People who were gay were pitied and ridiculed by my parents - they had no modern sense of people being allowed to be who they were.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
The gay people I knew in real life were soft spoken and didn't want to call attention to themselves because they were terrified of exposing themselves, of people finding out that they're gay.
Personally speaking, growing up as a gay man before it was as socially acceptable as it is now, I knew what it was to feel different, to feel alienated and to feel not like everyone else. But the very same thing that made me monstrous to some people also empowered me and made me who I was.
I grew up in a conservative small town, and the gay characters I saw on TV and in movies when I was growing up were all flamboyant and obnoxious and sometimes kind of annoying.
I was inadvertently raised in the 'gay community.' I had straight parents, but I spent massive amounts of time at a very early age with gay, theater-hopeful thirty-somethings.
My parents are kind and accepting. Because so many of my friends were gay, it was just an accepted thing in my house. I was very lucky.
My mother and father could not handle even me being gay. We never talked about it, really.
Yeah, I had gay friends. The first thing I realized was that everybody's different, and it becomes obvious that all of the gay stereotypes are ridiculous.
Remember that I was out of the closet at the age of sixteen. My parents knew I was gay; I'd had to tell them.
The only thing I can give to young gay people is that when I was growing up, there were no role models that were blokey that were men. Everybody was flamboyant and camp, and I remember going, 'That's not me, so even though I think I am gay, I don't think I fit into this world.'
I didn't know any gay people in my childhood.