In London we had a gay man in the fifties Quentin Crisp who went out cottaging most evenings and was beaten up and kept doing it ;he wore make up all the time and became an Icon and was still battered - it seems inconceivable looking back on it that any of that was allowed to happen & strange that something that others see as offensive should even matter they don't have to look - I really think what anybody chooses to do is none of my business, unless they want to hurt me.

We as social people must stop the US and them concept. We are all unique individuals that want to express our lives in whatever way feels good to us. Churches put up dividers and judgements for the sole purpose of making money for a church that continues to tell others what to think. Tolerance is a start to heal the rift. Non judgement must follow.

The nazis discredited many progressive cultural movements with the term "cultural bolshevism", including art, architecture, homosexuality among other things. The struggle between those who support progress and those who decry the degeneration of our society is much much older than the sixties. There might be a pendulum that sometimes swings this sometimes that way but those fractions will always be there, from the conspiracy theorist to downright racists to conservatives who can't tolerate the existence of gay people. The only hope we have is that those groups become more and more marginal with time.