Never. The first time I even heard of it, it was through sex ed in school, and they never said that it was bad. My parents never even mentioned it until one of my cousins came out about three years ago.
Adding to the TUOC pileon…
My mom’s dad, a railroad detective in Galveston in the 1920s through 1940s, used to help blacks prove their innocence when they were set up to take the fall for whites. Sure, he wouldn’t stand for this sort of racism, but it was also a good way for him to get people to help him protect his employer’s cargo since these people lived near the tracks or in the yard. With this guy as my grandfather, I grew up knowing what bigotry was.
I never saw it as wrong. You don’t criticize people for things they can’t change that don’t hurt anybody.
After being raised in a straight, abusive household and seen the type of household my siter the lesbian raised her daughters in, I know that straight ain’t always right and gay ain’t always wrong.
It might be of interest for folks to identify years, in addition to their age.
In HS in the mid-70s, I was pretty comfortable thinking homosexuality was “wrong.” Of course, at that point I wasn’t aware of actually knowing anyone who was gay. I remember a HS gym teacher launching a tirade about how terrible it was that homosexuals were taking over the word “gay.” And of course any guy who displayed any effeminacy was a “fag.” It was pretty common in the conservative whitebread culture of the times. Not sure what - if any - public figures or entertainers were out.
Just to set the scene, on the NW side of Chicago in the 60s and 70s all of us white Catholic kids played niggerpile and smear the queer, “wifebeaters” were Dago tees, Polack jokes were all the rage, and folks were readily identified by their ethnicity/religion. A real sensitive lot we were.
During my first couple of years in college, I remember going to my first gay pride parade, and am not proud of the memory that I and my buddies jeered the participants. But as my college went on, I got to know many more people who - by the way - just happened to be gay. I was running into so many people whom I thought were jerks, that I realized it really didn’t matter to me what a person wanted to do with whom. And there were few enough nice people out there that it made no sense to reject the possibility of friendship just because he/she had different sexual preferences than I.
When we bought our first house, our neighbors on one side were a couple of middle-aged men. Best neighbors we’ve ever had.
It really is a culture shock to have seen my kids grow up free of the many prejudices that were terribly commonplace 30-40 years ago.
Probably when I was about 16 (plus or minus) and I was studying ancient Greek. Of course we learned about classical Greek culture…
College. When I met actual gay people and realized, hey, they’re just people! And talked to them and found out they had always known they were attracted to the same sex and that it wasn’t just some perverted decision they made.
Yeah, I was raised Southern Baptist.
Oddly enough, I’m not one of those people who always knew it was okay. This is odd because my family was very gay-friendly, although I didn’t know it - my uncle is gay, had come out before my birth, and met his partner when I was maybe 2 years old. The thing is, they didn’t tell me or my brother or cousins until we were older.
My mom had gay friends, but I guess I hadn’t thought about it much until I found out my uncle is gay (BY MISTAKE, although they tried to tell me earlier and I was just too oblivious to know). I sobbed hysterically for 30 minutes. I’m still not really sure why, but it struck me as just horrible. I was still a little uncomfortable when he and his partner slept in the same bed during the rest of my trip out to visit them, but after that I quickly became used to the idea. Now I would describe myself as very pro-gay rights.
I was born in 1983 (this makes me 24 years old.)
I have an Aunt who is just 13 years older than me, more like a big sister really. I pretty much spent every waking moment with her growing up, which means I spent every waking moment with her best friend, who was gay. I was about 6 years old when I met him.
I never actually realized that he was gay until I was 13, when a friend of a friend handed my Aunt a ‘‘Men who Love Men’’ style book and said, ‘‘Do you think Tommy would like this?’’
Later, in the car, I said, ‘‘Annie… is Tommy… gay?’’
She did a double-take. ‘‘How can you NOT have figured that out by now?!!’’
Then she laughed and laughed. I guess, looking back, it was pretty obvious.
