Gay Hippies

Do you believe there were more gays or bisexuals during the height of the hippie movement? Or were the statistics pretty consistant ?

 

I think the whole basis of the hippie movement in the sixties and seventies was freedom. Free Love, among many other things. I don't really think one can view it under the same paradigm that we look at things today. That's just because back then the alternatives didn't view things in the comfortable little boxes/definitions that we use today. It wasn't gay/les/bi, it was just pure love, sex, and being.

I don't know anything about statistics, but I can safely say that they weren't as confined as we are today. Even the cinema of the time was less constrictive than today, and they weren't jumping to define everything. And because of that, we can't really compare it to our modern situation.

Hope that helps. Namaste.

 

G'day.


I think there are as many now as there have ever been. General attitudes to homosexuality have changed over time ( and continue to do so) and, as a consequence, so has the number of people who either realise or admit their sexuality. We've always been around, though, and always will be....

Peace,

Bunbury.

 

I would have to agree with White Raven. I think that there might have been more experimentation "back in the day," but I don't know if that necessarily means that the guys involved were gay.

At the same time, I think that more people who are truly gay or lesbian or bisexual are somewhat more likely to be open about it than they might have been 30 or 40 years ago.

 

white raven, you're most perceptive about the scene which you didn't live. yes, it was about freedom, being your true self. true hippies weren't judgemental, they accepted differences. I agree with what Sage said, the hippies might "know" your gay and not be bothered by it, but one didn't go around telling everyone either. It was a really different time

I was pre-pube (10-12 y/o) in the late sixties and hung around with my sister and her friends .. shes almost 10 years my senior. smoked my first weed at 11 with them, they were all very cool. I saw a couple of the guys being very "friendly" with each other, nothing more than just hanging on each other, I figured it was because they were stoned. around the same time, when I was 13, I figured out I wasn't wired (no pun) like my other male friends. they'd be talking about girls n-such and I was thinking about them.

peace out,
bob

 

I knew mostly the second generation hippies (during the 70s) but I would say that the ones I knew were pretty homophobic. Well OK most would say being a fag was ok as long as they didn't come on to them. It could be the small town I lived in but I saw this as I traveled around in after I left there.

Of course I did come to find somewhere in that same time that tere were a lot of people that would seem to be hippies that were actually red necks with long hair that got stoned. When it came to freedom to them it meant freedom to do what they damn well pleased but they had no concept of true liberation for anyone nor acceptance of people that they considered different than them.

It's what kept me in the closet for much longer than I should have.

 

Snowdancer: THis is such a great and truethful answere. Most people have no idea of what it is to be a hippie. Just cause you were born at the right time agewise it does'nt make you a hippie. As for sexuality amoung hippies I found true hippies had little fear of anyone different,although they did not mingle well they did live and let live. It is still a problem today for me. Most men don't want to communicate with another man even on message boards but when I try to talk to women they assume it's a comeon and delete quickly. Somehow you seem different when it comes to stuff like that.

 

I have no idea about the average hippy, both my parents where hippies and both where bisexual, all of their hippy friends where either actively homosexual, bisexual, or have had multiple encounters of it in their youth.

 

maybe...and this is coming off the top of my head because i really have no clue what it was like 30, 40 years ago. but there was a great deal of hippi-age back in the day. lots and lots of hippies. maybe if you were gay or bi back then, people just accepted it as who you were, and were happy that you had found out what you need to make you happy. not very judgmental or cruel about it. they were just happy for you. and happy to know you.

i have a great GREAT group of friends that are like that NOW. but its about 20 people, and the rest of the community around here are totally against it.

i do believe that there are as many gay and bi people as there were back in the day...(im sorry if im offending people with that phrase)...however...back then,if you were in a hippie type community, it probably wasnt nessecary for you to come out. nobody really judged you. now, if you come out, you lose friends. you stay in the closet,you cant be with a partner because you arent being true to yourself. you have a big big choice ahead of you. i chose to come out because i knew what was going to make me the happiest. and the people i surrounded myself with were very happy for me. a constant support group. they love me for me, not who i have sex with.

