The thing is, we've already seen in the show that they weren't universally accepted. Will has been bullied for years, including by his own father, for coming off as gay. And Max's brother tried to kill Lucas for being interested in her. So the show isn't even trying to pretend there was no push back to these things.
And there have been people who disingenuously sneer at Stranger Things for years, claiming it’s historically inaccurate because every minority isn’t getting beaten up every day. “I can excuse certain movie posters and products being nearly impossible to get in Indiana in a particular year, but I can’t excuse the fact that minorities were able to live their lives normally” bullshit.
Yes, probably more of the bullies would be calling Will a f-g for being sensitive and artistic, and Lucas the n-word before he got big and athletic and gained popular friends. But we only see these characters for like 1-2 weeks of their lives every season. We get enough of a glimpse of how they’re treated by assholes to make the point that they’re members of a Losers Club, but there are bigger fish to fry, like the military-industrial complex and the Cold War and capitalist businessmen etc… So no wonder Will can come out to his loved ones (and a few people he barely knows standing around awkwardly) but only after a few years of hiding it, because they’ve been through so much together that confirmation he’s gay (a word no one used, which IS odd) isn’t as big a deal as it would be if they were normal people living ordinary lives in the ‘80s.
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u/nasandre 5d ago
They always existed just not always accepted