Thanks for the link, Indy. Looks like it'll be a decent read. I think one of the unfortunate misconceptions, is that homosexuality has only encountered three periods in history:
1) "Oh, Ancient Greece: The Glorious 'Good Old Days'",
2) "Burn at the stake, witch: Persecution of the 'Other'", and
3) "Stonewall, and Beyond: The Modern Era"
More and more, there are histories and investigations coming to the surface, shedding light on the second period, which seem to almost shock people, in the occasional live-and-let-live attitudes of acceptance. In the U.S., two notable sub-periods gathering recent attention are the Civil War era, and the larger era of westward expansion (mainly Gold Rush, and logging camps).
We love to look back, and see the past as primitive. However, as in the recent thread about "gay" used generically by the young as a negative adjective "
http://www.lpsg.org/77884-gay-as-a-badword.html ", fear of being naked around other men (as we've seen in the countless locker room threads here), and the passage of anti-gay legislation in many states, it almost seems that as many strides as have been made toward us "...all get(ting) along," homophobia is still very alive and healthy in the U.S., and we're not hugely ahead of those who went before us.
