What was going on when I was born?

In neighborhoods throughout the city and across a broad spectrum of New York life, the influence of homosexual men and women is being seen and felt more than ever before. The yearly Gay Pride March, scheduled for June 26, is only one sign of the broadened awareness of homosexuality and the changes it has brought over the last decade and a half. The staffs of major political figures include representatives to the homosexual community. Homosexual churches and neighborhood groups have attracted hundreds of members. And this month a successful Broadway play about a drag queen's search for the meaning of family life won two Tony awards. Still, there are quarters in which homosexuals encounter hostility, and many men and women continue to lead what they describe as double lives, ''gay'' at home and ''straight'' on the job. But shifts in public attitudes have prompted others to live openly.

International Balance in East-West relations was stressed by Secretary of State George P. Shultz. In Congressional testimony, Mr. Shultz said Washington remained concerned about Moscow's military buildup, its ''unconstructive involvement'' in unstable areas of the world and its ''unrelenting effort'' to impose its philosophy on its allies. But he said the Administration sought ''to engage the Soviet leaders in a constructive dialogue.'' (Page A1, Column 6.) The Pope's return to Poland today is viewed by the military rulers as potentially risky but also as a chance to gain legitimacy, with the goal of an easing of Western economic sanctions imposed after martial law was declared Dec. 13, 1981. As Warsaw's welcoming banners were hung, plainclothes policemen were posted around the home in Gdansk of Lech Walesa, the founder of the Solidarity union, and he was told he would not be allowed to leave. (A1:5.)

The Port Authority, the operator of airports and bus terminals, wants to help build a $1.2 million greenhouse for an herb nursery in the South Bronx. ''We want to help finance businesses who want to expand and grow in New York City,'' Peter C. Goldmark Jr., executive director of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, said yesterday. ''What is unusual about this is the product.''

Fifth Avenue will get a ''red zone'' bus lane today that officials hope will help unsnarl traffic congestion there. The effect the lane will have on the avenue's commerce, however, remained an open question. The western-most lane of the avenue will be reserved for buses from 7 A.M. to 7 P.M., from 34th to 59th Street. Other vehicles may use the lane to make right turns, but those that stop or travel in the lane will be subject to fines of up to $100.

If there was doubt in anybody's mind that the computer would be an intrinsic part of American working lives, then this year's National Exposition of Interior Contract Furnishings will convince the most severe sceptics. Every major office furniture concern in the show coped with the computer. Work stations, executive desks, ergonomic chairs and filing cabinets seemed to be merely basics. The news was in the market's proliferation of support furniture - soundproof closets to house computer printer machines, rolling stands that support computer terminals, drawers that hold keyboards and tilting table tops - as well as myriad ways of dealing with wires, one of the nemeses of the new office environment.

LAST week, as the American Craft Museum's exhibition ''Towards a New Iron Age'' was being set up for tomorrow's opening, it was clear that the rugged, substantial pieces of iron - from Europe, America and Japan - were essentially decorative, and not the practical, everyday tools ironsmiths once made. While the handsome, contemporary bookends, fire grates and bowls may ostensibly have a use, it was industrially produced hammers, pliers and dollies that were actually used to install the show. Even the museum itself, as a building, has no crafted, functional ironwork; its doorknobs, hinges and locks are standard off-the-shelf items. Ironwork as a craft, once essential to our lives, is now optional. The history of ironwork in the United States is a history of steady attrition. In the late 18th century, nails wrought by smiths were replaced by nails cut by machines. In the early 19th century, the forged components of firearms began to be milled by machines. Midcentury factories started to make the tools that smiths had traditionally forged. Then a horseshoe-making machine was invented, then a hinge-making machine and then farm machinery was industrially produced; later the rubber automobile tire replaced the carriage wheel.

