Day nine
Watching each wrenching episode of ‘It’s a sin’ led me to consider the impact of the AIDS pandemic on the future of our LGBT community and even on society as a whole. Certainly being gay in most countries other than the USA and most of Europe continued to be fraught with prejudice and physical danger but change was taking place and it was often thrilling.
I remember standing in the middle of the Castro in San Francisco in the mid 90s and with hundreds and hundreds of other LGBT people celebrating, and sending off to Washington, the first out member of President Clinton’s administration. And here and there, and more frequently, there followed regular examples of prominent people now publicly acknowledging their sexuality.
Gay Prides sprung up all over the place and the authorities gradually accepted that such events could take place in the centres of cities rather than in the backstreets where they could be ignored. Those marches in London particularly produced a sea of thousands of us claiming Piccadilly and the West End and we were inspired and encouraged by being there together. I remember hearing a gay man saying to his more nervous partner “I told you, you would like it”, or the straight woman being amazed at the thousands marching and being told “now you know what it’s like being a minority”.
The police, whose shameful record of harassment of gay man over the decades and which had destroyed the futures of so many men, now began to soften in their approach. You could see the change as each Pride followed another and hostility gave way to acceptance – even eventually,may I suggest, joyful acceptance. In the late 90’s I remember a somewhat camp young thing approaching an officer and asking “can I have my photo taken with you?”, to which he replied “OK, but don’t kiss me, OK?”
The public belief in the sinfulness of gay sex, with its accompanying abhorrence, also took an unexpected turn. Whereas the government’s pronouncements on the subject more than inferred that we shouldn’t do ‘it’ ever, a saner approach now took its place and no gay pub, club, sauna, or disco (and there were now many of them) was complete without condoms, lube and dental dams being freely and liberally available, and the word now was ‘always use them’.
Nevertheless there were still examples, many of them, where being gay might be tolerated, but would be a bar to promotion, employment or social acceptance. There were for example very few ‘out’ teachers who achieved promotion and the same was true for a number of professions. I remember one of our senior teachers publicly saying that he could never agree to homosexuals being promoted to high positions, and, of course, Section 28 still loomed large over the whole teaching profession.
We also learned the necessity and the freedom of publicly expressing our grief for our ‘fallen’ buddies and to honour them too. It was to be later that official memorials would be set up in cities in many western countries but the creation of the AIDS Memorial Quilt both here and in the USA was a uniquely moving example of how much our dead meant to us. I have no idea where the British one is now kept, but it should surely be displayed regularly to remind us all of those dark days.
At a London Pride in the 90’s one of my ex students held a champagne breakfast at his home before the parade and I was invited. Following the breakfast I stood on the underground platform, to make my way to the start of the march and saw a couple standing close by holding what was clearly a banner. I approached and asked “Are you going to the same place as me?” They replied “Are you going to Pride? It’s our first time. Our son came out to us last week and can’t come today so we decided to come in his place.” They were wearing t shirts which proclaimed ‘We are proud of our gay son’
And I cried!
Roger Newman ( almost 80) Margate
FebulousFebruary 2025: Lost and Found 