Being homo on the prairie in the Fifties

When New York legislators passed the gay marriage law tonight, I thought about the early 50's in my western North Dakota high school where the words homo and queer were seldom mentioned. My fellow students and I assumed the drama and English teachers were lesbians because they were single and lived together, but the only joke I heard was that one of them was adviser to the Thespian Society which sounded a lot like lesbian. There was an unspoken acknowledgement that my classmate George had experimented sexually with several other boys but sex, hetero or homo, seemed an open book then. You learned on your own because no one, not even your parents or the parish priests, were interested in discussing the matter. After we graduated, George went to college and found some men who actually preferred the company of other men and a few, especially Korean war veterans, who were loudly hostile about same sex sex. After a veteran told George in front of others that he would kick the shit out of him if he ever touched him, George's sexuality evaporated. From then on, he was to all appearances a nonsexual person. I learned that sexual preference was dictated by someone stronger than yourself, be it that vet or eventually religious authority and or the state.