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I live in New York City, where things are a little more open about sexuality than in other parts of the country. One reason I think this is most of the homosexuals I meet are not from New York but from other places, often small towns in the Midwest and the like.
I am heterosexual, so I have kind of a peripheral view of this. In the East Village, especially around Christopher Street, stretching north into Chelsea is an area where a lot of gay people congregate, there are rainbow flags on the bars and restaurants etc. It is pretty normal, and the majority of the gay people I've worked with are pretty ordinary, the only difference being they have a boyfriend instead of a girlfriend. There are outposts of this sort of thing as well, I lived in Park Slope and there are gay-friendly bars and restaurants out there as well, where gay people get together like normal people do. If it is a gay singles bar, they talk to each other and meet each other in a normal fashion like heterosexuals do, out in the open and so forth.
On the other hand, there is a park a few miles from my house which is a gay hangout, of another sort. Gay people don't go here like they do on Christopher Street, out in the open, acting like heterosexuals might. They meet secretly, hanging out in their cars, and have anonymous sex in the cars or out in the woods. A lot of the homosexuals here are repressed, and actually stop off in the park on their way home from work, to be true to themselves for a few minutes with an anonymous stranger like them, before they drive home to the lie which is their whole life - the "beard" wife, the resultant children etc.
One of my friends says homosexuality is not normal. I asked him how not. He said it is not natural, animals don't have homosexual sex. Of course, there is some evidence differing from that when one goes across all species, but I answer - do animals wear clothes? Do they drive cars? Do they get to work at 9AM and follow orders of a boss and so forth? Do they get circumcised at a young age without any say on their part like I was? My entire life is abnormal and unnatural by that yardstick, so why does it only appear with regards to homosexuality?
Anyhow, of the two scenarios described - gay-friendly bars and restaurants and a pretty normal, above ground existence, and the other part, an underground world of lies, anonymous sex and so forth, Craig belonged to the latter. He worked to create the world of the latter. And - it does become abnormal, when it is driven underground and the only way to have a romance is to meet anonymous strangers and have sex with them. Craig was working for a world to make things more like the latter scenario, and less like the former scenario (a normal scene of bars and restaurants and clubs, like heterosexuals go to).
When pushed underground, it is weird and creepy and abnormal. People are scared of this park, and they should be! Who wants to live near or go to a park where men are prowling around looking for other men, going off into the woods and all that. It's creepy and scary, especially for those not involved. And it's a world the closeted homosexuals who work with the conservatives work to build. The last thing they want is the normal Christopher Street bars in Greenwich Village. They talk about how homosexuality is weird and creepy, but it is only like that in the repressed closeted people who go to the parks, when the normal, out in the open places they can go to are available in the Village. It's abnormal, just like a brothel to have sex is abnormal, while a boyfriend and girlfriend or husband and wife making love is normal. The strangeness of homosexuality is not to be found on Christopher Street, but in the anonymous pick-up spots of the conservatives creation.
I imagine out in more rural, conservative areas, these spots are the only places that exist for homosexuals nowadays.
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