, plus the failure to cast the ordinary man’s customary admiring glance at every pretty girl who walks by.

Well this right there; so THAT’s how you can tell someone is queer! :eek: And I’m thinking, who do I know who is really, really, really neat? OH, YEAH, of course, James T.! He always comes to school wearing a white shirt, tie, dark trousers, penny loafers and his hair neatly parted. Cute too. Sure, I could believe he was queer. But, on the other hand, I wasn’t particularly “meticulous” myself, so, this can’t be all true. Still, I thought, don’t forget to glance at girls!

So, I’m reading how “gay” might be genetic in some way but they don’t know for sure although there is some evidence with twins. But now we’re getting into the deep psychoanalytical stuff . . .

The psychoanalysts, who have observed and treated many homosexual patients over the years, believe that homosexuality represents a form of arrested development. Most children, though born with an indiscriminate impulse toward affection that does not distinguish between men and women . . . soon learn to concentrate it on another human being of the opposite sex. Some do not. Sigmund Freud, the founder of analysis, theorized that this could happen in a number of ways closely related to the stages of growth through which ever child must pass.

The article goes on and on about a lot of stuff I had no idea WTF they were talking about, narcissistic periods that don’t get out grown, something about an Oedipus which looked like “octopus” and so I had no idea what that could possibly have to do with anything.

Freud believed, the boy may grow up wanting to be exactly like his mother -- in other words, to play a female role in life. Or he may become so frightened by his feelings toward his mother, and by what he conceives to be his father’s jealousy, as to remain afraid of women all his life. (A common cause of homosexuality, Analyst Sandor Rado once declared, is “hidden but incapacitating fears of the opposite sex.”

This was just too weird. The idea of being “exactly like my mother” was totally freaky -- I mean, I liked my mom and we did seem to have a special relationship, far better than the one I had with my dad that was for sure -- but I didn’t want to be “exactly like” her. And as for fearing girls, there were only three girls I was ever afraid of. Pat, Linda and Tracey were *the hot girls* in my old school and they all three carried switchblades, they said to protect themselves from the boys! :eek:

WORKED FOR ME! :O

The article went on to say that basically the shrinks had come to the conclusion that being a homo wasn’t so much hereditary as psychological. What it boiled down to is we were all nutty as fruitcakes. Ultimately it was turning out that this was all my mom’s fault!

On the one hand, the homosexual’s mother kept him utterly dependent on her, unable to make his own decisions. On the other, she pampered him, catered to his every whim and smothered him with affection. Often she openly preferred him to his father, confided in him and, in Dr. Bieber’s words [[color=”red”]LOL at “Bieber”[/url]], “acted out a romance” which had obviously sexual overtones.

:eek: :eek: :eek:

Ok, I don’t know, I’m reading this and it is like, ok, yeah, my mom dotes on me and who knows maybe she does love me more than my dad -- can’t say that I’d blame her, he is such a mean old fart! -- but a “romance”? Really? With my momI?

:eek: :eek: :eek:

Even with such a mother, Dr. Bieber says, a boy can grow up to normal adulthood if he has a warm, affectionate father to set an example of masculinity and counteract the mother’s influence.

Ok, wait, so now it’s my dad’s fault? For sure “warm and affectionate” was not how I’d describe my dad. It was more like he hated my guts for something I never knew quite what other than just existing.

But the typical father of the homosexual, far from liking and supporting his son, turned out to be either totally uninterested in the boy or actively hostile.

Yeah, that sounded like my dad, alright.

Often the father was jealous and given to disparagement and ridicule. The boy feard his father and often intensly hated him

Well, DUH, how was I supposed to feel about a man who this one time used me for target practice with his 22 rifle?

He was always shooting things and he wanted me to become a good hunter too. I thought the whole thing was totally dumb but w/e.

So this one time we were target shooting with his rifle and some tin cans and he says to me, “Boy, why don’t you go over there, get up on the stump, put the tin can on yer head and let me see if I can shoot it off.”

Now I wasn’t at all sure whether the “it” in that last was the tin can or my head but I also figured he was just playing a game of “chicken” with me and he wouldn’t actually DO IT so why the hell not? So, dumb me, I go over, get on the stump, put the damn tin can on my head and stand there figuring he’s going to call the whole thing off any second. No, instead he says, “Stand REAL STILL now,” and “BLING” I feel this bullet fly inches from my scull and feel the tin can get knocked off my head.

:eek: :eek: :eek:

Not exactly the kind of father/son bonding experience the psychologists had in mind, I’m sure.

SO… mom and dad had f**ked me up. Well, that was no real big surprise.

Oh but this fucking article ain’t over yet!

In Dr. Bieber’s view, of course, homosexuals are psychologically sick: the emotionally disturbed offspring of emotionally disturbed parents. He believes strongly that the homosexual society is “neither ‘healthy’ nor happy,” and that indeed the very term “gay world” is only a flippant and rather pathetic attempt to cover up deep and chronic feelings of pathological depression . . .

Well, THIS is sure depressing as hell.

. . . Most analysts, psychiatrists and psychologists tend to agree. (A well-known psychologist and sexologist once began an address to the Mattachine Society with the comment, “I used to think that all homosexuals were neurotic.” His audience greeted his apparent change of heart with applause -- but he immediately chilled them by adding, “I now believe that homosexuals in most instances are borderline psychotics.”

Psychotic sounded REAL bad.

So, you see, I’m reading this trying to *understand something about myself* something that is very important and very mysterious to me. And what I’m getting is I’m totally f**ked up. And, apparently, so are all the other thousands and thousands of gay guys written about in the previous article. We’re f**ked up and unhappy and so of course we make ourselves even more f**ed up and unhappy by *even attempting to* give ourselves and some other guy pleasure.



The article goes on to site how, despite almost unanimous opinion in the psychiatric field, Freud himself didn’t believe that homosexuality was a sickness. It mentions the Kinsey report that indicated, “homosexual conduct was simply too widespread, in our own society and others, to be considered neurotic.”

I didn’t know what “neurotic” was for sure although I’d heard the word used now and then, like on some TV comedy or something, and I could see how I might be neurotic -- especially after reading THIS!

The article talks about how many homosexuals there are and how nobody can say exactly 100% for sure but there is A LOT, like millions. So however f**ed I am, at least I’m not alone. It’s just that everyone else is as f**ed up as me!

The article concludes:

. . . About the only effective way to discourage homosexuality at that crucial [[color=”red”]horny adolescent[/color]] stage, Dr. Gebhard believes would be “to encourage heterosexuality.” But such an idea would be utterly at odds with our culture and our moral code -- and therefore it seems inevitable that a considerable number of boys in every generation will continue to experiment with homosexuality, as in the past, and that some of them who were born or grew up with a predisposition will adopt it as a permanent way of life.

Many optimistic students of our society believe that we may some day eliminate poverty, slums and even the common cold -- but the problem of homosexuality seems to be more akin to death and taxes. Even if every present-day American with the slightest trace of homosexuality could be deported tomorrow and forever banished, Dr. Gebhard believes, there would probably be just as many homosexual men in the U.S. a few generations hence as there are now.

To be continued . . .

[MikeW]

SO… there I was at age 16 with extremely mixed feelings about all this. On one hand, a lot of what I’d just read didn’t make a whole lot of sense. Some of it did. I still couldn’t get over the fact that this was all laid out for EVERYONE to read in a magazine like this. I mean holly f’n CRAP! Now everyone is going to know we exist. A guy won’t be able to dress neatly for fear of being thought a faggot! And god forbid we should forget to glance all horny eyed at girls. And there are so many of us! I sure as hell had NO IDEA about that.

But for me at that age as confused and scared and overwhelmed by all this as I was, in some weird way this article seemed to offer a sense of hope. Yeah, there was all this crazy psychological BS (that I had mostly swallowed hook, line and sinker) but there was also something else.

It was in those *tantalizing* photographs, in the defiance of men who were less than totally afraid to publicly show themselves and what they desired. It was in the idea that there were a lot of us and that we had our own “world” and were organizing to try and understand and help one another.

And, too, for me, it was on the cusp of a great time of change. The adventure of “growing up” was just beginning for me. And right about then I was also beginning to learn about other things through magazines that interested me too. For example some kind of wonder drug called LSD.

A bit over two years after I read all this -- and had forgotten about a most of it -- I would be 18 years old, a college freshman in Chicago. Soon I’d be meeting my first openly gay man through a guy who lived in my dorm, a rugby player I had a total crush on. HE WAS SO CUTE! He suggested this gay guy he knew *might* be willing to take me on my first LSD trip.

:eek: :eek: :eek:

Ah, but all that, is a whole other tory for another day

SO… that’s it, that’s my story about this LIFE magazine article and how I discovered I was “gay”.

I think it is fascinating to see NOW how our perceptions of things, including ourselves and our sexual identity, has been SHAPED by what amounts to OPINONS expressed in an authoritative way.

At the very least the world we live in today has “gay” written all over it. Unless you’re growing up in a cave somewhere with no electricity, you *know* “gay people” exist. You know they have been “fighting for their rights” for decades and, if you think you might be gay, too -- however you may feel about that -- you know you’re not alone.

There are even places like this where you can come and ‘meet’ other gay guys without going outside your room or even revealing your true identity. This has both good and bad things about it but the point is, we don’t *have* to feel “isolated.” We *can* ask questions and begin to form *a sense of ourselves* independent of other (mostly straight) people’s opinions.

We’ve come a long way, and there’s still a LONG way to go.

[Uneunsae]

Educational. Thank you.

[WolfEyes300]

Wow I'm 16 now and after reading all that I'm confused as hell... it shows how people's attitudes differ through time but also how similar attitudes are ha ha if any of that made sense.
Mike it must have been hard for you to read all that and realize that you are seen as this perverted minority that can be arrested for doing something that comes as natural to you as eating. .. I don't think I could have handled all that when I first realalized I was "different" at 9 but wow.
Tantalising ha ha couldn't stop laughing ha ha ha.

[Buzzer]

“The Free Speech Movement that would make The University of California at Berkeley (down the street from where I live now) a household name, had not yet garnered national attention.

I basically lived at the FSM Cafe on the north side of campus when I wasn't in class.

Lots of history to be proud about there.