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I actually find it to be an interesting question, especially if put against the age of the responder. Curious to see if younger people had more conventional "first encounters", while prior to that it was primarily comedies or someone like Richard Simmons or Paul Lynde. Could potentially be telling of how times have changed.

Obviously, we all interacted with gay people before we even realized it, but when and how a person became aware of it can reflect how acceptable (or not) it was at the time.

The first one I encountered knowingly was a close friend of mine who came out as a lesbian in high school. 

Seeing one of my best mates get bullied for that is one of the reasons I have a very low tolerance for homophobic bigotry. This girl was one of the nicest people you'd ever meet, but she got harrassed day in and day out just for being gay.

My experience from high school was that the open lesbians (only two that I can think of) were accepted fully whereas not a single guy was openly gay and it was the butt of every joke. It was very evident to me why guys stayed closeted with the way everyone else joked about it. I suppose, as a guy myself, I may not have been witness to how the girls might have treated one another though.

This was a little over a decade ago now... I imagine it's gotten better.

My elementary school was the same. I recall this one kid being harassed for being a Christian and homosexual. Absolutely disgusting, but hey, that's what happens when you have close-minded parents

I didn't really have the gay thing explained to me as a kid, but in a nutshell I just noticed gay people often behaved like the opposite sex.

So when we got older, I wasn't really that surprised by anybody who turned out to be gay.

Gay men are definitely less accepted than lesbians, yes. Bullying methods though tend to vary by gender; where male bullies are more likely to openly verbally/physically attack their victims, female bullies tend to be more subtle; they ostracize, spread malicious rumours, leave nasty notes, deface the victim's property, etc. As such female bullying often goes unnoticed by all but the victim and perpetrators.

The incident I'm talking about was back in 2002-2005. Things have generally improved for gays and lesbians since then, though of course we still have a long way to go.

I have a sister and she has confirmed what you've said a thousand times over through the years. Male bullying was generally physical and blunt, whereas the way her circle of friends would gossip and scheme... I'm not really sure what to call it, but it was clearly destroying her at times.

It's funny, because many idiots in my classes tend to make fun of lesbians/gays all the time. However, they have fetishes for lesbian porn.

Not here to judge what people like, but how do you make fun of homosexual couples but jerk off to them later at night? As Bill O' Reilly says, 

I just thought of a perfect example for female bullying. Sophomore year we had a new girl show up in school and just about all of us liked her. She was very pretty in a casual sort of way, funny, goofy; basically likable in every way. She ended up leaving that year and I figured she moved, but we later learned that she had been so tormented by the girls of the school for that year that she convinced her parents to let her switch.

It's funny because they all seem so nice that it's almost impossible to believe they're capable of any kind of bullying, but they were sufficiently terrible to actually cause a girl to swap schools. So yes, clearly there was plenty happening that I was absolutely oblivious to.