I think the existence of gay people on TV really has changed everything. I grew up in a world without gay people. They basically did not exist in popular culture. Reagan and the AIDS era slammed the barely cracked closet door shut. I don't think I knew an out to me gay person until I was 25 or so. I'm not saying I didn't know anybody who was gay. There were certainly plenty of people who were gay and I just didn't know it. There were also a few who I knew were gay, and who were "out" in the sense that they didn't go to to extreme lengths to hide it, but they didn't invite me to gay bars or introduce me to their significant others.
I was a relatively enlightened person on this subject, but I'm not going to claim I was perfectly enlightened back then. I don't think I was homophobic, quite, and intellectually I was certainly in support of legal equality, to the extent that I understood what that entailed at the time, but still the fact is I didn't really know any gay people and didn't see them on the teevee. They were alien and different.
