In those days the term "gay" had everything to do with happy summer days, Enid Blyton adventures and light-heartedness. for it had not yet been adopted as an alternative name by the very well-hidden homosexual community. No television or radio programmes ever referred to gayness and as far as I knew there were no gay characters in the books I read.
Given this context, it was perhaps no surprise that later on I became somewhat homophobic. I was quite disgusted by it all and occasionally shared schoolboy tales of what we imagined gay men did together. Because of our ignorance there was much smutty laughter. Probably, the worst insults for other boys were "pufta" and "shirtlifter".
I loved girls and I loved women and I could not imagine any other kind of loving. I didn't have a single gay friend at university or through my teaching career and when I come to think about it, I don't believe I really got to properly know a gay man until I was in my sixties. That's when Steve became a regular at our local pub and I would often converse with him though interestingly the topic of his sexuality and LGBQT+ battles very rarely cropped up. We were more likely to talk about his singing or my country walks.
It's still a little strange to me that through blogging I have got to know several gay men. There's Andrew in Melbourne Australia, Bob in South Carolina, Travel Penguin in Washington D.C., John Gray in North Wales and Steve Reed in West London. For whatever reason, it seems that blogging is a medium that many gay men are drawn to.
The aforementioned men have taught me a few lessons - the first one being that each gay man is different from the next. They are not all the same. Another important lesson they have taught me is that private sexuality does not define someone. As in the heterosexual world, sex is just one facet of somebody's life. There's a lot more to be said - about gardens, dogs, holidays, books, trams, journeys, politics, the arts, childhood memories, food, friends, current affairs and so on and so on.
To those particular men and to the other gay people I have encountered through blogging, I just want to say a massive "Thank You". You have educated me and diminished my homophobia - like tackling a cancer with laser beams, reducing it to the size of a frozen pea. Other people's lives matter - black people's lives. women's lives, the lives of the disabled, African lives, the lives of those who live in poverty and now at last I recognise that this also applies to LGBTQ+ lives. I am just sorry that I took so long to get here.
from Yorkshire Pudding https://ift.tt/60KmfaB
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