My earliest memories of gay people came from watching a neighborhood. But the old language used to express them was on its way out, and those who hated homosexuals knew to say “religious freedom” or “family values” instead of plain old “faggot.” 4Įven before I graduated from high school, I had seen the radical change in attitudes toward homosexuals. There was still no lack of haters, but in the social and educational world that I was brought up in, people had gotten the memo that it was no longer cool to say derogatory things about homosexuals. And in 1994, gayness was considered far less novel than it had been even a few years before.
