Coming Out in 1975

I suppose I knew I was gay since I was young but did not know there was a word for us. There was no Ellen, Will and Grace, L Word … nobody was out. I had a heroic art teacher who never said anything about it but was flaming. A gym teacher who sometimes mentioned a roommate.

There wasn’t a word for us. Being a bit of a nerd I found “us” in the library card files, the Google of our day. There was literature. It wasn’t good.

Plot lines were ; girl meets girl, they fall in love, one of them either commits suicide, dies of drug or alcohol addiction or will marry a man. There was no variation from that theme. There was no happily ever after.

I knew there was a bar that the varsity football players hung out in the parking lot at night and beat people up.

So I shut up. And got into college.

At some point in my freshman year I was in the quad and someone had bravely put up a mimeograph sheet announcing a meeting of gays on campus. I was extremely nervous but I went. And there in a forested picnic area were about 9 people; the first gay people I ever met.

We started a speakers bureau on campus, peer counseling, reserved a room for a gay student center all about 1975. I was 19.

Till my parents found out and disowned me.

The rest is kinda a blur; parents evolved and accepted me rapidly 😍lots of activism follows, fighting prop 6 in California, publishing a feminist quarterly, working on publicity for the March on Washington in ‘87. AIDS cut a huge swath through those early friends. There were so many losses. I wish my friends were here to see you all. They’d be so proud.

Fast forward my wife and I got married in 2008. We are very happy and still fighting.