I don’t really remember having the supreme moral struggle over this issue, even before 13. The thing is, I was a devout, Bible-thumping Christian of the evangelizing variety (not because I was raised that way, but because I wanted to be, go figure.) But even then, I could not wrap my mind around even the possibility that it was wrong to be gay.
I remember this crazy southern church camp where they were talking about homosexuality, and the preacher said, ‘‘Don’t even get me started on how disgusting gay guys are. They do things, if I told you what they do, it would make you vomit.’’
I was baffled. As far as I knew, they only fucked each other up the ass.
I ended up leaving the church because some of my closest friends there showed their ugly, rampantly homophobic colors.
Then, high school sealed the deal. In 10th grade I became best friends with a girl I’d known since elementary school, and all her friends, and they all came out to me within the space of one week. I was up to my ears in gay for years. It got to where seeing straight people make out was a little jarring. I easily knew 15 people in high school who were either gay or bi.
Looking back on those days, and all the suffering they went through (on account of their parents, mostly) for just trying to be who they were… god, it rends the heart and pisses me off to no end.
The irony is I moved from my little podunk homophobic high school to a big, liberal university notorious for gay rights… and promptly made a bunch of straight friends. The only gay folks I regularly see anymore are my best friend, her girlfriend, her ex-fiancé and her girlfriend.
Sometimes I think the word ‘‘gay’’ doesn’t even register with me any more. There’s nothing fascinating or exotic about it at all. The mystery is gone!
Oh, yeah. And last year, my 15 year old sister-in-law came out to us. She is my heart and soul. Sometimes I wonder if all the excessive gayness in my life was just preparation so I could be supportive to her. I’ve never loved a kid so much in my life, which makes me even more pissed off at cowardly parents who reject their own kids over something so completely innocuous. There is a special place in hell reserved for those pieces of shit.
As a kid, I was perpetually being called “fag” and “queer” and the guys calling me that were being invasively, belligerently aggressive towards me. I thought that what they were accusing me of was what they actually were, and that they were playing a cruel game in which they were going to insist throughout that it was the victim’s doing, the vidtim’s fault. When I became aware that there were people who accepted or embraced the notion that they were gay, my first reaction was to think of them in terms of “Oh, they like guys like these bastards who are tormenting me to treat them like this. And, yeah, fuck them of course, lest we forget. That’s obviously waiting in the wings for me. Oooh you’ll like it, we do!” So I had contempt for them too.
I grew out of it when I became aware that the violent aggressive guys were tormenting and beating up gay guys; that they weren’t trying to make me gay, they thought I was gay, and/or they thought anyone they could beat up and torment was the kind of weak creating who would end up being gay, or some such thing; and also that gay guys who were together voluntarily were not (generally) like those creeps at all, they just were who they were and weren’t causing anyone any problems, unlike the people who were harassing them. So I certainly didn’t want to be in any shape way or form allied with those people, nor to inflict on others the kind of crap that had been inflicted on me.
I don’t remember a personal dawning of tolerance. I am, however, finding it interesting to watch the difference levels of tolerance in my family as my brother has just (finally) come out.
There is a difference, I think, between saying, “I don’t have a problem with gays - there’s nothing wrong with that,” and telling your son that he can’t bring his long term boyfriend on a family camping trip because you don’t want to listen to your drunken brother in law give him a hard time. (said brother already brought the boyfriend to the family reunion - I think he’s ready to let people know) I think that one is not so much about personal intolerance as it is a desire to protect him from the intolerance of others.
It’s easy to be accepting and understanding in the privacy of your own home. It’s another thing for me to stand up to a coworker who was spouting off about how AIDS is God’s punishment because “some things aren’t meant to be put in certain places - that’s just disgusting.”
I guess what I’m getting at is there’s a difference between being accepting and being out about being accepting. But maybe that’s a little hijack.
