Author Topic: The Question of Time: What Was Life Like in 1963?  (Read 86922 times)

Offline ZouBEini

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Re: The Question of Time: What Was Life Like in 1963?
« Reply #30 on: July 07, 2006, 11:38:53 pm »
Hi Katherine, I suppose it depends on the people and the communities involved.  I think it's great that your aunt and Dorothy had such a nice experience!

I love your blue state comment BTW!  It made me chuckle. 

~Larz

Offline Katie77

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Re: The Question of Time: What Was Life Like in 1963?
« Reply #31 on: July 08, 2006, 05:00:18 pm »
What a great story about two wonderful women, intelligent enough to make for themselves the life that they chose to live.

I have been aquainted, a few times with a household where two women lived together, and most discusssions i have heard about them, is, are they or arent they....never quite sure, and really none of our bloody business anyway.

As ive written in a thread here before, my father was gay in the 50's and 60's...well there wasnt such a word as gay then...it was homosexual.....when it was illegal to be so, here in Australia.....and his partner changed his name by deed poll to my dads name, and they lived as brothers....their neigbours and other straight friends knew them for years and years as brothers, and never thought anything strange with them living together...
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Offline Kajunite

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Re: The Question of Time: What Was Life Like in 1963?
« Reply #32 on: July 12, 2006, 04:40:22 pm »
This memories thread is bringing back some interesting memories for me.  I am 61 and went to a small school in rural Louisiana and I was not accepted by my classmates.  I had not dealt with my sexuality but I knew I was gay and I separated myself from those around me, and the others sensed that and I was somewhat of an outcast.  I still don't go to class reunions much to the chagrine of many of my classmates. 

The times were hard financially for most rural types.  But the 60's was the beginning of an awareness of and for the common person.  The news was not analyzed and discussed before then.  The Vietnam war (especially after I came back from Vietnam) brought out the protests.  This was a generation of rebellion and regeneration.  We had Vietnam war protesters; civil rights protests; the heavy drug culture (i.e. LSD); assassignations; the Cuban missile crisis and so forth, but we never got around to the gay awareness issue.  And then the 80's AIDS crisis came crushing down on the gay awareness.  This devasted the gay awareness issue.  Now in all fairness, gay awareness for the gay person was enhanced.  AIDS brought about an awareness in the gay community, but that awareness was set back horribly in mainline America. 

It is interesting, but gay awareness is moving forward at an amazing pace nowadays, and this movie plays a large role in that awareness.  I think that I am releasing a lot of anxiety and repression because of this board.  Like Ennis there was an internal lynch mob that may be thinning out a bit.  That could be from old age though.  But it is good to get rid of the little suckers! 

The differences between that time and now are numerous and I don't care to remember all of that time.  That time is to be taken in small doses.

I do think of then when I am being grateful for open discussions like this.  Is this an ole' Granny's rheumitize med'cin'?

Offline Front-Ranger

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Re: The Question of Time: What Was Life Like in 1963?
« Reply #33 on: July 12, 2006, 05:33:45 pm »
Go for it, Kaz, get out those mental kinks!
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Offline Kajunite

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Re: The Question of Time: What Was Life Like in 1963?
« Reply #34 on: July 12, 2006, 09:32:42 pm »
Yeah!  Them pesky little critters sure got old!

Marge_Innavera

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Re: The Question of Time: What Was Life Like in 1963?
« Reply #35 on: July 15, 2006, 10:00:58 am »
I would like to hear from people older than myself about how sexuality was dealt with in society when Jack and Ennis first met, particularly because that was a few years before I was even born.  For people younger than me who have asked me about what life was like in the 1970s and even into the 1980s, it's bizarre because it doesn't seem like -that- long ago to me.

I started high school in 1963, graduated college in 1971 and took postgraduate courses for a few years after that, so my memories of the 1960s are late childhood to early adulthood.

Both 1962 and 1963 were a transition between the culture of the 1950s -- arguably an extension of the 1940s -- and the social changes that started up in the next decade.  If Ennis and Jack were 19 in 1963, they'd been what was called in those days "war babies" (i.e., born during WWII) and in a kind of generational no-mans-land right before the baby boom group. 

In 1963, as far as sexuality was concerned, it was still a very repressive atmosphere in varying degrees for everyone - gay and straight, male and female. Homosexuality wasn't a topic that was even openly discussed, especially by middle-class people, and the word "gay" didn't exist. I can't think of any terms that weren't perjorative and when homosexualiy was addressed, usually in print media, it was in the context of pathology:  neurosis, family problems, bogus "causes" such as a too-strong mother and absent father (Momism was still alive and well) or even some kind of mental birth defect.  The view films that referred to it at all, such as The Children's Hour, were hugely controversial, and anything else in the film would get eclipsed.

As far as straight sexualty was concerned, the Pill came out in the early 1960s, but talk about the 'sexual revolution' was still pretty much just talk especially for women.  It was an era when sex was actually exploited in advertising just as blatantly as today: liquor and car advertising especially.  1962 and 1963 were the last years for sex symbol archetypes like the sophisticated playboy (with James Bond being the only survivor), the blonde bombshell and the virgin-next-door. 

