Acceptance of Gay Couples Not So New

[+ quoththeraven]

Obviously, it's hard to tell how frequently couples were accepted like the ones described in this article, but it's not true that all same-sex couples in the US have been persecuted or run out of town on a rail during, say, the 19th century. While the article focuses on a lesbian couple in Vermont, it mentions two male couples as well.

 

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2015/03/20/the-improbable-story-of-one-of-americas-first-same-sex-marriages-from-over-200-years-ago/

[AdamSmith]

Great examples.

 

In this century there is for instance the relationship between Eleanor Roosevelt and Lorena Hickok. Pardon the Wikipedia, but anyway:

 

In the 1930s, Eleanor had a very close relationship with legendary pilot phenomenon Amelia Earhart. One time, the two sneaked out from the White House and went to a party dressed up for the occasion. Roosevelt also had a close relationship with Associated Press (AP) reporter Lorena Hickok, who covered her during the last months of the presidential campaign and "fell madly in love with her".[34] During this period, Roosevelt wrote daily ten- to fifteen-page letters to "Hick", who was planning to write a biography of the First Lady.[35] The letters included such endearments as, "I want to put my arms around you & kiss you at the corner of your mouth,"[36] and "I can't kiss you, so I kiss your picture good night and good morning!"[37] At Franklin's 1933 inauguration, Eleanor wore a sapphire ring Hickok had given her.[38] Compromised as a reporter, Hickok soon resigned her position with the AP to be closer to Eleanor, who secured her a job as an investigator for a New Deal program.[39]

 

There is considerable debate about whether her relationship with Hickock was sexual. It was known in the White House press corps at the time that Lorena Hickock was a lesbian.[40] Scholars, including Lillian Faderman[38] and Hazel Rowley,[41] have asserted that there was a physical component to the relationship, while Hickok biographer Doris Faber has argued that the insinuative phrases have misled historians. Doris Kearns Goodwin stated in her 1994 Pulitzer Prize–winning account of the Roosevelts that "whether Hick and Eleanor went beyond kisses and hugs" could not be determined with certainty.[42]

 

A few months after FDR's first inauguration, Eleanor wrote to "Hick" about their open secret: "And so you think they gossip about us....I am always so much more optimistic than you are. I suppose because I care so little about what 'they' say."

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eleanor_Roosevelt#Other_relationships

[Guest Starbuck]

Familiarity has always been the best cure for intolerance. Get to know a PERSON and it erodes a STEREOTYPE. I realized this early by growing up four houses down the road from a middle-aged gay couple.

 

Steve and Bob lived in an old farmhouse with Steve’s elderly mother. What was once a rural community was evolving into the suburbia it is today, but, at that time (1960s), there were other multi-generational families in the neighborhood, people who grew up and built houses near or next to the ones in which they had been raised. My mother (and my nearby aunts and uncles, and some of the other neighbors) had known Steve since they were all kids. Everyone understood that Steve and Bob were a couple (although I suppose the word “lovers” might have curled their toes).

 

Yes, silly, small-minded comments were occasionally made. I remember one of my aunts saying that Steve (high-voiced and effeminate) had “the voice of an angel.” I suppose that was a kind of code just to reaffirm what everybody knew. I also remember hearing that Steve came home “that way” after his time in the Air Force. Those remarks were dumb, but they weren’t malicious. No one in the neighborhood ever treated Steve or Bob in a less than friendly way. And apparently no one thought that “gay” was something to hide from the kids (my generation) because we all knew that Steve and Bob were a couple.

[Rudynate]

The "acceptance" was conditional though. They usually still had to maintain at least a minimal pretense that they were straight. I spent my childhood in a small town in Western New York, where everybody knew everybody, the dogs sunned themselves in the street during the day, the ice man made deliveries to people who still had iceboxes and milk was delivered in a horse-drawn wagon. Our elected representatives were all conservative Republicans. Even in an environment like that, gays were "tolerated." There was a handful of obviously gay men - an interior decorator, a florist, a clothing salesman, a hairdresser (I'm not making this up), who were all highly thought of. But they played the game and stayed in the closet. I can't imagine they would have been accepted if they had actually come out.

[+ Charlie]

My father's favorite cousin Fred (they were both born in 1906) never married and lived all his life with his mother, but he had a "special friend" for many years, and everyone in the family seemed to understand that they were a couple, even though they didn't live together. Charlie was always included in family events, and when Fred died, Charlie was treated like a grieving widow by family members. It was my first intimation, when I was an adolescent and coming to terms with my own sexuality, that such a relationship could be accepted without being explicitly acknowledged.

 

Jeb and Dash is a fascinating book about a similar real life relationship in Washington, DC.

[MsGuy]

When I was a kid in my small southern town, I grew up knowing the mayor/state senator was gay (nick named Sally), the sergeant in charge of our local National Guard unit was gay, a department head in the leading industrial plant was gay, the Penny's manager was gay (he went on to become a national V.P.), our local black transvestite entertained all sorts of visitors on the down low and a wealthy local philanthropist was gay. Everybody pretty much knew and nobody much cared as long as they didn't frighten the horses (inside joke).

 

It's more or less the same today. One of our state senators is gay (& he not very secretly kept up a boy for years and years). He's been senator for 30 odd years now. Once one of the local political factions tried to beat him by attacking him as a queer but that just fizzled out. Turned out his side decided they would rather have a nancy boy that represented them than a straight guy that didn't.

 

My point is that gays have been around since Adam met Steve and small towns have long since learned all sorts of ways to accommodate their presence. Things that are in principle abominations turn out to be negotiable when one has to meet up face to face with the practitioner and his family & friends every day of the week. Not saying that folks don't gossip and not saying that some kids in school won't make life a living hell for a kid they perceive as an odd duck, just that adults generally find that they have enough on their plate w/o harassing their neighbors.

