Gaydar Then and Now

Back in the Bad Old Days when homosexuality was the love that dare not speak its name, you had to develop an intuitive ability called Gaydar to figure out who might possibly be a member of our church. Gaydar was, quite simply, a survival skill because gawd help you if you made the mistake of revealing your sexual orientation to the wrong person by making a pass at them. You could bring all sorts of disaster down upon yourself by doing that.

If only Gaydar had been this unerring and accurate (and society this open) --

How's your Gaydar? Spot the lesbian couple --

Gaydar was and still is, at best, an inexact science of clues, hints, signals and just plain ol' hunches. When I was a Baby Dyke in the 1980s, my friends and I spent endless hours debating whether someone we met might or might not be gay, based on the flimsiest of indicators. The only way you could be certain was if you actually saw them at the gay bar.

These days, however, we must update the old terminology because "gay" is not the blanket term it once was --

Of course, things have profoundly changed for the better in these happier times. No longer is Gaydar the crucial survival skill it once was. Now it's pretty obvious who's gayer than Christmas --

In fact, the quickest and most accurate method these days to figure out if someone sings in our choir is simply to administer the following --

Nowadays the only workout my Gaydar gets is identifying closeted movie stars, country singers and sports figures!