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

[Uneunsae]

It keeps getting better!

[Steve]

My first thought... The incredible amount of dedication, thoroughness, and most of all honesty that went into that post was ...to use the gayest possible word I know... fabulous! I love the details, the opening backdrop, the revelation, the revelation taken apart, and your reaction to each new piece of information. I'm going to download the PDF and read it all, but I'm sort of curious... I haven't looked up the dates, but when did the Kinsey report rear its head? (Just checked...1948). I'll have to read the PDF and see if they mention the KR as reference.

You were several years ahead of me Mike, but while I didn't exactly get to experience the complete taboo, hatred, and outright torture that gay people were put through in those days, the chill of intolerance was still deadly strong in the mid to late seventies. Especially in small town America. Hell, Matthew Shepard died in 1998.

I was luckier than you were, I know. If it weren't for activist groups, the sexual revolution of the 60's (a lot of those kids/people were activists by default just for showing up at the party), the reclassification by the the medical community removing homosexuality as a mental illness (the early 70's?), none of us would have it as easy as it is today in this country. Wasn't Larry Kramer a part of the Mattachine Society (in its later incarnations, I think)? I have rereading to do, I can't remember anything anymore.

Much of this, dates and the order of events, is fuzzy to me all these years later, but you remember it with such clarity.

I didn't have the same burden you had coming to terms with my sexuality. All the people who (looking for a better word, but none suffice) sacrificed their lives to bring gay issues to the table in America made the possibility of being gay somewhat easier to comprehend. I wrestled with the question, sure, but in my gut I knew the answer. I was terrified of the answer, and more terrified of the reaction if people ever found out about me, but I knew the answer. I think somehow I might have known something about "being different" as earlier as third grade when the nuns sent home a note with me for my mother that essentially boiled down to "Steven only likes to play with girls during recess". Which was bullsh*t, by the way. I had male friends. I just had more fun with the girls. My mother was so pissed at the Catholic school that she pulled me out of it and placed me in public school. A good move until around 6th grade when another torture started to happen.

But the glass closet I lived in until graduation is another story.

For the record, as hard as it was, I loved the Anita Bryant era. I think just because the fight was more clear cut. There weren't so many competing interests, money bases, and players/organizations screaming for attention, good or bad. And the fruit pie was spectacular.

[MikeW]

@ Stevie . . .

I get facts and fictions and dates and names all mixed up all the time. I did an entire day's worth of research while writing those posts. For me it was an exercise in trying to go back and remember what it felt like to SEE that article and read it at 16 years old.

I don't think Kramer was associated with the Mattachine Society -- although I suppose he could have been a member. Kramer founded Act Up! in 1987. The MS was founded in 1961 by Frank Kameny.

There's more I may respond to in your post but I'm too wiped out at the moment to think clearly.

[Camfer]

Having spent a lot of time with the Radical Faeries, I was told that the Mattachine Society was founded by Harry Hay in 1950. (wikipedia confirms this.) Here's an interesting clip where he talks about the 1930s, when there was not even the word homosexual in the dictionary. Imagine starting a gay rights organization without the word gay or homosexual!

[Steve]

I'm not one of those people who are overly concerned with a post being too long to read. A message board... a help board based on words and experiences is by nature based upon words. The people who really need the perspective of time, who seriously need help, may want to know what I have to communicate. My words aren't the gospel by any means, but the collective POV from as many members as possible can go a long way to provide understanding for those people in need. This place wasn't something I had as a boy, but it might have made all the difference in the world to me. If the a singular thing like reading a book (further down) kept me alive, maybe we can collectively help someone else persevere. Our time here is worth the cost.

Thanks for taking the time to check out my confused questions Mike. These days I become muddled so often that the ceiling becomes the floor. The research I do online takes more research just to sort the facts from the fiction. Often I have to research places like the activist blog Bilerico, and The Gay Center.org, The Stonewall.org site (especially the UK site which gives great insight into our friends across the pond), and the APA (American Psychological Association) among others. Usually by the time I finish looking at at of them I've forgotten why I was looking in the first place.

