Granted, people in the '80s were quite homophobic, but does anyone think the decade paved the way for the (well, increased) acceptance of homosexuality?

People like Boy George, George Michael, the Duran Duran guys (hahaha), the cross-dressing, boys in make-up, etc.  I wonder if this nullified people somewhat to homosexuality.

Were the '80s a decade for gay people?


Well, since you were born in 1990, I'm gonna say no ;D ;D ;D

I'm just razzin ya ;D

It's a bit of a generalisation, but every decade should become more tolerable as things become the norm. So yes the 80's was better for gay people. Same can be said for feminism and racism. However this works best in developed nations. In other countries things can go backwards... terrorism, extremists etc.

For a time during the '80s, it became moderately acceptable for guys to wear make up and have big hairstyles, thanks to several male British singers wearing make up and having big hair as part of their image. Think Duran Duran, Nik Kershaw, Robert Smith from the Cure, and of course, Boy George.

The 80s were certainly a decade when homosexuality became more mainstream in the media (Elton John, Boy George.etc 'came out' in the 80s) as well as in society as a whole. I don't think you could identify the 80s as a decade so much with homosexuality, but more that it brought awareness to the social issues regarding 'gay people.'

And don't forget the way Michael Jackson dressed!

But you know, there were guys who dressed and styled themselves in a feminine way in earlier decades. Remember how David Bowie looked in the 70s? And the 60s was when all the hippie guys started growing their hair long. Before that, only women were supposed to have long hair.

The '70s was the decade when gay men started breaking out of the closet, but in the '80s being gay started reaching more mainstream life and becoming acceptable there as baby boomers started to dominate society. But it was also, from the mid-80s on, anyway, a much less fun decade for gay people due to the AIDS epidemic...alot of people found out more people were gay than they thought the hard way. My mom's doctor died of AIDS in the early '90s, a nice Jewish boy who she had a crush on. But yes, gay things and people became more mainstream acceptable, though the disco/leather/extreme promiscuity '70s scene was totally dead by the mid-late '80s. AIDS made gay life so much less fun...the late '70s was like one giant coming-out-of-the-closet party for gays all across America.

Granted, people in the '80s were quite homophobic, but does anyone think the decade paved the way for the (well, increased) acceptance of homosexuality?

People like Boy George, George Michael, the Duran Duran guys (hahaha), the cross-dressing, boys in make-up, etc.  I wonder if this nullified people somewhat to homosexuality.


Good description -- yeah, I think gay acceptance probably began with all the cultural and mindset changes in the late '60s, picked up in the mid/late '70s (esp. the Disco lifestyle, as others have pointed out), but it started getting mainstream in the '80s.

I think it reached more liberally minded people and cities (i.e. San Francisco), but the "average" person circa 1985, may still have faced some discrimination for "coming out" if that makes any sense.

P.S. I wonder which had a bigger impact - Boy George being a "woman" or Annie Lennox being a "man"? ;D

Annie Lennox is a man? (don't really know who she is) lol,

Yeah, the whole thing about hedonism/promiscuity etc associated with the late 70s/early 80s reminds me of Disco Tex and the Sexolettes, The Village people, and those really weird kinky parties Freddie Mercury used to have. There was some pretty freaky stuff going on by the sounds of it...

I can't really imagine a show like 'Queer as Folk' or 'The L-Word' being shown before the 80s though.

I also think Jack Tripper being a supposed gay man in "Three's Company" helped with the acceptance from the late 70s onwards.

Good description -- yeah, I think gay acceptance probably began with all the cultural and mindset changes in the late '60s, picked up in the mid/late '70s (esp. the Disco lifestyle, as others have pointed out), but it started getting mainstream in the '80s.

I think it reached more liberally minded people and cities (i.e. San Francisco), but the "average" person circa 1985, may still have faced some discrimination for "coming out" if that makes any sense.

