Alice Mitchelle Murder Trial

While reading the article "The Trials of Alice Mitchell: sensationalism, sexology, and the Lesbian subject in Turn-of-the-century America." I remembered a movie that I had watched a few years ago, which essentially was first a book. It's about being gay, although it was not necessarily about a lesbian it was about a young man who is gay and how hard his life was. Just like in this article the movie "Prayers for Bobby" shows a young man who is gay in a very small community in the 1970's. Throughout the story he finds a lover and although this movie doesn't tragically end in the murder of one of the lovers it does end in a suicide. I wanted to relate this movie because it involves many of the same elements as this article such as, violence, and the lack of community support as well as the idea of "chumming," the fact that a gay relationship is dangerous and not 'normal'. In the movie the young man is pushed against fighting for his life every day. Many people in his community viewed gay as wrong and not allowed. Although, Freda and Alice were never beaten up or anything of that sort, there was violence depicted in the article through threats from Alice to Freda. That she would kill her if she did not pertain to love her as she promised.
The lack of family support also played a part in the article as when Alice's mother and Freda's mother sought out each other in expressing their relationship is not normal anymore and that there is now essentially a sexual part involved. It is not just foolish romance between two girls. They were not supportive of the two girls eloping to get married. In the movie 'Prayers for Bobby" everyone in the community thought gay as being dangerous/ scary, wrong, and evil, ect. And they used violence on him because of the fear of the unknown. The family did not approve of their son's lifestyle especially the mother. She did everything in her power to try to change her son and in the end virtually believed that it was her fault that her son killed himself. Only after his death did his mother understand what he was going through. She regretted not accepting him the way he was. My question is to what extent will lesbianism/gayness be looked upon as dangerous and how long will the lack of support for the gays be upon us? And what good does violence insinuate?