Many knew the cost

When I was growing up in the 1960's and 1970's as a gay boy we didn't have any role models to look too. I do apologize for the length of this post, I know it definitely will hit the 600 word mark. Most younger generation LGBTQ will ask why are so many people coming out in their fifties and sixties? Or as my first boyfriend said, I love you late bloomers. We had no one to look up too and if you read some of these examples listed below, you will understand why, starting with Mr. Rohrer. I, like Mr. Rohrer of the Dallas Cowboys had no positive role models. But Mr. Rohrer was told if he was gay, then it would destroy his football career. Jeffrey Charles Rohrer (born December 25, 1958) is a former American football linebacker in the National Football League for the Dallas Cowboys. He played college football at Yale University and was drafted in the second round of the 1982 NFL Draft. Early life and collegiate career

Rohrer attended Mira Costa High School, where he played football. He was a National Football Foundation and Hall of Fame Scholar-Athlete. In 2014 Rohrer was inducted into Mira Costa's Distinguished Alumni Hall of Fame, in the same group of inductees as musician Jim Lindberg and scientist Lance J. Dixon.

He attended Yale University. In 1978, he was a backup defensive end. He did not attend school in 1979. In 1980, he was moved to inside linebacker and helped his team win the Ivy League championship. He registered 110 tackles (second on the team), 54 solo tackles, 8 tackles for loss, 2 sacks and 2 forced fumbles. He suffered a fractured ankle and missed the last 3 games of the season. In 1981 as a senior, he posted 136 tackles (school record), 71 solo tackles, 4 tackles for loss, one sack and one interception, while receiving All-Ivy League and All-New England honors.[3] The team shared the Ivy League championship, tying Dartmouth College with a 9-1 overall record, and was briefly ranked in the nation’s top 20, with three of its players selected in the 1982 NFL Draft. Professional career Rohrer was selected by the Dallas Cowboys in the second round (53rd overall) of the 1982 NFL Draft, which at the time was considered a reach by the media.[5] As a rookie, he played in 8 games on the special teams units. The next year in addition to special teams, he played on the short-yardage and goal line defenses. In 1984, he was the backup at middle linebacker, until being moved to outside linebacker when Billy Cannon Jr. suffered a neck injury. The next year, he replaced Anthony Dickerson as the starting right outside linebacker, posting 54 tackles and 1.5 sacks. In 1986, he registered 111 tackles (second on the team), 2 sacks, 4 forced fumbles (led the team) and one fumble recovery. In 1987, he was replaced on passing downs, but still managed 74 tackles (third on the team), 4 sacks (led the linebackers) and 2 fumble recoveries. During training camp in 1988, he was hospitalized with a bulging disc in his lower back, which required season ending surgery. In 1989, with the arrival of head coach Jimmy Johnson, he was released before the season started, as part of a youth movement. During his time with the Cowboys, he was considered a tough and outspoken player. Personal life Rohrer publicly came out in 2018, when he announced his engagement to his partner of two years, Joshua Ross. On November 18, 2018, he and Ross were married. His marriage made him the first NFL player, former or current, to enter into a same-sex marriage. Rohrer was formerly married to Heather Rohrer, with whom he had two children.

