Like, just because they're different I should hate them?' So I never looked at someone differently. “She was around tons of gay men in the ‘50s and ‘60s. 'My mother was a concert pianist,” Buttle remembered. Growing up in the Tristate area, Buttle was accustomed to interacting with people of all walks of life. He had been raised from a young age to appreciate other people’s differences. So we'd go in, have a few drinks, have a few laughs and go home.'īuttle had no issue walking into a gay bar. 'If there was someone in there who knew us, they were hiding they were gay and would never tell on us,” Buttle said of the gay bar patrons in the less-accepting mid-Seventies. The bar was known to serve underage drinkers. So he frequented the dive where he knew he wouldn’t be discovered: a local gay bar called My Oh My in State College. Yet it was at Penn State where he found refuge in the gay community.Īs a 19-year-old Penn State Nittany Lions football player, Buttle would have been suspended by Joe Paterno if he was caught drinking alcohol. Still, he also participated in the high school musicals, where he knew there were gay men around him. In high school, the former New York Jets linebacker was the big football jock. Greg Buttle was used to being around gay men.
