The "Good Old Days?" Well, not so much, really.

[thucythucy]

35. And homophobia was the norm, accepted, and often lethal.

Being gay was illegal. Many police forces had units that specifically targeted the gay community. Blackmail was a constant threat. The violence was awful.

There's still a lot of oppression, and we are now in the midst of a backlash against anything to do with non-hetero culture, but it's nothing like it was in the '50s '60s '70s--even into the 80s when the Reagan administration refused to do anything to counter the AIDS epidemic because it was "a gay disease."

The '60s marked a huge change in so many ways. Just one small example to show how straight laced and petty things could be: girls could be suspended from school for wearing pants. Girls wearing pants!! The Horror!!!

Oh, and then too, rape victims were generally assumed to have "asked for it." No rape crisis centers. No rape counselors.

As for disability rights--they didn't exist. No ADA. No curb cuts or ramps. Courthouses, police stations, schools, mass transit, most stores were inaccessiblle. "Access" in that sense wasn't even a concept. If you had a significant and visible disability--forget about getting a job. Chances were good you'd spend your life in a nursing home or institution or locked in a back room. It was considered a shameful thing to have a disability, or to have a disabled person in your family. Even cancer patients were made to somehow feel ashamed of having the disease.

And of course, all of this was so much worse if you were a person of color.