To the editor: On June 23 I turned 51 years old. I want to thank you from the bottom of my heart for “Our Strangest Century,” the special section you published in print that day.
I was born 10 years before reporter Kevin Rector, who had three pieces in the section. I vividly remember hearing almost every day, as a teenager in the 1980s, that gay men deserved to die. I remember the AIDS jokes on TV, radio, and in the hallways of my high school. I remember equating gay intimacy with death.
I am still unraveling and coping with the trauma of these years.
Today I am an educator and professor at a university in Orange County, I work on LGBTQ+ history in each course and I have published books on the subject. My students, straight and queer, tell me every semester that this material is great for them to learn, their favorite part of the course. They say they've never heard anything like that before.
This desire to learn things that I was never taught fills me with hope and healing. Thank you for such a wonderful birthday gift.
Craig Loftin, Long Beach
