As an older gay man (57), I grew up during the time homosexuality was worse than murder. The teachings in priesthood often degenerated into "suicide is preferable over being queer" comments. Needless to say, I was bullied by the future leaders of the church. WHen I was a young teenager, the Stonewall riots occured, thereby ushering in the gay rights movement. I was young during much of the early changes.

However, I still suffer from "internalized homophobia", a condition where there is still shame associated being gay. I noticed years ago that when I run into my former tormenters, I become quiet about my gayness. I serve on an LGBT senior advocacy board, and many of our people suffer the same stigma. However, I have no problem being out at work. I also left the church years ago.

I wonder if other gay people in this forum also suffer from parts of internalized homophobia. ONe can't listen to the bigotry for years and it not effect one. Also, it amazes me to see the church state it has nothing against gay people.

I don't have any specific advice for you, but your post was dropping pretty quickly. Let's try to keep it on the front page and I'm sure you will get responses.

Welcome to the Board!

As an older gay woman(fifties), I feel no shame. But I didn't identify as gay when I was younger, so all the shame &guilt that SWK and other leaders heaped on homosexuals didn't sink in.

I just came out last year, (after a 28 yr marriage) and the climate in society and even the church is much different than it was in the seventies. I guess I've had more time than you to make a healthy place in my head, heart, and soul for my orientation.

I came of age a few years before you. It was not a good time for gay youth. We faced a lot of slurs. A lot of humiliation, the kind most will never know. We faced unthinkable fear just going about daily life many times. For me, because I was gay,school was a war zone. You could get beaten up a lot--often by a group, if you couldn't fly under the radar. The name calling hurt worse though. Nice mormon town too.

Those were our formative years, where what is learned is ingrained the deepest. You learned to live in a state of survival--the best part of your humanity taught you that instinctively. You knew your best defense was to avoid detection. Not a good way to live as a child, a teen, or, even at ninety.

I didn't go to any place or any event without the thought that I had to be constantly vigilant to avoid at all costs the insults, the humiliation and the bullying that could often come out of nowhere.

Is it any wonder then, that our comfort level plummets when we are now out of our element? We know society in general has changed somewhat--but you don't know what is in someone else's heart.

I have seen people from my past. I have run into those who threw punches at me, just for being me. I have wondered what they thought. Do they remember? Has their outlook changed being that they are all priesthood holders now? Do they feel differently?

My defense mechanisms do kick into gear out of the blue. It's not the same as being ashamed, like when I was a mormon and was taught to hate myself as much as I thought everyone else did.

The things you experience in your youth will always have a great bearing on your life. I'm a little older than you, but I can tell you, that those scars run deep and don't really go away. They aren't wounds anymore though.

As much as things have changed, the world is still a dangerous place for gays. Gay bashings and other less obvious forms of discrimination still happen everywhere.

It is not always internalized homophobia to stay silent around people that may be hostile.

I NEVER thought that I'd agree with "MJ," but I do agree with this. Yes, being gay is an incredibly dangerous thing, and to think otherwise is naive. Perhaps in the Castro district of San Francisco there's strength in numbers, but don't kid yourself. There's good reason to be vigilant and very cautious about whom you tell. We're a century or two--at the very minimum--away from any form of mass toleration, never mind acceptance.

Protect yourselves.

I certainly didn't. Even in Utah where I am out at work and surrounded by Mormons the likelihood of getting bashed is remote. Being gay is dangerous but not "incredibly dangerous". There is reason to be careful but not PARANOID. Would it surprise you to know that most people in Utah support job and housing protections for gays? yes a MAJORITY of people in Utah support such protections. The amount of change made since 1969 makes your claims about taking Centuries a joke.

GP, you have come across more than once as a very paranoid person, I seriously suggest you talk to a professional about it.

