The conspiracy theorist mind

RoseRed

RoseRed

American Beauty
PREMO Member
PeoplesElbow said:
I will also say gay was not mentioned at my school other than "fag" being the default insult hurled at a boy.

Was in shock when I went to college and the gay and lesbian club was front and center in the info pack they sent me when I was accepted, freaked my dad out.
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I think both terms were used back them. Also, keep in mind this was in the SF Bay area and AIDS was a hotbed there.
 
glhs837

glhs837

Power with Control
We all knew, but certain segments of the population, those with the intelligence to think you could cook up a cure in a prison, say, the knowledge level was a bit lower.
 
Kyle

Kyle

Beloved Misanthrope
PREMO Member
PeoplesElbow said:
Was in shock when I went to college and the gay and lesbian club was front and center in the info pack they sent me when I was accepted, freaked my dad out.
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Growing up in Hyattsville, the first time we ran into one was 9th Grade Algebra.

The guy made Paul Lynd seem masculine.
 
Grumpy

Grumpy

Well-Known Member
Kyle said:
Growing up in Hyattsville, the first time we ran into one was 9th Grade Algebra.
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First time I ran into one was High School, skinny little black guy and he hung out with us long haired hippie type folks. Never bothered any of us and even tho he was out of the closet long before it was popular, it was never really discussed among us, just accepted.
 
vraiblonde

vraiblonde

Board Mommy
PREMO Member
Patron
SamSpade said:
Well then it was WILLFUL ignorance - we all starting hearing about it around '82 or '83. I was at the Harvard School of Public Health in '85, and they did a lot of AIDS research there. My mom had just become a nurse at Hopkins, and even before isolating the virus, they knew that it had to be transmitted without exposure to air, so - sex, blood transfusions, shared needles, umbilical from mother to child.

I didn't "get" that from the left-wing media. I recall learning that unless you engage in those things - you almost certainly weren't going to get it, and the likelihood of a man getting it from a woman through sex was ALSO pretty small, because there isn't typically any movement of fluid to the man (unless he has an open wound). That's why we all thought Magic Johnson was full of crap.

We'd all play drinking games and joke that we were passing AIDS to one another, knowing full well that it was impossible. One of them, I remember, was around '91.

I guess, to me and the people I knew, transmission wasn't a mystery.
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But I think we can agree that you're smarter than most, right? I also wasn't worried about AIDS because I wasn't in one of the risk categories, i.e. gay male sex or IV drug abuser.
 
PeoplesElbow

PeoplesElbow

Well-Known Member
Kyle said:
Growing up in Hyattsville, the first time we ran into one was 9th Grade Algebra.

The guy made Paul Lynd seem masculine.
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To my knowledge I didn't know a single gay person till college. I did find out a couple girls I knew are lesbians now and a guy I was in band with that became a cop turned out to be a child molester.
 
SamSpade

SamSpade

Well-Known Member
jrt_ms1995 said:
Well, if we're making comparisons, mine was 87. AFAIK, there was no one gay (in the modern sense) among those.
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Mine was around 250. Back then, guys typically didn't come out - but there were many very effeminate types who eschewed sports, loved the theater, talked with a higher pitch voice and got along famously with the girls but on a friend basis.

At least ONE of them once, when people were making gay jokes, said loudly "do you have something against homosexuals?".

I was never very good at spotting lesbians and I can't think of any in either high school that might have been - but my first college was small, and my freshman class had quite a few very butch type girls. One of them was actually somewhat attractive, and I originally assumed she was gay but I later learned, she was just very tomboyish and was very much into men. Like me.

By the time I was at my second college - it was a huge place, and they were everywhere, and that was the early 80's, and coming out then was not so much.

I'd never met someone who was bi until I moved to Southern Maryland.
 
RoseRed

RoseRed

American Beauty
PREMO Member
Grumpy said:
Ran into my 9th grade GF at one of my sister's parties (all gay) when I was in my mid 20s, just laughed and told no wonder we didn't last.
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I have a couple of someone's in my life that never announced it, but I knew. One was married and had a child, so when she came out I wasn't shocked. The other was only 10, but I knew before I think he did. Much later in life he thanked me for keeping his secret until he was ready to come out.
 
vraiblonde

vraiblonde

Board Mommy
PREMO Member
Patron
I've known out gay people my whole life. But I come from a college town so it was a good bit more diverse than maybe most places. As far as high school, one guy we all knew he was gay but he wasn't, you know, demonstrative in school. Probably because there were no other gay guys (that we knew of) to make out with.
 
spr1975wshs

spr1975wshs

Mostly settled in...
Ad Free Experience
Patron
When Anita and I went to Norwich, the military college in Vermont, in the late 70's, there was a "secret" gay "underground.
2 of our friends from there are a couple of gents who have been a couple for 43 years.
Tom was Best Man at our wedding and Joe was one of our ushers.
Tom was a cop in NJ for 25 years, was medically retired due to kidney failure.
His doctor did not properly monitor the effect of high BP meds on his body.
Joe did his 4 year stint in the USAF and then 25 years as a civilian engineer for the Army.

One of Anita's former roommates is a lesbian, who had a good career as an officer in the US Army, retired as a Lt Colonel..
 
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