| OCR Text |
Show 15 different dynamics. The narrators in this study who spent significant periods of their adult lives in Salt Lake were not primarily sexual migrants, especially since more generous offerings could be found elsewhere. Although their childhood circumstances reflected diverse religious, class, and residential experiences, all but a few of the men traced their presence in Salt Lake to a Utah or Mormon upbringing, and in most cases both. Unlike the men comprising the gay diaspora in larger cities, the gay men of Salt Lake claimed roots in the city. They grew up at a time when Utah's lawmakers and religious leaders fretted over the war's legacy of promiscuity and sex-related crime, yet they experienced a parallel universe of same-sex eroticism, secretly and momentarily beyond the reach of policymakers and parents. This chapter examines the childhood and adolescent experiences of gay men raised in Utah or the Mormon Church during the 1940s and 1950s, most of whom recalled little to no discussion of homosexuality. Within narrators' families, the subject was never raised, reflecting a general reticence about sexuality and a particular complacence about Mormon families' immunity to "sexual deviance." The incompatibility of Mormonism and homosexuality seemed so obvious it went without saying, yet church leaders' and parents' silence provided a tabula rasa for youthful experimentation. Innocent of its social significance, friends commonly engaged in homosexual behavior. At the same time, the "queer" stigma typically applied to nonconforming gender behavior rather than sexuality, but practical necessity and factors peculiar to the Mormon culture permitted a surprising degree of gender flexibility. The war years brought into sharp reliefUtah's ambiguous relationship to the |