I have a friend who had/has that, Its hard! It was really hard on his relationship, and it ended up as something he went to therapy for. (Nothing wrong that that) How it was described to me by him was " I think straight people are better then gay ones". I'll tell you what I said to him.. "I don't!"

My advice is to find a group where you can feel welcome and appreciated. If you are ever feeling low, this board can even be a help I'm sure. I see very few threads that go unnoticed, and I'm sure someone on this board would encourage you. (maybe an ass here and there too, but they usually get told where to go quick like) I can't speak for everyone, but for me... I don't care if someone is in love with a Chia Pet. They still have worth!



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/02/2012 08:13PM by seamaiden.

have become a recluse (inspite of knowing it's destructiveness).

I use to be mr. socialite. Was Student Body Pres in HS and 1st assistant to Mission Pres. Pretty different for me now.

Thanks to those who post on this board.

I am not gay but I do owe a huge apology to all gay people in California. I was tbm at the time and I helped with prop hate. I look back now and I have complete disgust for myself in allowing to get caught up in all that craziness. I have made a promise to myself that when it comes up again in California, that I will be on the other side of the street making just as much noise.

Don't focus on the disgust about what you did in regards to prop hate, focus on your courage and strong character that allowed you to see that you were once wrong and gave you the courage and strength to change.

Wow. You'd never see that kind of acceptance from the other side.

I'm with you on this. I never stop writing here about the crippling attachment I have to negative attitudes about being gay--about the extent to which I buy into heteronormative constructs about so many things while other gay men around me revel in their liberation from those constraints. I don't know if I'll ever get there. At 47, I feel like I have so little time left to figure it out.

I wish I knew what to tell you. I never actually hated myself for being gay. I did hate myself for not being able to be straight. There is a difference. When I realized it had never been my choice and that my being gay did not have any bearing on anyone's life than my own, my healing began. It was also the beginning of me liking a lot of other "unacceptable" things about myself, which I wouldn't change now for anything.

There are many who will make you feel like you are less than. It isn't just about homophobia. It is about their need to feel superior so that they don't have to really own up to their own shortcomings.

So they invent a standard to judge you by. This standard conveniently is a standard to which they measure up beautifully without really trying. I mean how hard is it to be straight when you were born that way.?

So when I stopped trying to be straight, I stopped holding myself up to the standards of others. Some people say if a lot of people are saying something about you that it you really should consider the merits of what they are saying. I don't buy that. Consider the merits, sure, but also take into consideration that an entire group CAN be wrong. When you are gay, being unique is amazing. You won't always fit in, but you've got to fit into your own life at the very least.

I found a way to love myself and accept myself. You have to do that. I don't know how is the best for you, but find a way. I know it has to do with loving your odd little self. Laughing at your odd little self. We all are odd.

A lot of people love us, and that's enough. The best things in life are often an acquired taste.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 01/03/2012 03:37PM by blueorchid.

I didn't have the opportunity to meet him.
But through his journals I know his thoughts.
He was a tormented soul who lived in fear.
He is my brother in law.
He was murdered on the streets of San Francisco in 1988.
By a total stranger. Because he was gay.
No arrests, nothing.
Being gay is very dangerous. It cost him his life.
He left some incredible art for us to remember him by.
That is what I see of him every day. It makes me sad I
never got to know him personally.

The friend I mentioned above was beaten up and left in the bushes of a apartment complex!!

...He was in a relationship for 2 years and this man didn't want anyone to find out, no one could be told. I always voiced that I thought that was a little odd, as this was 2 F**cking years!!!! Anyway, people did end up finding out, and instead of admitting to it, this guy told his friends he wasn't gay and hating my friend because he was. Him and these friends decided the best way to get this across to my friend was to spike his drink with NAIL POLISH REMOVER and beat him after he was passed out!! Just left him in some bushes!! He had my, at the time, new cell number in his pocket so the hospital called me.. He didn't know his own name. He didn't recognize his own mother at the hospital either...

TWO YEARS!!!



