Eldergays - were you out of the closet in the 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s?

During the 70s, most of the gay men I knew were out of the closet to select individuals--friends, maybe family, rarely co-workers. That's the way it was. We didn't feel bad about it or shame one another because we weren't totally out and proud.

R1 - certainly didn't mean to suggest that anyone should feel shame about not being out of the closet in less favorable times. Hope that wasn't the read you got. Was just interested in hearing some memories of gay life - in the context of the larger heteronormative culture of the times.

fsefsfssf

shreeeeeeeeeeee eeeeeeeeeee eeeeeeeee eeeeeeeee eeeeeeeee eeeeeeeek

1970s. Upper West Side of New York. It was basically easy enough to get laid, or make plans to do so later, just by walking around the neighborhood.

There were also two bars, the Candle and the one where they had peanuts. I wasn't clone-y, so I did better at the Candle. And there was the Ramble at CPW and 73rd. I didn't go there often, as I lived near Riverside Drive. Plus, being in the woods at night wasn't for me.

And there were other neighborhoods. I always worked on the east side, and I'd often meet guys there.

It seemed important to a lot of us to have sex as often as possible with as many men as possible--kind of a cultural or political imperative of the time. Pre-aids, of course.

I am not bothered by the term "eldergay," btw.

I'm from the UK and I'm friends with a few older gay men (unlike OP, I prefer to call them "The Stately Gays") and each of them have a different take on what it was like for them coming out or living life as a gay man. The one that gives me the chills is the stories my friend Steven told me about London at the time AIDS became headline news. Steven, and the friends he had back then, refers to himself as a "Lucky Survivor". I don't know if he was joking about this, but it was horrifying. On the one hand, you had AIDS cutting down people left right and centre. That was shocking in itself. I don't think younger gay men - in fact, *any* young person these days - could ever get to grips with the social and personal trauma the AIDS outbreak in the 1980s generated. I'm 36, and I remember very bloody well the bloody terrifying AIDS adverts on television - there was none of the namby-pamby hand-holding "oh, you've got AIDS, well lets get some drugs!" At that time, the treatments we can take these days were nothing but pipedreams. That was one thing in the 1980s that made being gay tough.

The second was more insidious, more damaging and lethal in its own way than AIDS.

Many people outside the UK - in fact, a few under 25s - will not have heard of Section 28. Section 28 was legislation passed by the Tory government under Margaret Thatcher that stated ""shall not intentionally promote homosexuality or publish material with the intention of promoting homosexuality" or "promote the teaching in any maintained school of the acceptability of homosexuality as a pretended family relationship". Section 28 wasn't just supported by a faction of the Government but also by the highly vocal right wing media in the UK, along with the then-still strong religious communities. The impact of this legislation lasted for years and the supporters of this hateful legislation were - ARE - still vocal in their support of a now-repealed law. It was, if I'm going to be honest, purely legalised hate. If you were a teenager at school in the 1980s and 1990s, you were told that "Your way of life, your sexual orientation and/or your support of that way of life or orientation is fucking wrong and we know it's wrong because it is enshrined in law". Fun fact: when I left High School, my year-class had forty six pupils, nineteen of which were boys, and of those boys, ten of them have come out of the closet. Not one of them came out before 1998. In fact, the first of my high school contemporaries came out in 2003. Way to go, West of Scotland Catholic Education!

Section 28 was only repealed in England and Wales in September 2003, Scotland having beaten them by repealing it in June 2000. The fucking hilarious thing is that allegedly no one was ever prosecuted under that fucking act, and I know from discussions with friends who were at school at the same time as myself that whilst homosexuality wasn't "promoted", in a lot of schools in Scotland it was more or less tolerated. (I know that one boy who came out of the closet in my old school in 1994 was first expelled and then, two days later, was beaten to a pulp by former classmates and was witnessed by his old English teacher. You can guess the outcome of the criminal investigation...) The attitudes of many people now in the UK is that gays are people too. We don't have full equality - no matter what the law says - but it's a damned fucking sight better than 1988, that's for fucking sure.

That was really interesting, R6. Thanks for sharing! I have to admit that although I spent my early youth in the UK, I'd never heard about Section 28 until just now. Also, that's a REALLY high percentage of gay boys in your school. Was it all the haggis...?

It wasn't really that high, R7, not when you consider the school had over a thousand pupils by the time I left school. The kids who made up my year were actually the highest intake that the school had ever had. So, proportionally, the gay boys in my year were really quite small.

[quote]It wasn't really that high

Its EXTREMELY high. Out of 19 boys in one class, 10 turned out to be gay. So there were more gay boys in your class than straight boys. You can probably count on one hand the amount of boys who came out as gay in my entire year group at school.

I love hearing stories from eldergays. Being gay really seemed more magical back then.

There was no internet...so no real way for a fledgling gay to connect with anyone else. There were no out and gay TV characters. There were virtually no articles on gay subjects in any regular newspaper or magazine. There were no “straight/gay alliance” clubs. No one really even used the word “gay” except as an insult or to condemn something as lame. AIDS was brand-new...not much was known about it except that it hit gay men disproportionately and turned them purple. Add to that living in a small town in the middle of nowhere—Iowa, in my case—and it was a lonely, miserable, scary and sad existence.

Tldr op.

You must feel that 2015 was really magical too, R10/Defacto, you fucking weirdo.

My husband and I met in 1984 while I was in college (he had recently graduated). When one of my roommates found out I was gay, he got very upset.

Soon after that, my mom and dad found out and found a psychiatrist that claimed to have a 75 % success rate in changing gay guys to straight. After 1 1/2 sessions, I politely told him that I had realized that I was different at the age of 5 and that I had recently met a guy that I wanted to spend the rest of my life with and that I did not want to waste his time, my time or my parents money.

My mom and dad got VERY upset, and it took nine years for them to accept me (their gay son) and my relationship with Brad. Their main concerns were religious, their friends finding out and AIDS.

Now, things are great with my family, and Brad and celebrated (obviously without a party) 35 years together in February. With Brad's family, it is "don't ask, don't tell" which seems to be common with a lot of families in the South. But, his mom and sister adore me, and his mom tells me she loves me, often.

R14 I wanna hear more about the roommate. Was he hot?

In the closet in the 80s, out to some other homos in the 90s; since then out to some breeders. Like Noel Coward, Leo Varadkar and others, I am wary of making an issue of sexuality. Leo: "Varadkar spoke publicly for the first time about being gay: "it's not something that defines me. I'm not a half-Indian politician, or a doctor politician or a gay politician for that matter. It's just part of who I am, it doesn't define me, it is part of my character I suppose" I was also put off early on when an Eldergay told me in the 90s: "Look, if you're going to be gay you'd better love Judy." That was a turnoff, even though I was and am a fan of some of Judy's work.

Here's a link which may encourage some younger gays not to feel it necessary to scream gay, instead of living a stable life.