Do you know latent gays and closeted gays?
I live in Russia. There are plenty of closeted gays here. My friend has a wife and kids, and he flaunts his muscularity and religious beliefs. Even though he's gay, his friends and family don't know it.
It's typical to have sex with a guy, have a hot night, and the next morning he calmly admits he's heterosexual and just enjoys dick occasionally. Then it might turn out he's in the riot police and breaks up LGBT and anti-war rallies.
But I didn't create this post to whine about gays in third-world countries. It's because I've started meeting people who simply don't believe in closeted gays. They think that if a 30-year-old man turns out to be gay, it means he was straight before, and then somehow became gay.
Or, for example: we're sitting at a bar playing quizzes. Our team includes two closeted gays, me (I'm openly bi, but I don't say it every time I greet someone), and a married couple. Suddenly, the married couple starts discussing how there are no gays in our city, because they've never seen one. It's a random conversation.
And I'm just sitting there in shock.
It must be acknowledged that even in Russia there are openly gay people. And Western media actively portrays queer culture in its films and TV series. And I have a feeling it's not just that I live in a wild country. It's that people are used to seeing openly gay people, rainbow-colored, affected, feminine... And in their mindset, if someone suddenly realizes they're gay as a teenager, they don't continue to live their life as a normal guy. They join a gay scene and live their life as an openly gay person.
And I thought that in the US, gays essentially live like that. And it's probably strange to them that someone might not even realize they're gay—even if their penis gets hard for men (i.e., it's latent).
Or that a gay man can be closeted, live with a woman, go to church, vote Republican, and be a conservative. Simply because he thinks it's the norm.