I did wrestle with coming out. Like you Mike I had experience with other boys, but even while I was old enough to love the brand new toy in my pants, you're right, there was no social context in these encounters. We were boys just messing around, and we all knew by virtue of how it was talked about and the insults gay people received, that the discussion of "messing around" was the ultimate taboo.

I distinctly remember walking home from a friends home in the cold of winter with the internal debate going on in my head, "Am I that way? I must be that way. I don't like this. People can't know. Am I like this?" Like I said, in my gut I knew, whether I wanted it to be true or not.

I was lucky that by the time I started coming to terms with myself that there were fictional books I could read with positive portrayals of gay men. The movies were still massively depressing to watch (Boys in the Band), even if you did see the black humor and the reality of the characters.

Novels like The Front Runner probably saved my life. If I hadn't starting finding something positive to lose myself in, to take me away from small town hate, and vicious abuse, I would have lost what little hope I had. I balled myself tighter than Anne Coulter's embryo with those little tidbits of positive images and rode out my life. I'm sure I reread The Front Runner and The Fancy Dancer at least fifty times during those years.

Later there were other books, not all positive but at least realistic, like Dancer from the Dance, Faggots, Gay Plays (a collection of contemporary gay theatre plays and musicals). Bent was a hard f*cking book to read. I read Gordon Merrick's stuff like The Lord Won't Mind, even if I knew it was little more than Harliqueer romance.

I can't begin to imagine what it must have been like for you Mike. Novels like that just weren't around for you. The only option you had was to shut up and try to act as straight as you could, even if you couldn't readily know some of the behaviors that gave us away. I would have ended up like Jack Twist at the end of Brokeback Mountain.

I wonder reading your posts whether or not your parents knew internally, like the gut feeling I had inside that knew I was gay, about you. It certainly seemed like your father might have known at some level. They always say "mother's know", and maybe the intuitive ones do, but it doesn't prevent them from being evil, or burying their head in the sand and pretending life is wonderful.

No offense to Will (please, please, please), but my hatred of most cops still carries over from my youth. It was an unwritten rule in those days that even if you needed them desperately, gay people didn't call the police. The blue wall of silence was more like a fortress of steel in those days, when cops had each others backs, no matter the truth. They created more trouble by their attitudes toward gays than they were worth. There were/are more instances of police and the court system abusing power skewed in favor of white, heterosexual men than I care to remember. I don't want to create ill will toward men like Will, so I won't rant more than this. I know he sees the worst parts of humanity on a daily basis, and risks his life in the process. I can't paint everyone with the same brush.

Still, I think we all have a fairly good idea what would have happened to a police car, even a campus vehicle, being held hostage in the name of civil disobedience in this day and age. It wouldn't be pretty. Images of Tiananmen Square are brought to my mind.

And I have gone off, off, off topic without meaning to. And probably created ill will by doing so. I hope my POV has some merit. All of it relates to my coming to terms with my coming to terms gay saga. Please forgive me if I have offended.

[Steve]

Having spent a lot of time with the Radical Faeries...

I envy the hell out of you Camfer. I would have loved to be part of something that liberating.

[MikeW]

Having spent a lot of time with the Radical Faeries, I was told that the Mattachine Society was founded by Harry Hay in 1950. (wikipedia confirms this.) …

I stand corrected! Thanks, Camfer. :0)

[Bhp91126]

Incredible posts and a great read. Thank you Mike. And, boy, am I glad that by the time I became aware all this crap about deviants, sickness, lobotomies et al was already laid to rest. I'm fucked up enough as is. So I never had to deal with shame or guilt, just with fear of being discovered, which was crippling enough.

[Camfer]

Well Mike I don't think your statement was really all that inaccurate. The original Mattachine Society was founded by Harry Hay in 1950, and the Washington DC chapter was founded about a decade later by the guy you mentioned. Just thought it might be interesting to bring out the fact that the first gay rights organization was founded when you were still a toddler!

[Camfer]

I envy the hell out of you Camfer. I would have loved to be part of something that liberating.

Well the Radical Faeries are still happening, and yes, it really is the most libertine society I've ever witnessed. That has its pluses and minuses.