Halloween: blame it on the gays

Halloween is homo-licious! So says right-wing Toronto-born muckraker David Frum. In a piece for CNN, Frum traces Halloween’s popularity among adults today (even straight ones) to San Francisco’s Castro neighbourhood in the 1970s.

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The Castro Halloween party spread to other gay neighborhoods in the 1980s: Greenwich Village, West Hollywood, Key West, Florida. In 1994, University of Florida anthropologist Jerry Kugelmass published a book on the new trend, “Masked Culture,” describing Halloween as an emerging gay “high holiday.” And after a while—the straights imitated.

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What else does Frum say we can blame on the gays? Disco and sparkling water.

• Halloween craze started in gay culture [CNN]