One of my friends was obviously gay since kindergarten, and no one ever made a big deal out of it. I don’t think anyone ever even teased him in school, because he was never in the closet so they really had nothing ‘on’ him. There was plenty of ‘That’s so gay’ going around, but never in the literal sense. I don’t think I even realized anyone had a problem with it until high school, and then I was a staunch defender of gay rights. (Of course, I didn’t realize people actually believed the Bible was more than an Aesop’s fable 'til about grade four, so I guess I was raised in a rare liberal suburban bubble)
L’il Pluck. No, I’m not a homophobe. I’m not even rabid.
Trying to articulate this is difficult, bear with me. We, as humans, are designed to be a certain way. We are supposed to not kill each other, not kill ourselves, protect children, and be predominantly heterosexual. This list is not all inclusive, but you get the idea.
When we, or others around us, go against these things, it makes us uncomfortable, and it feels wrong. Are there certain situations when it is completely appropriate? Absolutely. Are there situations where you can inured to it? Sure. Can we learn to be accepting and tolerant? Yes, and yes.
All of us are on a spectrum-some may kill unprovoked, some would never kill under any circumstances. Some would kill themselves at the slightest disappointment, some would never contemplate it. Children can be looked upon with love, derision, hatred, even lust. Homosexuality can be environmentally induced, mildly dabbled with, or intrinsically part of one’s makeup.
But to me, it is more than just personal preference. More than the kind of music you like, or if you just love Greek food. Otherwise, why would people choose to do it, when quite a bit of society is homophobic? The family friend, whom my children love to play with, whom I’ve taught to waterski, taught to wakeboard, stays at my house and uses it for his cabin when we are out of town, has had a really tough time with his family accepting him through the years. I wouldn’t wish that on anyone. I have a nephew who I am pretty sure is gay. At 20, he might not be sure, but I think it’s a pretty good possibility. Will I welcome him and his future SO, male or female, with open arms? You bet. But I still think it is wrong at some level.
And the reason why I said the “tolerant crap,” is I cannot believe that I am the only person on the 'Dope who feels this way. Maybe the only one to post…
I didn’t really understand it, but I never thought it was bad. I was told it existed before I’d ever had occasion to consider its rightness or wrongness. Mother made friends with some lovely lesbian ladies when we lived in New England. We went hiking and they taught me how to put my hair up in a bun with nothing more than a pencil. One of them dyed her bangs different colors, so one day she would have bright purple hair in front, then another day she’d have brilliant lime green or orange or blue.
Mom explained that these girls happened to be lesbians, which meant that they loved other women like most women loved men. So they lived together, sometimes, and they were just like everybody else.
We weren’t a very religious or conservative family – my father, arch-conservative of the family, still never really seemed to have a problem with gay folks. He does make gay jokes, but he makes straight jokes, blond jokes, and redneck jokes, and he’s a straight blond redneck, so…
I know exactly.
While I was never “intolerant” I was always ooked out.
My junior year in college I was running the student unions film program. We got a proposal for a gay/lesbian film festival. We’d had other proposals - but they were campy (lets show Rock Hudson movies!) that I always torpedoed - more under the “wouldn’t sell and that seems a little offensive” than “I wasn’t comfortable.” This one was different - the proposal was from a woman I’d been in film classes with for years and knew - not well but well enough to respect. It was well researched - she’d chosen her films carefully AND she brought ticket numbers from similar festivals. She’d been turned down by other organizations. And I couldn’t come up with a reason to turn her down that was any better than “I don’t want to do that” which seemed to me like a lousy reason. They weren’t movies I wanted to see, but they were movies that she was able to show me were important that would bring in an audience. So I supported it, and my support at that moment in time is what any proposal needed.
Suddenly I went from slightly homophobic to giving interviews about the Gay Lesbian Film Festival I was running (most of those interviews went to her - and she was running it - I was just the chair of the organization). I was suddenly defending something that I had previously consciously chosen to ignore because it made me uncomfortable. That took care of my homophobia darn fast.
fisha, and may I add, you are brave to do so (being the apparent only person to post a not popular opinion in this thread.) I really don’t understand your position, but I respect it, because apparently you haven’t allowed whatever misgivings you might have to affect the way you treat people. That means something, to me at least.
