>>>But notice that you're not talking about gay accountants or lawyers or doctors or ..., and you're not talking about women at all. 40 or 50 years ago, for most people, if they knew or knew of someone who was gay, that person was in the arts because in the arts, it was safe to be gay and out (well, at least for some--can't help but think about Rock Hudson, who had to hide his sexuality to be a movie star). And, of course, it's only in the last few years, that you can be gay and serve in the US military.
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>>What do you mean "it was safe to be gay?"
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>I mean that in those fields, being gay didn't automatically keep you from working. Being found out to be gay didn't get you fired.
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I've been in the business world a long time and I've never seen anyone fired or otherwise demeaned for being gay.
One of our best managers in one of my jobs was a gay black man.

Ditto in the military.
All the nonsense about gays being mistreated is hogwash.
We had lots of gay guys in our units overseas and in the states. They tended to hang out together.
I never saw anyone mistreated for being gay.
Some of the women officers were built and talked like Hulk Hogan.
If you didn't know that they were gay you were on another planet.

>>Let's talk about Rock Hudson ( a Fitzgerald, by the way.)
>>
>>Do you mean that if hadn't pretended to be something that he wasn't (a heterosexual man) that he would have had to get a real job?
>>Do you mean that if women had known that he was gay, it would have seemed ridiculous for him to be whispering pillow talk with Doris Day?
>>Well, guess what.. it would have and it still would.
>>Choices have consequences.
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>I'll start at the end. Everything we know says being gay isn't a choice.

Agreed, but you choose your job.
He chose a job that inherently implied that he was heterosexual man.

>
>Today, we seem to be better at accepting that people's sexuality doesn't mean they can't play roles with a different sexuality.

Well, now I challenge your use of "better" in that context.
When Arnold Schwarzenegger plays Snow White, I'm out of there - I don't care whose feelings might be offended.

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>I don't know who's deifying Rock Hudson. Ryan White, yeah, he was a hero. So was the reporter whose name escapes me who came out and wrote about his battle with AIDS fairly early on.

What is about AIDS that makes someone a hero because he contracted the disease and talks about it?
Millions of men and women died from syphilis... no heroes there that I've heard of.
If Al Capone had talked or written about his syphilis, would that have made him a hero?
Lots of men in my units overseas were infected with STD.
We called them stupid ******, not heroes.
What is different about AIDS?