If I passed, an interesting career beckoned. If not, my career would end before it had started. Indulgent laughter from my interrogator. Temptation was no sin. It was giving in to it that was the sin.

When Hollywood Studios Married Off Gay Stars to Keep Their Sexuality a Secret



When Hollywood Studios Married Off Gay Stars to Keep Their Sexuality a Secret - HISTORY
Use of the noun gay to refer to a particular person "the author is a gay" or particular people "they are both gays" is commonly considered offensive. Instead, phrases that employ the adjective are preferred, as in "a gay author," "they are both gay," etc. The noun does, however, function as a neutral or positive self-descriptor, and in its plural form is common especially in phrases with other plural nouns that relate to sexual orientation and gender identity, as in "the rights of gays and lesbians. These example sentences are selected automatically from various online news sources to reflect current usage of the word 'gay.


Handkerchief code
You may even have heard the expression used in relation to other kinds of identity, such as being undocumented. In the late 19th and early 20th century, gay subculture thrived in many large American cities. In response, gay life became more secretive. The Mattachine Society, the earliest important organization of what was known as the homophile movement — a precursor of the gay rights movement — took its name from mysterious medieval figures in masks. It did not mean revealing it to the world at large.




Societal attitudes towards same-sex relationships have varied over time and place, from requiring all males to engage in same-sex relationships, to casual integration, through acceptance, to seeing the practice as a minor sin, repressing it through law enforcement and judicial mechanisms, and to proscribing it under penalty of death. In a study, Gwen Broude and Sarah Greene compared attitudes towards and frequency of homosexuality in the ethnographic studies available in the Standard cross-cultural sample. They found that out of 42 communities: homosexuality was accepted or ignored in 9; 5 communities had no concept of homosexuality; 11 considered it undesirable but did not set punishments; and 17 strongly disapproved and punished.