P.S. I wonder which had a bigger impact - Boy George being a "woman" or Annie Lennox being a "man"? ;D


I agree with that. Gay acceptance became more average in the early-mid '80s or so, and certainly by the late '80s, gay people were much more accepted. Of course, there was the backlash against the "gay agenda" by televangelists and the religious right and such, and the "AIDS was sent down by God" stuff. The whole division between the two helped create the liberal-conservative divide that is today almost irreparable.

The gay scene was bigger in the '70s, the gay scene as an isolationist thing reached its peak in the late '70s and the early '80s, but by the mid-'80s gay acceptance began to break out of the scene and into everyday life.

The 80's definetly brought it out mainly because of the onset of AIDS becoming so prevelant and the connection between the two.

I think the  80s music scene will always have that homosexual overtones. I was only in my teens when alot of the British groups made it big in the U.S.  I first started watching Mtv in 1982 and I remember seeing Boy George for the first time and no I didnt question his sexuality I guess I was too young. The signs were certainly there. Some artists particularly the British had a soft image in those days and they werent afraid to express their own feminine/masculine side.  Mtv was virtually a new station so they aired their videos on heavy rotation. Its easy to dismiss the 80s pop scene as gay music because alot 80s artists today have come out the closet. George Micheal, Pet Shop Boys, Frankie goes to Hollywood(pretty obvious), Erasure, Dead or Alive and General Public had members come out the closet. Its easy to criticize music scene back then but it just open the door for widespread gay acceptance. :)

I think the  80s music scene will always have that homosexual overtones. I was only in my teens when alot of the British groups made it big in the U.S.  I first started watching Mtv in 1982 and I remember seeing Boy George for the first time and no I didnt question his sexuality I guess I was too young. The signs were certainly there. Some artists particularly the British had a soft image in those days and they werent afraid to express their own feminine/masculine side.  Mtv was virtually a new station so they aired their videos on heavy rotation. Its easy to dismiss the 80s pop scene as gay music because alot 80s artists today have come out the closet. George Micheal, Pet Shop Boys, Frankie goes to Hollywood(pretty obvious), Erasure, Dead or Alive and General Public had members come out the closet. Its easy to criticize music scene back then but it just open the door for widespread gay acceptance. :)


Yeah, the '80s British music scene was very gay...Frankie Goes to Hollywood, Boy George, Morrissey, the New Romantics, et. al. That British invasion seemed to be very gay-influenced.

I think it was around the late 70's going into the early 1980's, it was kind of like that macho, mustachioed, muscly biker type of gay culture. Being gay was in around about 1979-1983 then I think it slowly died down after that because of the AIDS epidemic and people were slowly dying from it.

https://i.pinimg.com/736x/20/b6/83/20b6838b000b9bc207173e43666f632b--village-people-bear-men.jpg
Glenn Hughes from The Village People is an example

I think it was around the late 70's going into the early 1980's, it was kind of like that macho, mustachioed, muscly biker type of gay culture. Being gay was in around about 1979-1983 then I think it slowly died down after that because of the AIDS epidemic and people were slowly dying from it.


The Reagan era also brought with it a wave of conservatism. Wholesome family sitcoms were all the rage.

Elton John, Boy George.etc 'came out' in the 80s


Technically speaking, Elton John came out in 1976 in a Rolling Stone cover story/interview titled "It's Lonely At The Top", but he "hedged his bets", so to speak, by claiming he was bisexual. He later claimed even that admission hurt his sales.

Kind of the reverse of that was the essentially heterosexual David Bowie "coming out" in a Melody Maker interview in 1972. It was a very 1970s phenomenon to do something like that and it really increased his profile and mystique. (Back in the pre- internet, pre-Twitter days when rock stars actually had a "mystique"). Bowie was a brilliant artist and very adept at androgyny, gender bending, and creating personas (not to mention manipulating the media),  but when you get down to brass tacks he was, for all intents and purposes, straight.

