When did musical theater become “gay” in public opinion?

by Equal_Ad1687

I hope I worded this question ok. I don’t mean any shame towards any LGBT people, I was just curious. A lot of folks these days will automatically assume a man is gay because he is into musical theater, why is that? It seemed like the male musical stars of the 20th century such as Dick Van Dyke and Gene Kelly weren’t harassed about their sexualities. I’m a straight man who loves musical theater and plays, yet I’ve had a dozen people assume I’m gay or something because of that. Why is that? Like I said, no shame to those who are gay, I just wanna know why people are so quick to assume that about men like myself.

Ad_Homonym_

I wrote about this (under a different username) here: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1vovah/whenwherewhy_did_theater_particularly_musical/ceukop5

Short answer: almost from the beginning.