Yeah, right around that time of my life my mom made friends with a gay man. He was a black belt in juijitsu, masculine, and really fun to be around. He taught me a lot of juijitsu moves, and spent time hanging out with me. He broke even more preconceptions for me, and exposed me to something in reality that I had only been exposed to in concept before. That was the first time in my life that I realized gay people are just people, the same as everyone else, not these moral deviants I had been taught that they were. It still took me several more years to completely overcome the bigotry I was taught, but it did happen.