Were gay issues talked about in Pullman, Bellingham in early 1970s?

A personal perspective.

I just got to thinking that I didn't hear much derogatory talk against gay people, until I got to Bellingham. That was back in 1973 when I came to Bellingham for Western Washington University. Back in Pullman, where I grew up, being gay just wasn't discussed. It was kind of a "conspiracy of silence." That was a different era and the subject was pretty much deep in the closet. There was a naive silence, but I don't remember much scorn. Pullman is a fairly liberal, college town, but back then the gay issue was very hidden.

When I came to Bellingham, my freshman year, it was suddenly more out in the open. There were gay symposiums on campus, but back in my freshman dorm, folks were telling lots of faggot jokes.

Coming from my liberal background, I didn't have much respect for the people in my dorm. They seemed superficial and shallow. It seemed like the folks, in my freshman dorm, were either "Jesus Freaks" (a big term in the early 1970s) or drunks. I missed the slower, more thoughtful ways of Pullman High School. Just about everyone's dad, in Pullman, was connected to Washington State University so there was an academic feel. Here in Bellingham, many of the students, in my freshman dorm, were from more commercial backgrounds. They seemed less genuine, more phony and hurried. Also more materialistic.

I went to some of the gay discussion groups, on Western campus, in part to (sort of) jokingly horrify a "Christian" who was living across the hall from me in the dorm.

As time went on, I started meeting more varieties of people, here in Bellingham. It took some time, but I did find a variety of intelligent and genuine people scattered around.

Ironically, as I got somewhat involved in the gay student group, I found many of those people to be shallow and superficial as well. I've always been an outsider and never fit, very well, into any of those boxes. I've usually gotten along fairly well being on the edge, rather than in the middle, of various clicks. Some of the intelligent and genuine people, I find today, are gay.

I think things are quite a bit different today, than back then. I sometimes wonder what being in a freshman dorm, at Western, would be like today?