I've been pretty sheltered on this topic. For starters I had a male cousin, he was deaf, but talk in family between some of us was that he was gay. He was educated, a pathologist as a profession, had a live in mate and they travelled the world. He died from what we believed was a mass vaccinations deal in D.C. many yrs ago. The docs told my aunt he died of cancer as I recall. He was a dear person and he would be the same age as my brother now if he lived and that is 81. Then in the 80's I worked with an openly gay guy, also a great person, good worker and struggled with acceptance by the DUMBNUTS. It was easier for him in CA but he decided to sell his San Jose house and move to NC where housing was much less, but acceptance was not to be found by him. He had heard there was a chance he could make it there but such a struggle. He kept in touch via email for some yrs and then a old friend told him to come back to Chicago his home town, and he did, and then we lost track...my gut tells me he's gone. But boy did he have struggles in his life to be accepted. Then I knew a friend of a friend who just could not would not come out . Again a good worker and financially comfortable and his last residence is Palm Springs, there is a large gay community there... One of our conservative commentators is openly gay, again smart and he resides in Palm Springs. Outside of these few I probably knew many gays but they never came out. Today's world of trans shite -- I just cannot buy into it all. Any stories??
I have one known first cousin she is gay. For as I know still in closet family wise. Worked close with a guy for years who was gay, we became friends. Have a niece in law who was married, one grown child . She has since decided she is gay so, she made a big switch. However that is subject to change as she literally crazy. Have met several gay people in my life time, and unlike today's gays and trans people did not flaunt it.
Some of my best friends have been gay men, and I have had a number of lesbian friends as well. No biggie for me as long as they don't push an agenda on me or others. I also think homosexuality is different for men and women. I have known a couple lesbians who have switched but I know of no males who have done so.
When I was 19, I worked in an office with a guy I considered bisexual. He acted like any other guy; until he started drinking. He kept a bottle of Vodka in his desk. He'd fill a paper cup with water from the sparklett's machine, then he'd keep pouring Vodka into the cup. As he drank, he'd start to walk & talk like a female. He kept us entertained. The bottle was always empty by quitting time. Since he lost his license to DUI's, I'd give him a ride home; it was only a couple of miles out of my way. I felt sorta bad for him when I learned what he was putting his liver & brain through.
I've known quite a few, but most of them not very well. An older cousin came back from Vietnam gay and drug-addicted, although it's quite possible that he was already gay, but the drug addiction brought it out. I don't know how that stuff works. He lived on the same road as me but was a few years older, so he wasn't someone I came across very often. I had a teacher in high school, but although there were rumors that I didn't believe at the time, I didn't know he was gay until well after I had graduated. When I worked for Champion, I had a gay co-worker. He seemed like a nice enough guy, but he wasn't someone I had any contact with outside of working hours. I knew a couple of gay guys while I was working EMS. One of them liked to stare at 12-year-old boys in ways that made me feel uncomfortable, and I would have gotten rid of him if I were in charge because he would hang out with young boys outside the station. Even at work, he wore makeup, and he gave me the creeps. I'd have been creeped out if he were perving on 12-year-old girls, too, but I think the fact that they were boys ramped the creepiness factor up a couple of notches. The other gay guy I worked with in EMS was a nice enough guy. I saw no problems with him. I worked with him at one company and later hired him at another. We had a couple of medics who didn't want to work with him because we worked out of rented apartments in various places within our service area on 24-hour shifts, and they didn't want to spend the night in an apartment with a gay guy. We also had female medics working with male medics, and it's not like they had to share a bed or anything, so we didn't give anyone choices about who they were paired with. Other than that, there are a few gay people living around here and probably others I don't know about. While none of them are close friends, I don't have many close friends here anymore, and I don't have any problem with that. I wouldn't defriend anyone if I learned they were gay; just, you know, leave the 12-year-olds out of it.
