ABSTRACT
The earliest classifications of non-heterosexual student identities was evident by the 1940s and continued, perhaps surprisingly, at least through the 1980s: those who identify (or are identified by others) as “homosexual,” a clinical term denoting sexual activity as an (or the) indicator of identity (Greenberg, 1988; Katz, 1994), and those whose sexual and emotional lives are led secretly, “in the closet” (Signorile, 1993; Tierney, 1997). These labels are in direct opposition to what was considered the norm in American culture: the open and visible heterosexual who has no questions or qualms about his sexuality.
