bulletandpima

Also OT, when my gf's mom came out, announced when h daughter announced her engagement to he husband. The family was in shock. Her Mom is now in a committed relationship with another woman, but I remember thinking how horrible her 25 yrs of marriage must have been. I could not imagine having to have sex to keep up the appearance for appearance sake. It just made me cringe in pain for her (not as oh homosexuality is gross, but oh how that would have made me want to cry everytime I had sex with someone I didn't want to have sex with)

dke

Never knew any, even in college, but developed friendships with several once I moved to the city. We've moved to an area that I consider to be provincial, and a few years ago realised that the kids were picking up homophobia from their peers.(who get it from their parents) It actually got to be a problem for my son when he'd speak out, defending gays so between that and other issues with the whole "good ole boy" scene we transferred our kids to a more progressive, tolerant school.

alwaysamom

I grew up in a family where my parents, and grandparents, had gay friends, and so it wasn't an issue. When I was in 7th grade, my family moved and I was not happy about having to change schools. On my first day, my homeroom teacher asked a boy in the class to 'show me around'. We became best friends from that day on. It was never discussed, even through high school, but it was obvious to all in our circle of friends that he was gay. We didn't care, and, honestly, neither did most other kids in our large h/s. He was a very popular kid in our year. Sadly, the worst treatment he received came from his religious parents who abandoned him when he was in college, and finally came out to them.

Having been involved in the arts/theatre community for such a long time, I have many close friends who happen to be gay. All four of my Ds have close gay friends, both male and female. It has been, as it was for me, just a normal part of their lives and not a big issue. Three of them had gay teachers in h/s, and the three college aged ones have certainly had gay profs in college. None of us sit idly by when people make hateful comments or slurs.

JHS

I certainly never considered myself anti-gay, but use of the word "faggot" as an all-purpose insult was ubiquitous in my world from 5th-9th grades, approximately. Pretty much everyone stopped using it as we realized that it could refer to actual people we knew (or, in some people's cases, to themselves).

There was exactly one out gay man in my all-male high school while I was there. (I was class of '74, he was in '75.) As you might imagine, however, by the time we were juniors in college, several of my high school classmates had come out, some who surprised me and others who didn't.

alh

It is a pretty interesting question to me whether it is rare or common to change the attitudes with which we are raised, especially with regard to today's young people from conservative religious backgrounds who end up at much more liberal colleges.

hs class of '74; raised in an extremely conservative area of the country by parents who absolutely never tolerated anti-homosexal language: a common slang word was "queer" which was only uttered once under their roof. I vividly remember asking in my early teens whether homosexuality was normal because they were so very frightening in their response, which made it clear that even asking the question was inappropriate and insulting. I suspect, thinking back on comments overheard as a child, that there was a closeted relative in the generation proceeding them. A few years ago, a great-aunt in her 90's, absolutely out of the blue, asked me if one of my sons "didn't like girls" and while I was still recovering from my astonishment at the question, patted my knee and looked me straight in the eye and firmly said, "you know, that is quite all right."

vicariousparent

I was never "anti-gay" but I thought homosexuality was 'unnatural', just because it felt unnatural to me.

About 20 years ago I realized that what is unnatural for me may still be natural for someone else.

I would hate to live in a world full of gays who thought that my heterosexuality was a perversion.

I support gay marriage and equal treatment of gays.

garland

B and P, agree with your characterization of pain. Additionally, I think it would be equally painful, maybe more so, to find out that the person you thought wanted to be with you was hiding who she was in a sham marriage for 25 years. I feel bad for both parties, which is one reason to support equal treatment of gays and gay marriage, so that everyone can know that they are in the relationship both they and their partners want on the deepest level.

Booklady

HS class of '75, in NYC. I went to an all-girls school where it was clear that some of the teachers were lesbians, so it was just part of the landscape. No one seemed to care about it one way or the other. Later I lived in Greenwich Village and had a lot of gay friends, many of whom sadly died in the early days of AIDS.

VectorWega

I was completely anti-gay as were most (all?) of my guy friends from 4th grade through HS. There were no openly gay kids at any of the schools I attended.

