A lot of younger people don't realize how far we've come on gay rights in a very short period.
A while ago I heard recordings of white house press conferences from the Reagan administration when a reporter started asking about AIDS for the first time.
I was just a kid during the Reagan administration, and not the kind of kid that listened to white house press conferences, so I had no recollection of this.
It was shocking to me how casually they joked and laughed about gay people dying and how they made fun of the reporter for asking the question. It was also shocking that it wasn't just Reagan's press secretary but also the other reporters joining in and laughing.
I found a link to it for another post recently: