Attitudes on homosexuality in the 40s, 50s, 60s

[trof]

I'm no fan of Mitt Rmoney. I think he's an empty suit and would be a disaster for our country.
I'm sure not condoning his shearing of the supposedly gay classmate.
That was criminal, at least today it would be.
But I think you should at least have some insight into what the social norms were back then.
I was born in 1941.
Rmoney was born in 1947, so we're not that far apart in age.

When I was a boy, one of the worst things you could call another boy was "queer".
And any boy who might have seemed to be 'effeminate' to us was branded queer.
(I don't think I knew there was such a thing as lesbians until I was nearly out of college.)

I would add that the 'N' word was in common usage when I was growing up and it wasn't necessarily a pejorative.
And granny called grandpa's Italian friends "Those dagos".
My sweet granny.
But that's another subject.


My point is that commonly accepted attitudes about 'people-not like-us' were very different then.
No, they weren't right, but they were the 'norm'.
The majorities in every social stratum looked down on and denigrated the minorities.
There was no such thing as acceptance or accommodation.
At least not for most folks.

So I'd just ask you to bear this in mind when you look at something that happened five or more decades ago under the lens of today's culture.
Attitudes were not the same back then.
Thankfully, we've come a long way.
Still a way to go, but we're doing better.
And that's a good thing.

[CBGLuthier]

1. you are correct about the different attitudes but a bully is a bully in any age

It is one thing for them to make snide comments but to take it to the level of violence requires a bully. A sadist who gets off on abusing the "weak."

[cali]

2. sorry this apologia for Romney doesn't cut it

Yes, things are different now, but I was born in 1952, and I knew that singling out another kid because he or she was different, be it of a different race or religion or whatever, was fucking wrong. I knew that picking on people that are weaker or vulnerable was a rotten thing to do- and that's not something new. EM Forster wrote most eloquently about bullying in his Public School when he was a kid and he was a child of the Edwardian age.

This isn't just about Romeny bullying a gay kid, it's about his being a bully period.

[Solomon]

7. To be honest, i dont see this post as apologia for Romney.

The post is correct. Attitudes back then truly horrible but totally accepted. When I first heard about the Romney bullying my first reaction was, almost everbody thought that way in those days. To the point where people would openly sneer about gays to bolster their own machismo. I'm sorry but that's just a fact, at least as far as males were concerned.

But still, even so, the fact that he took it to the physical level is disturbing because as we have seen, even taunting can cause suicides.

Since we first learned about gays on the cusp of entering the teens years, what caused the introduction of the fact that gays existed was the fact that the adults felt the need to warn us about it. Be wary of the bathrooms in bus stations and what not. In those days being gay was almost synonymous with being a predator in a large segment of the population. So the very starting point was one of fear.

I think the poster is right to reflect on the long way we have come since those days. I can truly say I have evolved as well.

[trof]

20. Damn, cali. I thought I made it clear this isn't an apologia.

It's just about when times and attitudes the accepted 'norm' were different back then.
Just as the generally accepted idea of slavery was the norm when our Declaration of Independence was drafted and ratified.

I grew up in Alabama in the 40s and 50s with segregation (not just in schools, everywhere), 'White' and 'Colored' drinking fountains, restrooms, buses, and train and bus waiting rooms.
I thought nothing if it as a kid.
I didn't think if it was right or wrong.
I didn't think about it at all.
It just 'was'.

Subsequent generations find that hard to fathom.
They grew up in the world they inhabit now.
Much different from the world that existed decades ago.

The 'norm' changes in America.
We don't burn witches anymore.
That's a good thing.

Peace.
trof

[antigone382]

3. True, but Romney's response to the story coming out today is the problem for me.

I did some pretty cruel and awful things as a teenager, and I look back on those things with shame (though I have the peace of mind of knowing that I am better than that today). If one of those stories came out about me, I would not shrug it off as "hijinks" I don't quite remember...but...well...sorry if anyone was offended. I would acknowledge the person I was, apologize for the harm I caused, and try to explain that I have grown since those events. If Romney had done that, I could accept his apology as sincere. I am not one to demonize my political opponents, or to hold them to a higher standard than the standard to which I hold myself. However, his ridiculous claim to "not remember" the event, combined with a non-apology that minimizes the harm that he caused, is extremely disturbing and reflects very poorly on his character.

[RoseMead]

8. I agree

I'm not as concerned with the man's actions decades ago as I am with his response today.

Lots of people do horrid things when they're kids, and then later grow up to acknowledge and regret the wrongness of their actions. Mitt isn't one of those people.

[trof]

21. Exactly. That's the problem for most of us.

I really don't know what to make of Rmoney.
(And that's the way I will forever spell his name.)
I can obviously see that he just doesn't 'get it'.
He's way to insulated from 'the rest of us'.
Has been and will be.

[JI7]

4. the problem is that he hasn't really changed

[HockeyMom]

5. My family must have been very different

I grew up in Greenwich Village in the 50s and 60s. I went to school down the street from the Stonewall. Gays were all around me growing up, including my own family (Aunt). It was never a big deal to my family, even going back to my Grandma who as a 2nd generation Itlalian and Catholic. I catsit for gay couples from when I was a preteen, and once even, ratted out a group of boys from school who went on a rampage to beat up "queers" in the neighborhood.

