As a young man, Washington County native Patrick Arena was taunted because of his sexual orientation.

People labeled Patrick Arena "a fairy" early on.

As the only boy in tap classes at the Vella School of Dance in Washington, Pa., in the 1960s, he was taunted and whispered about.

"Truth was, I knew I was gay, but I certainly wouldn't admit it," says Mr. Arena, 57, of Washington. "There was nobody to discuss it with and I was afraid to discuss it anyway. I certainly couldn't talk about it with my parents or guidance counselor."

Growing up gay in Washington County in the 1960s was painful. Decades later, the climate for 22-year-old Patrick Cameron and other gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people is better in the county, as it is in much of rural America.

But as GLBT communities in Pittsburgh and other cities nationwide host pride festivals and pride weeks throughout the summer, advocates say there's still room for improvement in rural areas, where gay populations remain small. Washington County, for example, has only about 250 same-sex couples, says demographer Gary J. Gates, co-author of "The Gay and Lesbian Atlas." Overall, about 20 percent of same-sex couples in Pennsylvania live in rural areas, said Dr. Gates, a Johnstown native and senior research fellow at the Williams Institute at the UCLA School of Law.

When Mr. Arena was in high school, he pretended he was straight, always pursuing "unattainable" girls, like the head cheerleader or head majorette. During a Christmas concert in the 10th or 11th grade, a teacher who always had encouraged his singing and choreography, shocked him.

"I guess I was standing [in a way] he thought was effeminate in the middle of the chorus, in the front row," Mr. Arena says. "In the middle of the concert, he came up and pushed me and kicked my knee so I would straighten my leg out and told me to stop standing like a 'faggot.' "

After the concert, the teacher asked, "Are you a faggot? If you are, I don't want you in any more of my concerts."

Mr. Arena was speechless and devastated.

"I still discuss this in therapy to this day," says Mr. Arena, now a private voice coach and jazz singer who has performed at some Pittsburgh Pride events this week, at Pittsburgh's Hard Rock Cafe and the Backstage Bar at Theater Square. "I felt like I couldn't trust anybody."

Because he was a dancer, his Washington High School classmates nicknamed him the Sugar Plum Fairy. At his high school graduation in 1969, the student council president announced him as Patrick "Sugar Plum Fairy" Arena.

"Of course, everybody laughed," he said. "That was really humiliating, but I had to walk on stage, smiling and waving."

He attended Duquesne University for about two years, but left the school and headed to New York City in 1972 to study jazz. He worked and lived on Christopher Street, the epicenter of the gay rights movement and ground zero for New York's AIDS crisis, in the 1980s and 1990s.

"I was right there when people started getting sick and losing weight and they didn't know what it was," he said. "I lost over 200 people that I knew, friends and acquaintances."

He returned to Washington in 1999 to care for his ailing father, who passed away about two years ago. Today, he's a member of PFLAG (Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays) in Washington County and participates in programs in Washington sponsored by Persad Center Inc., a Pittsburgh-based counseling center dedicated to serving the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender community.

"I thought that things would have changed somewhat in those 25-plus years," he says of his hometown. "I found that there's a lot of homophobia here and it hadn't changed as much as I'd hoped it had."