David Ogden Stiers was born at St. Francis Hospital in Peoria, Illinois, on Halloween 1942, the son of Margaret Elizabeth (née Ogden) and Kenneth Truman Stiers, and grew up in Peoria Heights, Chillicothe, and Urbana, Illinois. He attended Urbana High School as a freshman and sophomore where one of his classmates was Roger Ebert. Stiers' family moved to Eugene, Oregon, where he graduated from North Eugene High School, and briefly attended the University of Oregon, before enrolling at the Juilliard School in New York City, from where he graduated in 1972.Stiers subsequently moved to San Francisco, where he performed with the California Shakespeare Theater, San Francisco Actors Workshop, and the improv group The Committee, whose members included Rob Reiner, Howard Hesseman, and Peter Bonerz. In California, he worked for the Santa Clara Shakespeare Festival for seven years. Stiers relocated to New York City in the 1960s to study at the Juilliard School (Drama Division Group 1: 1968–1972). During his studies, Stiers was mentored by actor John Houseman, whose City Center Acting Company he later joined. Early acting credits Stiers first appeared in the Broadway production The Magic Show in 1974 in the minor role of Feldman. This was followed by several other Broadway productions, including The Three Sisters and The Beggar's Opera. Subsequent early credits included roles on the television series The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Kojak, and Rhoda. Stiers also appeared in the pilot of Charlie's Angels as the team's chief backup. M*A*S*H (1977–1983) Cast photo from M*A*S*H for 1977: Front row from left - Loretta Swit, Harry Morgan, Alan Alda, Mike Farrell. Back row from left - William Christopher, Gary Burghoff, David Ogden Stiers, and Jamie Farr In 1977, Stiers joined the cast of the CBS sitcom M*A*S*H. As Major Charles Emerson Winchester III, Stiers filled the void created by the departure of actor Larry Linville's Frank Burns character.[10] In contrast to the buffoonish Burns, Winchester was articulate and socially sophisticated, and a highly talented surgeon who presented a very different type of foil to Alan Alda's Hawkeye Pierce and Mike Farrell's B.J. Hunnicutt. Burns usually served as the butt of practical jokes instigated by Pierce or Hunnicutt, was frequently inundated by insults for which he had no comebacks, and was often harshly criticized for his surgical skills. Winchester, however, presented a challenge to his colleagues' displays of irreverence, since his surgical skills could match or even outshine their own and, when it came to pranks and insults, he frequently outmanoeuvred his opponent; his patrician manner and aversion to puerile behavior served as the target for his fellow surgeons' barbs and jokes. At times, however, Winchester could align himself with Pierce and Hunnicutt, and the occasional tantrum aside, held considerable admiration for his commanding officer, Harry Morgan's Colonel Sherman T. Potter. For his portrayal of the pompous but emotionally complex Boston aristocrat, Stiers received two Emmy Award nominations. Other television work After M*A*S*H completed its run in 1983, Stiers made guest appearances on the television shows North and South, Star Trek: The Next Generation, Murder, She Wrote, Matlock, Touched by an Angel, Wings, ALF, and Frasier, along with a regular role in the first season of Two Guys, a Girl and a Pizza Place as Mr. Bauer. In 1984, he portrayed United States Olympic Committee founder William Milligan Sloane in the NBC miniseries The First Olympics: Athens 1896 for which he received another Emmy nomination. Beginning in 1985, Stiers made his first of eight appearances in Perry Mason made-for-TV movies as District Attorney Michael Reston. He appeared in two unsuccessful television projects, Love & Money and Justice League of America (as the Martian Manhunter). In 2002, Stiers started a recurring role as the Reverend Purdy on the successful USA Network series The Dead Zone with Anthony Michael Hall. In 2006, he was cast as the recurring character Oberoth in Stargate Atlantis. Voice work Stiers provided voice work for dozens of film and television projects. His first work was on one of George Lucas's earliest films, the critically acclaimed THX 1138, in which he was incorrectly billed as "David Ogden Steers". Stiers voiced PBS documentary films such as Ric Burns's project New York: A Documentary Film, 2010 Peabody Award winner The Lord is Not on Trial Here Today, and several episodes of the documentary television series American Experience,[13] including Ansel Adams (2002), also directed by Ric Burns. He voiced Mr. Piccolo in the animated English-dubbed version of Studio Ghibli's 1992 film Porco Rosso, as well as Kamaji in the English dub of the studio's 2001 film Spirited Away. He collaborated with Disney on eight animated features, including 1991's Beauty and the Beast (as Cogsworth, also providing the opening narration), 1995's Pocahontas (as Governor Ratcliffe and Wiggins), 1996's The Hunchback of Notre Dame (as the Archdeacon), 2001's Atlantis: The Lost Empire (as Mr. Harcourt), and 2002's Lilo & Stitch (as Jumba Jookiba). He reprised a number of his Disney roles for various sequels, most notably with Jumba in Lilo & Stitch's three sequel films (2003's Stitch! The Movie, 2005's Lilo & Stitch 2: Stitch Has a Glitch, and 2006's Leroy & Stitch) and Lilo & Stitch: The Series. He lent his voice to the direct-to-video Batman: Mystery of the Batwoman (2003) as the Penguin. Stiers did voice work for Solovar in a two-part episode, "The Brave and The Bold" of Justice League and voiced Solovar again in a Justice League Unlimited episode "Dead Reckoning". He voiced Mr. Jolly from Teacher's Pet. He voiced the king and prime minister in the 2004 short film The Cat That Looked at a King. In Hoodwinked (2005), the animated movie partly based on Little Red Riding Hood, Stiers voiced the role of Nicky Flippers, the frog detective who is dispatched to Granny's house. He voiced Pop's father, Mr. Maellard, in the animated TV series Regular Show, which debuted in 2010. Stiers had voices in several video games, including Icewind Dale, Kingdom Hearts II, Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep, as Jeff Zandi in Uru: Ages Beyond Myst, and as Esher in Myst V: End of Ages.Stiers was the reader for numerous audiobook versions of novels, including Tom Wolfe's A Man in Full (1998), and Colleen McCullough's The First Man in Rome. Music Though he had no formal musical training, Stiers was the associate conductor of the Newport (Oregon) Symphony Orchestra and the Ernest Bloch Music Festival. He also played a major role in establishing the Newport Symphony. He also guest-conducted over 70 orchestras around the world, including the Oregon Mozart Players, the Vancouver Symphony, the Virginia Symphony, the Oregon Chamber Players, and the Yaquina (Oregon) Chamber Orchestra, as well as Orchestras in San Francisco, San Diego, Los Angeles, Chicago, and Toronto. Stiers traced his love of music back to a performance by George Szell and the Cleveland Orchestra on the basketball court at the University of Oregon in the 1950s. During his days at Juilliard, he would skip his acting classes to sit in on master classes led by such notables as John Williams, Pierre Boulez, and Sir Georg Solti. Personal life Stiers came out as gay in 2009. Death Stiers died at his home in Newport, Oregon, on March 3, 2018, at the age of 75, from complications related to bladder cancer. His will made provisions for bequests to several area arts organizations, including the Newport Symphony, Newport Public Library, and the Oregon Coast Council for the Arts, as well as other groups. (Source Wikepedia)