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 01/02/2012 10:53PM by seamaiden.

not only are gays more acceptable to the younger generation, but we kind of tend to think it's cool to be gay - especially people who are confident and unapologetic about being homosexual. I know it's not a choice, and you've been through a lot of horrible things, I don't want to make light of that. It just makes me sad to think of gays who are homophobic, when it's not only OK but actually kind of a cool aspect of their personality.

The generation before me fought and made the world a better place for me. The pushed as far as they could, they still hold on to some of their old ways of thinking about gays. Some of them look at my generation and say how jealous they are, how they wish they came out when I did.

My generation picked up the torch, pushed the boundaries farther and faster than the generation before us was comfortable and have been winning.

Now, I look at the younger generation, coming out at very young ages and with much less baggage than I. I look a them and I am jealous. They have picked up the torch and are pushing the boundaries further and faster than some of my generation feel is prudent. I look at the gay and straight youth that have joined the fight and I am jealous, I am also very happy that they are asking and getting far more than I even dreamed possible.

It's the lot of all of us born in the twentieth century. the realization at about five or six that you're different from all the others. Finally figuring out the difference when all the other boys start to like girls. Nobody tells you anything of course, it's always "stop doing/acting like that!" or "why can't you be like the other boys?".

"It's Gay!"

"You're a FAG!"

And when you finally figure out what you are, it is defined as "an abomination in the eyes of God", a sickness, disgusting, to be shunned by all decent people, unless you bottle it up and pretend you're something that you're not.

Supressing you're true nature becomes a way of life. I was 42 before I admitted to *anyone* that I was gay. I still tend to be very wary about who I share it with. I do so hope coming generations don't have to go through what we've gone through, but there will always be a xenephobic streak in human nature. Let's just hope we don't lose any ground.

I still suffer from that as well. I believe the feeling that being gay is as bad as being a murderer or rapists is very much still alive. My own parents equated being gay with murder and rapists just last year. I was so upset at them that I didn't speak with them for quite a while. This was all in the open forum of facebook for all to see. When I had friends defend me, my parents finally stopped, and I think they realized how mean their comments were. They never apologized, but they haven't said those things since then. But the hurt runs very deep when your own parents say such bigoted and mean things. :(

i am out to all and not care who knows

way i think it is if you want to hate me for a thing not even a commandment of god or teaching of jesus to hate then you are not worth knowing so see ya suckka

At 50, I can say that the feeling you describe is gone.

I'm a guybrarian in a large & liberal city, so it's kinda stylish to be gay.

http://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/intelligence-report/browse-all-issues/2007/fall/the-latvian-connection

It's easy for me to be out and proud. I live and work in Seattle where it's highly politically incorrect to hate anyone for any reason.

Lucky me, but don't forget there are extremists everywhere, and there's nothing you can do if dumb circumstance places you in their midst.

It's so hard to read that, but the point is there once again, homophobia is alive and well, and it is RELIGION fueling the hate and MORMONS are at the center of it.

To all the mormon apologists on this board, saying mormons are just another church, just another tribe and they deserve respect, you know very well what you can do with it. Because if you are part of a homophobic group, you are condoning that and encouraging it. You cannot claim to not be part of it.

The mormon church is full of hate and if you are a member you are too. You can't have it both ways.

I have been the victim of hate crimes and I have every right to hate your filthy disgusting church.

Whenever I meet one of my former tormentors (I am only a couple of years younger than you, Gay in SF) the feelings of being bullied still well up inside me.

I seem to recall that in the UK not long ago a man in his 40s met someone who had tormented him throughout his teens. The result was that the bully ended up being dead at the hands of his former victim.

So I think, probably to a limited extent, I have some understanding of where you are coming from.

Sounds to me like your understanding isn't too limited, but more on the deep end.

This country is finally spotlighting bullying. You don't have to be gay to get bullied but it does seem to give you an excellent head start.