[Ray Hill] came out to his family when he was eighteen. His mother took a long drag from her cigarette and a sip of her coffee and said, “Well, that’s a relief.” “What?” he asked. Late 1950s Houston was not a tolerant time and place for homosexuals, especially in the blue-collar, religiously devout area in which he lived. “We noticed that you kind of dress up more than the other boys in the neighborhood and we thought you were pretending to be wealthy and we aren’t,” she explained. “We were afraid you might grow up to be a Republican.”
from Flagrant Conduct: The Story of Lawrence v. Texas by Dale Carpenter
Forthcoming March 2012