I gotta think about it. I worked for an openly gay man in the early 80s. This was in the Virginia burbs of DC. He moved there from the San Francisco office, and was president of that division. There were probably 20-25 of us who worked there. Jim held the company Christmas party at his place, where he danced the night away with his boyfriend. Except for a couple of guys, no one cared because we knew Jim as himself, who happened to be gay. I felt a little bad for him because back then DC was rather socially conservative, unlike San Francisco from which he hailed. There was one gay coworker in my last job. I don't know who his boyfriend was, but when the guy died circa 2006, Newt Gingrich spoke at the memorial service. Louis (my coworker) was probably 40 or so at the time. I don't know how old his boyfriend was. I've not had any gay friends in my social circles that I can think of, and cannot think of any other coworkers who were off the top of my head, although many must have been. But other than making an assumption about those who were married, I had no idea what their social lives might be...I was never big into mixing my private life with my work life, so I neither shared nor pried nor socialized. My last employer was a government contractor who had about 25,000 employees. They had quite a few internal "clubs," such as Professional Women and New To The Workforce groups. There were a couple of Gay/Lesbian Professionals groups, but I'm unaware of anyone I knew very well who was a member. I do recall seeing some folks list those groups on their internal profiles that we all had to create. It struck me as odd and out-of-place.
Years ago, I worked for a lesbian couple who hired me to take care of their equestrian center. Very nice couple, but only worked for them for a couple of weeks, waiting for my state unemployment insurance money to start. At my last job, one of the food and medical supplies drivers was a lesbian. She was transferred to materials department that I worked in. She told me that the supervisor/director of the department didn't like her and she quit the company. Our great niece, after being involved with two men while in the Army, told her mom that she thought she was bi-sexual. Apparently she had gotten together with another girl, not in the Army. They wound up getting married. She has very little to do with her family, including us, today. We never/ever thought she'd become a lesbian, but she did. Very surprising!
I just remembered the two gay women who work at a friend's greenhouse. They are "occasional labor," and mostly show up when they need the cash. Other folks have hired them to do stuff on their properties, and again the pair of them show up "whenever." When they show up, they are hard workers. I don't think there are drugs involved. One of them is one of the most highly self-educated people I know. She is deeply conversant on a ton of topics, from plants to wildlife to politics to history to literature. It seems that all she's done for a living are these pick-up types of jobs, traveling from region to region. (She's not the first extremely intelligent person I've known who eschews traditional/stable life.) On the other hand, her girlfriend is dumb as a sack of rocks not quite as worldly, and I've been told she is the physically abusive one of the pair.
Thinking way back to my childhood, my grandparents owned a beer salon and when the gave it up, it went to my dad and mom for their lives and it was lucrative and lots of work but an older man in the bar some thought he was a queer, never married and worked for Singer Sewing Machines, sold them etc....Makes me wonder more... Also some kids in my school days were suspect.
Oh and today, I got a surprise phone call from a hairdresser I had gone to for many yrs and not any years in about the last 20 or so, what a treat hearing from him and he had my number as I've never changed my land line #. He is gay and a great hair worker and really nice person.
I called the French Quarter in New Orleans my home for many years and the people who worked the Quarter used to be an extremely tight knit bunch. Notably, there’s a restaurant and / or bar on every block; there are the strip clubs, trans clubs, gay clubs and even a small theatre for the performing arts so yeah, I’d say I have met, known, been friends with, employed and worked with a plethora of those who deviated from the “straight” life. Note: Sadly and as a matter of fact, I knew all 32 of the gays who were deliberately burnt to death in an arson fire at the Upstairs Lounge in ‘73. One of the good things about Quarter life is that no one really gave a dern about what one’s sexual proclivities were. With the exception of what we called, “The Queen’s Parade” after the show bars closed for the night (or morning as it were), there were no real outward expressions of what one’s sexual preference were. Note 2: Some of the queens were simply performing cross dressers whilst others were at one stage or another of transitioning. And, the Queen’s Parade refers to those who didn’t change from their stage appearance before walking down the street to make their way home, for a drink or both. By 0300, the drunk tourists are pretty much gone and all that remained on the streets were those who worked the quarter and 4 or 5 queens or more walking together was called a parade.