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.

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.

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

• Halloween craze started in gay culture [CNN]