Coming Out in the 1960s

I enjoyed traveling back in time to the 1850s.. Let’s do more. Let’s travel forward a hundred years to the 1960s with my new series, “Coming Out in the 1960s.

In 1965, President Johnson is busy escalating the “military action” in Vietnam, determined to increase our presence there from 50,000 troops to 500,000. To raise his army, he is extending the limits of the military draft and is threatening the status of college students’ deferments.

College youth will organize and join forces, nationally. And an entire generation will rise up and resist the authority of their government.

The culture will quake in the last half of the sixties. And, a great tectonic fault will heave apart, separating: violence from peace, hate from love, conformity from individuality, lies from honesty, and inhibition from spontaneity.

Just when we all think that the quake has quieted, and we have learned to live with the rupture, there will be a new and deep rumbling. Out of the cultural fault, there will swarm HIPPIES!

Men will pierce their ears with golden earrings, and many will wear necklaces of love beads. Pink and yellow will be tie-dyed into their color schemes. And, there will be enough drugs to shift the orbit of the moon!

The keywords are, “Turn on. Tune in. Drop out.” Gender-bending and unisexuality will emerge, along with love-ins. Straight guys, hyped on pot, acid, and speed, will insist that they are embracing their feminine side. Little do they know that they are helping to set the stage for Gay Liberation.