1963 was the last year of the "Kennedy era" (November 1963 to be exact) and there was a lot of cultural change in the air that wouldn't become visible to most people for another few years. It was the era of Martin Luther King's iconic "I Have A Dream" speech, which sort of branched out over the succeeding years like channels in a river delta, to women, religious minorities, ethnic minorities and, after Stonewall, gay people.  Too late for Ennis, in whose interior life times didn't change, or at least didn't change fast enough.

The late 1950s-early 1960s would have been a very, very rough time for Ennis and Jack to come of age sexually, especially Ennis. My first viewing of BBM, I knew the basic outlines of the story but none of the details and my immediate impression of  how Heath played him was that it was it was a take on James Dean, another icon of that era, especially in terms of body language.

Just one personal note: I was living in Atlanta in 1963, about the time it became an epicenter of the civil rights movement, and the feeling of being on the cusp of history was particularly strong there.
« Last Edit: July 15, 2006, 10:03:55 am by Marge_Innavera »

Offline 2robots4u

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Re: The Question of Time: What Was Life Like in 1963?
« Reply #36 on: July 28, 2006, 02:12:54 am »
Phillip...an answer to your questions would take up more space than "War and Peace", and it would also depend on the part of the country.  I lived in the rural south until the age of ten, and from my "rememberances", never did I hear the word "homosexual" ("gay" had not yet become part of the lingo), because the general populace did not know what a homosexual was.  In 1963 I was a junior in college, in the Los Angeles area, and it was a time when America was in sexual turmoil; I was called "fag" and "queer" because they were the 2 most offensive term in the English language, but it did not derail me.  In mid-1964 I entered the Air Force and was stationed in SW Texas, and Roswell, NM untill early 1967.  It was in Roswell that I met the man whom I would love for what I thought would be forever, but being military, I had to keep a low profile; being in a small rural community, D. had to keep a lower one.  We had our circle of friends, male and female, and life was great, as long as no one found out about our sex lives. D. did not fear public ridicule, as Ennis does, but he did go out of his way a lot to make sure the proper image was adherded too; I too, as it was not of the era "don't ask, don't tell".  In 1967 I went to a new duty station in Alaska, but it was not a sad thing as there were telephones and stamps, and I would only be gone a short 15 months.  Being gay in Alaska was extremely difficult as we had no place to meet our own kind, and were stuck indoors from mid-Sept through mid-May, but in spite of those circumstance, "gayness" fluorished, but not without consequences.  Two months after I left the military, 150 officers and enlisted men were "rounded up" in a sting, and the roommate of a young man I was seeing from time to time (D. and I had an understanding) was responsbile, to further his own welfare.  I returned to L.A. in mid-1968 and it appeared that nothing, in terms of being gay, had changed...it was more tolerated than accepting, but beatings and murder were ofter the price of coming out, even in L.A. I prepared myself to return to Roswell and try to decide what D. and I would do as far as our future together.  It was not to be....D., roommate Mike, Mike's lover (and my friend) Jerome, and friend of all of us,  were returning from Albuquerque from a 4th of July weekend trip.  Just 35 miles north of Roswell their car was hit head-on by a drunk driver, killing all 4.  That's why "He Was A Friend Of Mine"  hit me so hard when I heard it at the end of BBM.

After a long time of mourning I got on with my life.  The gay climate in the 1970s began to change; we were still "fags" and "queers", but now we were more public with it, and we  began to fight back, no longer being perceived as weak individuals, but now a strong group.  Disco came and went; HIV/AIDS came and stayed.  I had many more relationships, 2 lasting several years. I was also one of the lucky many who did not get this horrible disease (and to this day I will slap the s*** out of anyone who calls it God's revenge on gays for being gay!)  But I've never forgotten D., and like Ennis, I have a simple, meanngful reminder of a love cut short....2 birthstone rings we gave each other for our birthdays after our 2nd year together (we had the same birth month and day, but not year, and neither of us knew the other was getting the ring, so it was a major surprise.)

We have made major strides in acceptance in major cities, but I fear not so much in the smaller towns like Roswell and Riverton.  And I hope that by the time I close my eyes for the last time we will have made some more major strides forward, and that more and more people will understand how love works....it doesn't matter whom you love but that you love and are loved in return.

 
« Last Edit: July 28, 2006, 02:19:36 am by [email protected] »

Offline David In Indy

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Re: The Question of Time: What Was Life Like in 1963?
« Reply #37 on: July 28, 2006, 02:56:10 am »
God. The memories.

Your post brought back many memories for me... both good and bad.

Somehow I had forgotton what it was like... what we went through.

It was beautifully written. Thank you for posting it for us to read 2Robots.

Welcome To Bettermost.  :D
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Offline Jeff Wrangler

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Re: The Question of Time: What Was Life Like in 1963?
« Reply #38 on: August 02, 2006, 09:23:04 am »
And may I add a simple "Amen"?

Thanks, 2robots. Everyone should read your post.
"It is required of every man that the spirit within him should walk abroad among his fellow-men, and travel far and wide."--Charles Dickens.

Offline Sheriff Roland

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Re: The Question of Time: What Was Life Like in 1963?
« Reply #39 on: February 05, 2007, 08:32:19 am »
Gotta go ta work - wanna be able ta find this thread later

Think I got somethin ta add (Life magazine, circa 1965 - Gays in America) gonna do some research & get back ta ya

Btw, this thread has been dormant for a long time - once you get beyond the "where where you when Kennedy died" posts, there are some facinatin reads here!
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