{"id":6086,"date":"2012-07-29T19:03:32","date_gmt":"2012-07-30T00:03:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/?p=6086"},"modified":"2012-07-29T19:03:47","modified_gmt":"2012-07-30T00:03:47","slug":"one-reason-coming-out-to-yourself-was-very-difficult","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/6086","title":{"rendered":"One Reason Coming Out To Yourself Was Very Difficult"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Jim Burroway over at Box Turtle Bulletin writes a daily Today In History post, and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.boxturtlebulletin.com\/2012\/07\/28\/47017\">yesterday&#8217;s gives me pause<\/a>. \u00a0 Here in 2012, even those of us who lived through this tend to forget it&#8230;<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><em><strong>Illinois Rescinds Sodomy Law: <\/strong>1961. <\/em>On this  date in history, the state of Illinois led the nation in becoming the  first state in the land to enact a repeal of it&#8217;s law criminalizing  homosexuality. The repeal was part of a very large omnibus legal  overhaul of the state&#8217;s criminal code, and much of that overhaul was  based on the \u00a0American Law Institute&#8217;s Model Penal Code, which in 1956  recommended the elimination of anti-sodomy laws and other prohibitions  against consensual sexual activity between consenting adults. Because  the Model Penal Code also touched on a plethora of other criminal  statues, it&#8217;s likely that most Illinois lawmakers didn&#8217;t realize that  they were repealing their anti-sodomy law by adopting the Code.  Nevertheless, the code was adopted, and the anti-sodimy law&#8217;s repeal  became effective on January 1, 1962.<\/p>\n<p>For the next decade, Illinois would remain the only state in the  union to legalize consensual adult same-sex relationships. In 1971,  Connecticut finally rescinded its sodomy law, followed by Colorado and  Oregon (1972)&#8230;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>1972 was when I graduated from High School. \u00a0 So bear in mind the story I&#8217;m telling in <a href=\"http:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/acos\/acos-main.htm\"><em>A Coming Out Story<\/em><\/a> was happening in an America where sex between same-sex consenting adults was a criminal act in 48 out of fifty states that could get you jailed.<\/p>\n<p>If it seems like little teenage me <a href=\"http:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/acos\/episode_16.htm\">is trying awfully hard not to notice he&#8217;s falling head over heels in love with a guy<\/a>, this has some bearing on why. \u00a0 The next three episodes form another small story arc, that centers on the horrible Sex Ed class I had in Jr. High, and how damaging it was particularly to a gay teenager. \u00a0 There are other negative images of gay people I planned on including into it as background. \u00a0 I may just rewrite some of the text of story arc to include this fact about the state of the sodomy laws back then, just as I was on the cusp of adulthood.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Jim Burroway over at Box Turtle Bulletin writes a daily Today In History post, and yesterday&#8217;s gives me pause. \u00a0 Here in 2012, even those of us who lived through this tend to forget it&#8230; Illinois Rescinds Sodomy Law: 1961. On this date in history, the state of Illinois led the nation in becoming the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[25,3],"class_list":["post-6086","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-life","tag-a-coming-out-story","tag-gay-rights"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6086","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6086"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6086\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6086"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6086"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6086"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}