Children aren't born with bigotry. They learn it from their parents. If their parents aren't bigots, they won't be either.

[DarthDem]

6. Beautifully Said.

Poetic. Wow.

[cali]

10. Mine too. Although my parents sucked at being parents

in some very major ways, they had gay and lesbian friends (a famous story in my family was how Christopher Isherwood had a crush on my father), but then they had a lot of friends in the arts.

[Luminous Animal]

14. Mine too, and I was born on a Michigan farm in a Catholic community of around 2500 in 1957.

[HiPointDem]

19. My family never talked about homosexuality at all; I learned about it from people (boys) calling

each other fags and queers. So I don't think it's the case that people won't act out bigotry unless they learn it from their parents. They also learn it from their peers and from the society at large.

Great that you had such an unbigoted childhood in Greenwich Village, but it wasn't the norm in the 50s.

[trof]

22. Could I jusr say that Greenwich Village New York was a far cry from Birmingham Alabama at that time?

Lucky you.
I wasn't that fortunate.

[HockeyMom]

27. Not entirely

Teenage boys, still went out at night, and beat up gays. Police many times did nothing. It still happens if you read the news. All in all, still better than a lot of other places accross the country I suppose.

[csziggy]

28. I grew up in a small Southern town and homosexuals were not treated

The way Rmoney treated his classmate. My father employed a homosexual and when other men on the crew objected, my Dad told them they could work with whoever he hired or look for new jobs.

Dad was never a liberal - he just did not see what someone's personal choices had to do with getting the job done.

Of course, though Dad has never actually come out and admitted it, his aunt was a lesbian and lived with her lover for fifty years.

[David__77]

9. He is playing the Reagan game is not even saying the word "gay" right now.

He's on strict orders not to even utter the word. He should be forced to do so.

[trof]

24. I think 'marriage equality' is what we should be talking about.

Framing is all.

[NNN0LHI]

11. My Republican parents vacationed to Hawaii every year with a gay couple in the early 60's

I am not familiar with with what you speak of.

Don

[trof]

25. My 'parent' did not vacation in Hawaii.

She was a single, working mother (divorced) who raised me in Alabama in the 40s and 50s.
And she's the one who nurtured my liberal values.

I'm sure you are not 'familiar' with what I speak of.
Lucky you.

[justiceischeap]

12. Attitudes 10 years ago were different too

but being mean just for the sake of being mean? That, I don't think, has ever been okay. The fact that the kid was gay or looked different shouldn't even matter in this discussion. What matters is, would RMoney discourage this kind of behavior today? I doubt he would because it will lose him votes. He can't sincerely apologize for his actions or say with honesty whether he truly recalls the incident because that would lose him votes.

And I agree with the first poster that said it's more about his actions today then yesterday.

[cthulu2016]

13. Perhaps presidents are supposed to be above the norm

[trof]

26. One can HOPE. The last one sure wasn't. n/t

[madinmaryland]

15. Growing up in NW Ohio in the 60's & 70's I was oblivious to homosexuality...

Name calling was rampant and as you say, calling someone gay/queer/etc. was one of the worst things you could do.

None of that happened at home, but I still saw it and was influenced by it.

It wasn't until I went to college and actually got to meet gays and lesbians, that I started to understand what they went through and that they are human beings like I am, and had the same dreams and goals that I did.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

16. I was in junior and senior high in the late '50s

and early '60s. My recollection is that boys who seemed effeminate were called "queer" but we (at least I) didn't really know what homosexuality was until later in high school. And I don't remember ever seeing those kids being harassed or teased (although they very probably were - I might not have seen it because I was an unpopular nerd who didn't hang with the popular kids who normally did the harassing and bullying). But there was obviously a lot of ignorance and prejudice - kids who were called "queer" were looked down on even though we might not have known exactly why.

Fast-forward to the late '60s, when I was in college. There was a guy in the crowd I hung out with who came out (this was about 1968), and our reaction was like, "Really? Huh. How about that?" And none of us cared and he was still our friend and nothing in that relationship changed. Seems like the culture changed quite a bit between 1963 and 1968 - at least as I experienced it.

[Odin2005]

17. Psychiatrists considered homosexuality a mental illness until the late 70s.

[ScreamingMeemie]

18. My father was born in 1944. His older brother was gay. He did not know it at the time,

nor did anyone else, but he remembers things in hindsight. What he doesn't remember is his brother being bullied. Because it wasn't okay then and it's not okay now.

[slackmaster]

23. Homosexuals weren't scorned but regarded as mentally ill in my family in those decades

I think my family didn't fit the mold suggested by the OP here. I come from a long line of highly educated people with advanced degrees, many of whom have been involved in health care either as practitioners or administrators.

My aunt, who came out in the late 1950s, had a father who was a clinical psychologist (PhD) who specialized in treating substance abusers and schizophrenics. Her older brother was a psychiatrist (MD). Homosexuality was widely regarded as a psychological disorder by most professionals in those days.

Her family thought she was mentally ill, and tried to get her into treatment. They loved her and took care of her physical and financial needs until she went away to a university and struck out on her own, but they could not accept her sexual orientation simply because they were trained to regard it as a disorder.