I can’t see how anybody would grow from this experience if we all agreed 100% with one another. I wish more people would be brave enough to speak up as you have.
I was born in 1974 (that makes me 32 now) and for most of my childhood “men who love other men like mommies and daddies love each other” where just not terribly relevant to my life. They were spoken of in low tones, but not hushed whispers. The general idea was that there was something not quite right about them, but neither was it wrong, and most of all it was none of our business. Gay Pride Parades were tacky and a bit shocking, and something to shield the youngest of children from, but mostly because of the revealing clothing and outrageous behavior (as my mother once said, “I wouldn’t take a six year old to Mardi Gras or Carnivale, either!”) rather than the gayness of the members.
In high school, there were three of my friends who we all “knew” were gay*, even though they dated girls. We all snickered behind their backs and felt a little bad for them, not because we didn’t like them being gay, but because their charade was a little pathetic, and also because we all felt like being gay was far less of an issue than they were making it. I was personally a bit irritated that one of my guy friends persisted in denying being gay because I felt like it meant he didn’t trust me enough to tell me the truth, and that was insulting. Now I just realize he was probably sorting through his own stuff and it had nothing to do with me, of course.
*Years later, that’s been confirmed in all three cases. All three of them were cruising parks and answering gay personals during high school, and hiding that other life from the rest of us.
As a high-schooler, I didn’t know anyone who was openly gay. I was big on defending anyone I thought of as being persecuted, but that defense really didn’t rise to the level of acceptance. I didn’t really inspect my feelings much, I just claimed to be really tolerant.
Later, I realized that I thought all it took to be tolerant was not wishing people dead. I thought I was superior to homophobes because they wanted to hurt gay people and I didn’t want to hurt them, I just thought they were disgusting (in a vague way) and obviously wrongheaded. They were probably pissing God off.
I had gay friends, and I suspected a former boyfriend of being bisexual, but I didn’t really think about it.
The final turning point is actually pretty funny in retrospect. My husband and I were talking about an “Indecent Proposal” sort of situation. “Would you have sex with an old dude for a million dollars? Two million?” In any case, I made some noises about how I wouldn’t sleep with the guy even for ten million dollars, and my husband said something like, “Well, for ten million I’ll sleep with him myself!”
I still don’t know if he was joking, but I was horrified. And I was horrified that I was horrified. I couldn’t figure out why I was so horrified, but I was.
That forced me to examine all of my attitudes.
I’m not horrified any more. Now I’m just amused.
This was another aspect of my life where my newfound beliefs conflicted with the religion of my upbringing–eventually ending in my abandoning of the religion.
Oh, and I was born in 1971.
I was raised by a very religious and bigoted family. If you had asked me when I was sixteen how I felt about gay people, I’d have told you that I “hated” them. I didn’t actually know any, but I knew they were totally gross! I never bothered to really examine this opinion, and it was shared by everyone, so far as I knew.
I had actually known one couple, Victor and Keith, who were friends of my mother’s. I adored them, and never bothered to reconcile this with the fact that they were nasty gay people. (Mom drifted out of this friendship and later told me she just couldn’t handle being around all that “faggotty stuff”).
A few years later, I had graduated and was working at a fast food restaurant when I utterly fell for a gay co-worker. He kindly made it plain to me that I was barking up the wrong tree, but we remained friends and he let me ask all kinds of nosy questions. Through him I met more gay people, and I accompanied them to gay bars and even to Gay Day at Disney. I guess by then I’d have to say I didn’t have a problem with it anymore.
As soon as I figured out what it meant. To me, the entire concept of male homosexuality can be summed up thus - “More girls for me”. Now that I’m married I’m not interested in more girls, and now I just don’t care if a guy is gay or straight. Doesn’t matter to me, except when people want to pass laws against them.
Lesbianism is, of course, one of the least wrong things in the world - I honestly don’t understand how any chick can be straight. Sex with a dude? Yuck.
I can’t pin it down to the precise moment, but I’m pretty sure it happened while I was getting fisted.