This post documents four significant developments in US gay culture that occurred in my lifetime. Each alone would be life changing and significant. Altogether they created a cultural shift that reverberate through today.
December 15, 1973
I was 12 years old. The American Psychiatric Association votes to remove homosexuality from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. A majority decides that love is not a disease. I remember reading this in the newspaper before I understood how much this would impact me.
June 5, 1981
I was 19 years old. The CDC publishes a report describing a rare lung infection in five young gay men in Los Angeles. Two are already dead. Nobody has a name for it yet. Gay men read about it in local papers, in newsletters, in whispers. What followed was the worst years in the community’s memory — and also some of its most fierce. ACT UP. Vigils. Funerals. The sense of abandonment from the dominant culture was profound.
June 26, 2003
I was 41 years old. The Supreme Court strikes down sodomy laws in Lawrence v. Texas. What gay men did in private was no longer a crime. For the first time in my life the closet was not a necessity, but coming fully out of the closet would take many years.
June 26, 2015
I was 53 years old. Obergefell v. Hodges produces marriage equality nationwide.
Recognition. Legitimacy.
I remember being shocked by this change, also concerned about the reaction that would surely come from the right. I was also aware as now a senior citizen, my own chance for marriage was remote.
The Collage
In my collage, four gay men from four generations, 1960’s, 1980’s, 2000’s, and 2020’s, represent these epoch events that gays experienced in the transition from the 20th to 21st century. From my own view, there is a cumulative sense of freedom and growth, but also an unmistakable awareness of lost time.
It’s about time.