Robert Reed father from the Brady Bunch Reed and fellow Northwestern student Marilyn Rosenberger married in July 1954.[34] They had a daughter, Karen Rietz, before divorcing in 1959.[35] Reed kept the fact that he was actually gay a close secret, since public knowledge of his sexual orientation would likely have damaged his career during that era.[36][37]

Several years after his death, Reed's Brady Bunch co-stars – notably Barry Williams and Florence Henderson – publicly acknowledged his sexual orientation, and revealed that most of the cast and crew of The Brady Bunch knew.

Henderson spoke about Reed being in the closet during a 2000 interview with ABC News: "Here he was, the perfect father of this wonderful little family, a perfect husband. Off camera, he was an unhappy person – I think had Bob not been forced to live this double life, I think it would have dissipated a lot of that anger and frustration. I never asked him. I never challenged him. I had a lot of compassion for him because I knew how he was suffering with keeping this secret."

Regarding Reed's unwillingness to discuss his sexuality, even off-camera and in private, Williams told ABC News during a 2000 interview that "Robert didn't want to go there. I don't think he talked about it with anyone. I just don't think it was open for discussion – period. [Had it ever come out that Robert Reed was gay] it probably would have caused the demise of the show. I think it would have hurt his career tremendously." Death In November 1991, Reed was diagnosed with colon cancer. When he became ill, he allowed only his daughter Karen and actress Anne Haney, a close friend, to visit him. Haney later said of Reed, "He came from the old school, where people had a sense of decorum. He went the way he wanted to, without publicity." Weeks before his death, Reed called Henderson and asked her to inform the rest of The Brady Bunch cast that he was terminally ill. He died on May 12, 1992, at Huntington Memorial Hospital in Pasadena, California, at age 59. Reed's death was initially attributed solely to cancer, but details from his death certificate were made public revealing that Reed was HIV positive. It remains unknown how and when Reed contracted HIV because he kept his medical condition and private life a secret from the public until the day he died, telling only a few close friends. While Reed did not have AIDS at the time of his death, his doctor listed his HIV-positive status among "significant conditions that contributed to death" on the death certificate. He is buried at Memorial Park Cemetery in Skokie, Illinois. ( Wikepedia )

A longstanding rumor maintains that Nabors "married" actor Rock Hudson in the early 1970s, shortly before Nabors began his relationship with Cadwallader. Not only was same-sex marriage not yet legal anywhere in the United States at the time, but the two closeted gay actors were, according to each other, never more than casual friends. According to Hudson, the story originated with a group of "middle-aged homosexuals who live in Huntington Beach", who sent out joke invitations for their annual get-together. One year, the group invited its members to witness "the marriage of Rock Hudson and Jim Nabors", at which Hudson would take the surname of Nabors' most famous character, Gomer Pyle, becoming "Rock Pyle". The rumors spread, and because of this the two made sure they were never seen in public together. (Wikepedia)

I hope this has helped with explaining why we didn't come out or talk about being gay back in the our youth. It wasn't allowed to be discussed.