[+ SundayZip]

Some of the stories about gay couples being accepted in small town America sound a lot like how the 'genteel folks' would treat black people, "Oh, I get along with those nice colored folks just as long as they don't get too uppity and they stay in their place".

[Rudynate]

Exac

Some of the stories about gay couples being accepted in small town America sound a lot like how the 'genteel folks' would treat black people, "Oh, I get along with those nice colored folks just as long as they don't get too uppity and they stay in their place".

 

 

Exactly - oppression with a genteel face.

[instudiocity]

Christians say 'love the sinner hate the sin'. Most Christians I've encountered seem to agree with the concept.

 

There are fanatics in every cult, movement and political subdivision. I'm just as afraid of the fanatical Gays as I am the fanatical Christians.

 

They both want to restrict the rights of others.

[MsGuy]

Some of the stories about gay couples being accepted in small town America sound a lot like how the 'genteel folks' would treat black people, "Oh, I get along with those nice colored folks just as long as they don't get too uppity and they stay in their place".

 

Well yes...kinda...if you understand there's a lot of complex shit going on that an outsider might not notice.

 

Just one for instance:

 

A childhood friend of mine was our long time sheriff. Now he grew up poverty level red neck and I didn't. His family was KKK from way back and my family was known to harbor blank loving commies from equally way back. He knows I'm gay and I know he knows, we just don't ever talk about it because, I think, we don't share a frame of reference that allows for any kind of useful conversation. That doesn't stop us from being friends or him going to some considerable trouble to help me out whenever I needed it or me going out of my way to assist him when he needed me. I think he finds me something of an odd duck but fun to spend time with and someone he can trust in a pinch. That's more important to him than who gets my dick hard. Besides his kids are friends with my nephews and my political faction usually cooperates with his faction... and things just get more complicated from there.

 

That's just one of many, many examples. So yes all this takes place in an overall context of an oppressive homophobic culture and I've got all the internal scars you could ask for to prove it but, in the end, we find ways to scrape along together. Small towns are like that, the good ones anyway.

 

And yes it is getting better.

[+ SundayZip]

... I'm just as afraid of the fanatical Gays as I am the fanatical Christians.

They both want to restrict the rights of others.

 

In what way do gays restrict the rights of others?

[instudiocity]

In what way do gays restrict the rights of others?

H0w about the intolerance of threats and pickets simply because a pizza shop owner believes differently than the fanatical gays??? Those folks had never even been asked to cater any weddings and a "news" reporter fund newsworthy the fact that this particular family doesn't believe they should be supporting gay marriage with their lives, creativity and labor. So they get closed down because of the pickets. They get threatening phone calls because they simply believe differently.

 

Celebrating our diversity isn't about our intolerance of those who have divergent lifestyles, values and opinions. Celebrating diversity invites all the forum of public opinion. Fifty years ago, gays felt oppressed. Today, fanatical liberal gays have become the bullies and oppressors. At least fanatical liberal gay-rights activists are bullying and oppressing others for their beliefs and lifestyles.

[MsGuy]

Seems that God has blessed the owners with over $800,000 for standing tall for their beliefs.

 

And they still have the pizza joint.

 

Which they are considering reopening.

 

I guess P.T. Barnum was right.

[MiamiLooker]

I don’t believe the Pizza owner’s daughter was coerced into giving the interview. What reaction did she expect? She could have declined rather than show her stupidity. And, from what I’ve read, it was mostly mainstream America that disagrees with the notion that a business can discriminate based on the owners so-called religious beliefs.

[+ WilliamM]

Some of the stories about gay couples being accepted in small town America sound a lot like how the 'genteel folks' would treat black people, "Oh, I get along with those nice colored folks just as long as they don't get too uppity and they stay in their place".

 

Exactly. I found out about ten years ago that a distant, very middle class cousin was kicked out of his brother and wife's home permanently when they came home unexpectantly during the afternoon and found him in bed with 20-year old neighbor guy. This happened in the 1940s. I understand the brother and sister-in-law being upset, but not for the rest of their lives.

[+ Gar1eth]

From the time I was about 8 in 1969 years old until I was about 13 or 14, there were two 'single' women who lived right next door to us in mid-size Texas (population prob about 100,000 back then).

 

I was terribly naive as a child. It never occurred to me that there was anything weird about their relationship. Of course, I didn't even know what gay was until the question popped up when I was around 10 or 11. I hadn't had the 'Birds and Bees' Talk with my Dad at that point. My mother explained that gays were people with hormone problems (do I need to tell you how I was made fun of when someone mentioned gays at school a few months, and I offered my definition?).

 

But they moved away long before I was in high school. One time when I was in college, in reminiscing they were brought up in conversation. My mother mentioned something about them having been in a relationship. I was shocked because I had never thought about that as a possibility.

 

Gman

[Rudynate]

In the small town where I spent my childhood, there were a few pairs of unmarried sisters who lived together - "old maids," as it were. They were shown great respect and courtesy and were always referred to as "the Misses _____." As an adult, I have often wondered if there was more to these relationships than there appeared.

[+ quoththeraven]

I guess the question is when does discretion end and oppression begin. It probably is different for different folks and different circumstances, but it's worth remembering that prior to some specified period of time that I can't exactly pinpoint because it differed from place to place, PDA by straight folks would have been frowned on, too. So the only oppression going on would have been openly verbalizing the relationship or the inability to make the relationship official. I don't know as gays and lesbians back then considered making their relationship official and known to everyone important as long as they were left alone and not shunned.