The Supreme Court today forcefully reaffirmed the constitutional right to obtain an abortion and struck down an array of local legislative restrictions on access to abortions. In the most sweeping of three decisions, the Court declared unconstitutional an Akron, Ohio, ordinance that placed a number of obstacles in the path of access to abortion. The provisions struck down by the 6-to-3 ruling included a 24-hour waiting period, a requirement that all abortions after the first three months of pregnancy be performed in hospitals and a highly detailed ''informed consent'' provision that required a doctor to tell a woman seeking an abortion that the fetus ''is a human life from the moment of conception'' and that abortion can have dire physical and emotional consequences. ''It is fair to say,'' Associate Justice Lewis F. Powell Jr. wrote for the Court, ''that much of the information required is designed not to inform the woman's consent but rather to persuade her to withhold it altogether,'' a motive that he said was forbidden by the Court's earlier abortion rulings. The decisions had considerable practical and symbolic importance. Twenty-one states, including New York, New Jersey and Connecticut, limit second-trimester abortions to hospitals. Those restrictions are now invalid.

The Washington State Supreme Court yesterday declared invalid contracts that bound local utility companies to pay off $2.25 billion in bonds to build two nuclear power plants that were never finished. Although the decision is certain to be reviewed, it heightened concern in the nation's bond markets that there might be a default on bond payments, the largest default ever for tax-exempt bonds. In the aftermath of the court decision, securities dealers said few of the bonds could be traded, although speculators were offering to buy them at only 15 cents on the dollar. The price of the bonds fell about 10 points yesterday, or $100 for each $1,000 of bonds, reducing their price to $150 and raising yields to more than 30 percent. The Washington Public Power Supply System, created in 1957 to build power plants in the state of Washington, had relied on the contracts with the utilities to assure that its bonds would be paid off, even though it had halted work on the plants.

Mayor Koch, breaking a long silence on the subject, charged yesterday that the State Education Commissioner had been politically motivated when he refused to allow Deputy Mayor Robert F. Wagner Jr. to become the city's Schools Chancellor. ''I thought that was a political act of outrage and cowardice,'' Mr. Koch said of the Commissioner, Gordon M. Ambach. ''I think he was just afraid of being accused of being a racist, afraid of lawsuits, and he took the easy way out.''

THIS summer Rebecca Lipman of Manhattan will take on her fifth consecutive job as a mother's helper, living with a family on vacation and caring for their small children. Thus far she has summered in Cape Cod, East Hampton, the Berkshires and Southampton. This July through Labor Day she will be staying in Atlantic Beach, L.I., looking after a 5-year-old boy and a 9-month-old girl. ''I can't think of a better way to spend a summer working,'' said the 15-year-old sophomore at Milton Academy in Milton, Mass., who started out at age 11 as a children's companion. ''It's challenging because you're responsible for kids, you spend your time at a beach or pool, you're part of a family, you learn a lot. Sometimes it's scary having all that responsibility and of course the kids aren't always perfect, but mostly it's fun.'' On the other hand, Cathy Strong, 17, of Rumson, N.J., worked as a mother's helper for two families last summer and decided this year she would prefer a job at a nursery school or day-care center. ''I would rather work at something more organized,'' said the junior at the Westover School in Middlebury, Conn. ''I love kids, and the families were nice. But there were conflicts between the parents over the kids' discipline, and I didn't like being in the middle of that.''

Banners in patriotic and religious colors were hung along the major streets tonight as this usually drab capital prepared for the long-awaited, politically charged return home of Pope John Paul II on Thursday. For the Government of Gen. Wojciech Jaruzelski, the Pope's visit is being openly viewed as a chance to gain legitimacy at home and abroad. An immediate goal is the easing of Western economic sanctions imposed after martial law was declared on Dec. 13, 1981. But the authorities are well aware, too, of the potential risks involved in the papal trip stemming from the powerful identification of the Roman Catholic Church here with Polish nationalism, with historical anti-Russian and anti-Communist sentiment and, not least of all, with the banned independent union, Solidarity. Police at Walesa's Home Even as the welcoming banners went up this afternoon, plainclothes policemen were posted around the home in Gdansk of Lech Walesa, the founder of Solidarity, and he was told he would not be allowed to leave.

''I still go home almost every weekend for a hurried gazing pass at the people of my state, masquerading in the guise of a man trying to find out what is going on. Who in the world can find out what is going on in the people's minds on a Saturday or Sunday when people would rather not be talking to politicians to begin with?'' -Howard H. Baker Jr. of Tennessee, the Senate Majority Leader. (A18:2.)