Monday, March 9, 2015

The Mayor Of Castro Street

I'm still reading The Mayor Of Castro Street, it's a pretty long book. I'll be doing the sign posts Again and Again, and Tough Questions.

I noticed while reading this book, although it isn't really directly tied to (related to) Harvey, it was something that occurred a lot. When Harvey was alive (50's), homosexuality was greatly frowned upon. If you were gay, you were automatically pushed aside, teased, or even physically hurt. This brings me to the first Again and Again: Men kept their orientation to themselves, due to the fear they had of straight men, or anyone who wasn't as accepting. A second one was gay bars, clubs, or anywhere a lot of them went, were often raided. What I mean by raided is police officers would go into the places a lot of gay men were, and beat them. It was illegal to even serve a gay man a drink at the time.

Now for Tough Questions, I found a tough question as soon as I read it. Since I am both researching Harvey for an essay project I have, I've been looking at tons of different sources with information about his life. All of them, including my book, pretty much say he wanted to put both of his lives together. His lives as in his gay life, and his family life. Things would become to difficult to combine; If he did, his family/friends life would become ruined. People would attack him, tease him, and possibly break off all connection with him. He was a popular, smart, and athletic person in high school, so it would definitely be hard if he did it. If he did do it, getting something off your chest is always a good thing. You feel better about yourself, and maybe he was happier with the gay lifestyle he hid.

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