However, I made a change for the better in college.

VectorWega

BTW, I find it quite humorous that there are over 20 posts with nobody ever being anti-gay. Either you are primarily all women, gay, or full of crap (not to create a stereotype or anything).

alh

re. post 115
It would be really interesting if some students would comment on this!

epihany, although I live in a tolerant, liberal as you can get, area of the country no public hs school kids I know have been out to anyone but sibs, very close friends and parents but do tend come out as soon as they go to college which I have always assumed meant that they imagined that as a safe environment. Facebook gives me the creepy-crawlies but I am guessing it is a fairly easy, non-confrontational way to let your future college roommate know the situation.

TerpDad

Class of 75, Catholic, anti-gay from high school through college mainly due to two incidences. Once after leaving a tough track practice, I was walking home. I lived about 3miles from school. A car passed by and stopped, I recognized the student from school. He was a senior but I did not know him by name. He offered me a ride and I was exhausted. I was just a sophmore. On the ride home he reached over and put his hand on my leg. At first I was scared then I got mad. He apologized and continued to ride me home. He talked the rest of the way I was oblivious. My anger helped me to tuned him out. Before ,I left the car he exhorted If you should ever change your mind. I couldn't believe it. I went inside and told my mom. She became angrier than me. Because, I wasn't totally sure who this person was I did not press the issue.

The second issue took place in a college library restroom. While taking care of business. I notice a particular graffiti message amongst several scrawled on the stall. The message was explicit and below it happened to be that day's date. Before I knew it I looked up and to my shock peek-a-boo. The guy from the stall next to me was peering down. These were the only times I used the word faggot. As I continued my education, I began to meet other gays. It took a while before I realized not all gay people were perverts. If someone had a similar experience, I can see how discrimination begins. If they could not make the same distinction that took me several years to make!

epiphany

Thanks for the reply, alh. I would also like to see some students commenting on this. On one site I went to (commenting on sexuality profiles on Facebook), several young people stated that FB assertions can be deliberately ambiguous, even teasing (intellectually, not sexually), when no "other" sexual orientation is actually true. Other people alluded to what you just did: that FB is a "safe" way to "hint" or prepare peers for disclosure. (i.e., many people opening a FB page include Friends from early childhood, not just college age). I can also see the logic of what you said about announcing orientation to current college-age peers.

However, I wonder how wise it is to "announce" covertly or overtly, online, that you are gay. I know the parents of these people & am very close friends with some of them. I actually don't know if they know this news, and it also puts me in an odd situation, but if I were the parents, I would NOT like learning second- or third-hand that my child is gay, and has announced this on the internet first.

It's also interesting to me that the cultural family backgrounds of these individuals are not what I would define as middle-of-the-road. They are all either from very morally rigid environments or very morally permissive/liberal ones. I don't mean to draw conclusions about this: could be pure accident.

mathmom

Never anti-gay. The first reference to homosexuality I remember hearing was in Cabaret (1972) where Brian says, "Screw Maximillian!" and Sally says, "I do" and then is completely flummoxed when Brian says, "So do I." First gay guy I remember was a friend of my boyfriend's freshman year. He told us more about gay sex than I really wanted to know. I knew a few guys who were out in college, but not a lot. It was kind of funny going to my 25th reunion, how many more guys were so obviously gay now. People - both men and women - were much more out in grad school - not sure if it was the field (architecture) or the institution (Columbia) or the city (NY) that made so much difference. I don't think anyone in our class made a secret of their preferences.

Speaking of Lesbian teachers at girls schools, I have to relate this story. There was some brouhaha at my high school about a lesbian couple that had moved on campus. (The school only learned about the partner after the fact, but of course let them stay on.) It came up at an alumni gathering. One of the 80 year old women at the gathering piped up, "What in the world is the fuss about? The founder of the school lived with her female companion. How is this any different?"

3bm103

VectorWega: I'm going to suspect that those of us who are not homophobic are more willing to share that outlook than those who are. I'm sure there are plenty who aren't ready to admit it.