Sexes: How Gay Is Gay?

• Share

(8 of 8)

Whatever course the organized gay movement may take, and whatever its victories or defeats, the outlook is for more and more homosexuals to come at least partly out of the closet. Says Chicago Psychologist Jon lost: "Ten or 15 years ago, homosexuality was just not discussed, and many people suffered because they simply did not know that there have always been people like themselves. Everything that has happened in the past few years has reduced the potential for that isolation. Just hearing the word gay, reading it in a newspaper, seeing a gay person, real or fictional, on television-any of those things make it easier for a person to come out."

Nor can heterosexual society again ignore the subject of homosexuality, as many straights devoutly wish it could. Says Eric Rofes, a gay teacher in a Cambridge, Mass., private school: "Ten years ago, few people knew that they knew a gay person. Today, most kids grow up knowing that they know someone who is gay." Knowledge, however, does not necessarily mean acceptance.