From: firstinitiallastname@texas.net   
      
   Arrow Catcher wrote:   
   > On Thu, 15 Dec 2005 19:51:21 -0600, Gerald Clough   
   >  wrote:   
   >   
   >   
   >>It may be proper to distinguish between gays of the old West and men who   
   >>resorted to homosexual activity in the absence of women, the later   
   >>certainly more common than the romantics of Brokeback Mtn.   
   >   
   >   
   > That seems true.  In general the homosexuality would've been   
   > situational.  They probably didn't think much of it since there   
   > weren't all the publicized labels and rubric we have today.  My mother   
   > told me that back in the 30s when she was in college at Gulf Port,   
   > Mississippi, she recalled these two coeds who seemed to be all over   
   > each other.  In retrospect from our contemporary times she figured   
   > they were enacting a lesbian affair, but at the time that never   
   > occurred to her nor the other coeds in the absence of a "gay" rubric   
   > and all the baggage that carries.  They didn't think a thing of it.   
   > May be the same thing with our hypothetical old time gay cowboys (or   
   > pirates, sailors, logging teams, miners, etc.) - they didn't think a   
   > thing of it.   
      
   Very much an idea expressed by social historians, that there were no   
   labels, outside of religeous references to Sodomites, which was, anyway,   
   an altogether erroneous idea of what folks were up to in Sodom.   
      
   --   
                          Gerald Clough   
       "Nothing has any value, unless you know you can give it up."   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)