Jimmy Sommerville should be mentioned in this thread because he recorded numerous hit singles throughout the 1980s with Bronski Beat and the Communards that featured explicitly gay themes, something even current gay music stars like Sam Smith don't have the guts to put forward. Among his mainstream hits are a cover of the Gloria Gaynor version of "Never Can Say Goodbye" (using "boy" and not "girl"), "Smalltown Boy," "Why?," and the boldly titled "There's More to Love Than Boy Meets Girl." He was more popular outside the United States, but his global success and promotion without shame still say a lot.

We just weren't ready yet in the 1980's and 1990's for gays to be too expressive.  :(  :(  :(

I mean, we still treated Ellen like a pariah for like 3, or 4, years. So post 2008 was a better time for gays than pre-2008.

The Reagan era also brought with it a wave of conservatism. Wholesome family sitcoms were all the rage.


Weren't people dying because of gay culture?

I don't know why yesterday I was watching YouTube videos on 70's and 80's gay culture parades but I'll tell you right now I'm not gay, I was just watching a video and they sung about "Christopher Street" in San Fransisco, a music group called "The Boystown Gang" during the early part of the 1980's if you've heard of them, they consisted of 2 guys and one black woman, they had a bunch of hits and their music was part of gay culture during that time. So after that I was watching a few videos on gay parades and I really enjoyed it. 

Everyone I've heard talk about their experiences tell me that the '80s and early '90s were worse than the '70s for them.

Everyone I've heard talk about their experiences tell me that the '80s and early '90s were worse than the '70s for them.


So the 70's were better? ???

WOW! This is an old thread come to life again.

Gays started to come out of the closet in the '70 and it continued into the '80s. However, the AIDS epidemic was used to make people fear gays. "Gays will give you AIDS." In fact, in the early days of AIDS, it was called GRID, Gay-Related Immune Deficiency since the majority who contracted it were gay-gay men, specifically. The government didn't really do much at first because they were secretly hoping that this disease would wipe out the gay community. Then in 1984, Ryan White, a 13 year old boy came down with the disease after a blood transfusion, they realize that it wasn't a "gay" disease after all. Men, women, & children were coming down with it. That is when the CDC started to act.

BTW, you can read a great book and movie about it called "And the Band Played On."

So, because of the AIDS epidemic, it really set back gay rights. Strives have been made, like same-sex marriage becoming legal in 2015, but there is still a lot of discrimination.



Cat 

So the 70's were better? ???


Don't know, but AIDS probably made gay rights regress again.

The '70s was the decade when gay men started breaking out of the closet, but in the '80s being gay started reaching more mainstream life and becoming acceptable there as baby boomers started to dominate society. But it was also, from the mid-80s on, anyway, a much less fun decade for gay people due to the AIDS epidemic...alot of people found out more people were gay than they thought the hard way. My mom's doctor died of AIDS in the early '90s, a nice Jewish boy who she had a crush on. But yes, gay things and people became more mainstream acceptable, though the disco/leather/extreme promiscuity '70s scene was totally dead by the mid-late '80s. AIDS made gay life so much less fun...the late '70s was like one giant coming-out-of-the-closet party for gays all across America.


I would agree with this. The AIDS crisis in the '80s set the LGBT community back significantly as it gave the religious right something to latch onto as well as promote homophobia among mainstream straight America.  While things were still better than they were in the 1950s for LGBT Americans, they were worse than the '70s overall things didn't really start to get better until the late '90s.  The late '90s seemed to be when the modern mainstream gay acceptance movement in the media kicked into full gear.  The moment was either when Ellen premiered or when Matthew Shepard was murdered.

WOW! This is an old thread come to life again.
This is a nostalgia forum so some people are nostalgic for old threads. ;)

I was just wondering, were the music group The Village People intended for the gay community cause in a lot of their videos they're showing off their muscles and chests and I don't know if they were meant for them or hot women who just want their bodies?

I was just wondering, were the music group The Village People intended for the gay community cause in a lot of their videos they're showing off their muscles and chests and I don't know if they were meant for them or hot women who just want their bodies?


From wiki... "Originally created by Jacques Morali and Henri Belolo to target disco's gay audience by featuring popular gay fantasy personae, the band quickly became popular and moved into the mainstream".