 

You probably have a point there, my background described in my previous post never really made it difficult for me, but then again most of my friends where hippies anyways, I really hated most people my own age, they where just so stupid, and theirs Fad's completely controlled them, Yes I used to get into fist fights over this kind of thing all the time, still do occasionally, I really dont take crap from people. But as far as my friends they all pretty much knew, or where also themselves and my parents didnt really care anyways. As for my peer's I never cared what they thought anyways, and being known for violant outbursts they somewhat avoided causing problems for me.

 

I think back in the 60's love was love...and they didnt bother to put a lable to it...so , knowing exact statistics might be hard.....now we feel the need to divide that same love into catagories...hetro ..gay...Bi....

I still tend to think love is simply love.

 

gotta chime in and sorry if I am dropping a sour apple.

I was there back in the day and in the early 70's, ironically, the hippies seemed as homophobic or more so than mundane society. Sorry, to report it, but that was my experience.

The dudes with long hair were always being accused of being queer and so they seemed to be defensive. They thought the queers were giving the hippy community a bad name.

The women were no better. They seemed to be afraid that the gay boys would steal away their sensitive men or worse, denude them by association. The level of homophobia was a secret, or at least not talked about. But it was there.



.

 

I wasn't alive back in the day, but my hippy friends and I are all about free love. I know many "str8" men who will get it on with other guys if there are girls there too and we happen to all end up with our clothes off, as we typically do.

 

i think just in general certain counter-cultures are more open minded on sexuality in general (gay/lesbian/trans/bi/queer/whatever)

 

About the only "gay hippies" I've ever known weren't really hippies in the classic '60s definition (The Radical Faeries). For one thing, the hippie movement pre-dated gay liberation by at least three years and thus the two never really meshed, except in San Francisco -- and even there, by the time they did, the hippies had already fled the city for Mendocino and Humboldt counties.

For all of its openness about sexuality, the old Sexual Freedom League in S.F. drew the line at men getting it on with other men -- a damn shame, as far as I'm concerned, for I've had a love affair for long-haired hippie dudes for all of my adult life (I'm 53 now).

I'd say that one of your best chances of meeting up with "gay hippies" is at either a Rainbow Gathering or a Faerie Gathering. That's where I met all three of my boyfriends over the years.

The Pagan community has long been a magnet for more spiritually-oriented counterculture folks, including Yours Truly. A lot of former "flower children" are now Pagans (You'd be surprised how many Pagan men are at the very least bisexual).

There's also HipFaerie on the Internet (Which surprisingly, despite its name, is NOT part of the HipWorld Network).

Hope this info helps.

-- Skeeter

 

in a book i read called 'make love, not war' which was all about the sexual revolution... around the middle of the book it talked about the SFL and homosexuality. and i remember it talking about how as the gay pride thing took off it was somewhat shunned by the free love movement, and then there were different factions, some that focused more on being free to do their thing and others that were more politically motivated.

i am wondering if homosexual acts were more condoned back in the time when they were a true shock to our culture and considered part of the general counterculture... instead of now where homosexuality is seen as mainstream (that is not confined to one particular subculture.)

then again i don't know if being gay was lumped in with being a hippie back in the day.

i think i was born in the wrong time period!!

 

I was a young teenager then, i had an older hippie cousin whi taught me about both being a hippie and bisexuality....Seemed right to me..

 

Nobody stopped being friends with me when I came out, though it could be that the types of people I am friends with are just... cool And I wasn't around "back in the day" being born in 1980. I can say that in my opinion it's never been easier OVER ALL to be gay, though, than it is right now. Except maybe in ancient Greece

 

I was interested to find this site. A few years ago I conducted a number of interviews with folks trying to tease out the interface of the gay and hippie subcultures in the late 60s, particularly in San Francisco. I interviewed Chet Helms of the Family Dog who put on dances at the Avalon Ballroom and brought Janis to SF to join Big Brother. I interviewed Ram Dass, Stephen Gaskin, several of the Cockettes, and gays who were hippies at the time. I really ought to dust those tapes off and do something with them.

 

Glad to see someone else from Ohio. Looking for friendship and fun. More of a Hippie frst and then got into Gay Liberation in early 1970s.