Growing Up Gay 50 Years Ago

This posting represents a departure for Mourning Dove Hill. My profile lets on that I am gay but I have not discussed that or any gay matters in a post. So here goes:

When I was growing up—my teen years were in the 1950s, a time that, strangely, is often romanticized—the word gay was never heard. (I first heard it in 1963, when it was explained to me as a code word, a word that you would slip into a conversation to let the other person know you were gay; and if he understood, of course he was gay too.) The popular culture of the time—songs and so forth—depicted a world in which 100 percent of men were attracted to women. In other words, gays didn't exist. For that reason I, and thousands of other young males growing up in small towns in that era, were able to believe, each of us, that we were the only ones in the whole world who were "different" in that way.

Heterosexual males have 50 percent of the population that they can pursue. (Well, we have to exclude the women who are too young, and I was going to add "and women who are married," but let's not be naïve; that doesn't stop a lot of men.) On the other hand, a gay man has to find a partner among the three or five or whatever percent of the male population who share his sexual orientation. I, like millions of others, learned that the major cities had significant gay enclaves, and so wanted to move to the big city. The pickings are a little better there!

The social conservative/Christian/evangelical community keeps insisting that being gay is a "choice." (Here, and in so many other cases, I have become more and more convinced that they do not really believe what they say. They really just are repelled by the idea of gay sex and will find any reason whatsoever—for instance that it's a choice, or that the Bible proscribes it—to justify a prejudice which at heart is disgust stemming from their sexual puritanism.) If you examine this idea with a modicum of reason, it can't possibly hold up. Why would someone choose to be gay when

1. People like them revile us.
2. It's harder to find a partner among that much smaller population.
3. There might be discrimination in finding a job, etc. In spite of all the progress and nondiscrimination legislation passed in many jurisdictions, it's still a disadvantage to be gay.
4. Gays and lesbians don't have equal rights, including the right to marry their partners (in most jurisdictions); their partners may not be able to visit them in the hospital when they are gravely ill; and their partners don't automatically inherit property or Social Security benefits as do spouses in married heterosexual couples.
5. Many gays and lesbians were raised in, and still wish to be affiliated with, churches that tell them that they are sinners. What damage does this do to one's psyche?
6. It's well documented that GLBT teen-agers are subjected to verbal and physical harassment by their peers and even teachers. And there is a higher rate of suicide among GLBT teens than among their straight peers.

If there is a greater incidence of alcoholism and other such problems among gays and lesbians, it very likely is due to the burden we must cope with, that of dealing with society's homophobia. The 1968 play (and 1970 movie) The Boys in the Band—one of the first plays to depict gay characters—leaves us with the sentiment, voiced by one of the characters, "If only we didn't hate ourselves so much."

The San Francisco Chronicle said, when the film version of The Boys in the Band was revived in 1999,

. . . in the attitudes of its characters, and their self-lacerating vision of themselves, it belongs to another time. And that's a good thing.

Of course it's a good thing, if it's true. I believe the Chronicle is saying that gays and lesbians growing up today do not have the baggage of internalized homophobia. I am sure it is correct that it's easier for young gays and lesbians today: there is greater societal acceptance of homosexuality and certainly it's a subject much more out in the open. A young GLBT person today can find others like himself or herself far more easily.

But not all of us of the Boys in the Band generation are yet gone from this Earth.

Copyright © 2010 by Richard Stein