Growing up in the 1960s South as a gay young man was perilous. Public sentiment was overwhelmingly negative, and the government often used the term “deviant” in referring to gay people, as Eric Cervini documented in his 2020 book The Deviant’s War: The Homosexual Versus the United States of America (a Pulitzer Prize finalist). Thousands of civil services and military personnel were dismissed due to rules against gay behavior. A “lavender scare” outed closeted gay people and increased discrimination. In the early 1950s, Congress passed an act “for the treatment of sexual psychopaths” in the nation’s capital, facilitating the arrest and punishment of people who acted on same-sex desires and labeling them mentally ill” (Adkins, Judith. “‘These People Are Frightened to Death’: Congressional Investigations and the Lavender Scare.” Prologue Magazine, vol. 48, no. 2, 2016). Further investigations into gay sexual orientation during that time forced gay men into both literal and figurative hiding. It was a tumultuous time for gay men, especially in the South, where prevailing attitudes held that men must be “men” and discouraged activities seen as “feminine.”

Laws targeting gay sexual orientation date back to colonial times and were often defined as sodomy laws, or laws making anal intercourse illegal.