There are people who are still alive who were alive when it was illegal to be gay.
Actually, if you're reading this you're one of them because its STILL illegal to be gay in about 70 countries and in the USA in only the past few days culturally controlling figures like Matt Walsh have supported "conversion therapy" for gay and queer people.
Do not take sexual diversity for granted. Because its violently coercive enemies don't.
@autoerot1ca I remember the Toronto Bathhouse raids.
@autoerot1ca More than 'alive', 'sodomy' was illegal in a huge swath of the country until 2003. My own very blue state criminalized it until 1997.
@DarcMoughty @autoerot1ca I came in to say this. You don't even need to be old enough to drink to be old enough to have been alive when "being gay" was illegal in the US — Lawrence v. Texas is a relatively recent memory, for many.
To say nothing of equal rights...
@jima @autoerot1ca I'm only 41, and all my gay teachers in high school were closeted, at least professionally. I think my school was a bit of a refuge for gay teachers because they were more "don't ask, don't tell" while other schools were more prohibitive.
@jima @DarcMoughty Please note the toot had a world focus and I am not American. In fact 95% of people in the world aren't American.
@autoerot1ca in the US, being lesbian was illegal in iirc 17 states and being gay was illegal in 19 until _2003_.
everyone over 20 was alive when it was illegal to be gay or lesbian in parts of the US.
@moira @autoerot1ca And across most of the south, states haven't repealed those laws, despite them having been ruled constitutionally invalid.
Maybe they just haven't bothered, maybe they're waiting for an opportunity to test them again.
@autoerot1ca
@chrisjrn
I'm (hopefully) a long way off from being dead, and I've still committed, as an adult, what was, at that time, felony sodomy in the states where I lived.