In an article to mark LGBT+ History Month, I've been thinking about two key changes that have driven the shift in public attitudes over the last thirty years.
This year’s LGBT+ history month has been dominated by Russell T Davis’s acclaimed Channel 4 TV drama set in the 1980s, It’s A Sin, and its recollection of those terrible days at the start of the HIV/AIDS epidemic.
The series and the accompanying discussions have been a powerful reminder of the taboos, the discrimination and the pain from which so many people suffered in those days. It’s particularly distressing to look back on the language used by some MPs, others in authority and tabloid journalists. Whether the result of ignorance or prejudice, the sentiments expressed still have the capacity to hurt, and the words used can be difficult to forgive.
Of course, much of this stemmed from fear – especially of a new disease which few understood and for which there was no treatment. Given everything the world has been through over the last twelve months, we can perhaps at least understand where some of those feelings were coming from.
However, with HIV/AIDS, the underlying prejudice against homosexuality was at the root of the reactions. The conviction was widely held (and is sadly still prevalent in too many religious organisations and societies around the world) that gay people were exercising a conscious choice despite knowing that it was “wrong”, that their practices were somehow “unnatural” and were therefore liable to “punishment”.
Here in the UK, even after the passage of the 1967 Act decriminalising homosexual acts for men over 21, there were determined attempts to prevent gay men from contacting each other and building a community – even invoking an obscure 17th century law at one point in order to ban magazines and contact ads. Gay clubs, pubs and shops were the target of police raids throughout the 1970s. Arrests for homosexual offences actually increased after decriminalisation as police focused on those under 21 and other ways in which closeted gay men would meet each other, such as cruising and cottaging.
Thanks to campaigning organisations such as the Campaign for Homosexual Equality (CHE) and magazines such as Gay News, there was some progress in changing attitudes during the 1970s. Social attitudes were undoubtedly on the move before the onset of the AIDS epidemic. According to the government’s social attitudes survey first conducted in 1983, the proportion of people saying homosexuality was wrong stood at 62% (though it was as high as 84% amongst older people, who tended to make the decisions). However disapproval rose to 74% by 1987, and to over 90% amongst people born in the 1910s and 1920s. That was the context for the Thatcher government’s notorious Section 28, passed that year to ban the “promotion” of homosexuality in schools.
As the HIV/AIDS epidemic retreated in the face of new drug treatments – and people began to accept that the disease was not simply a “gay plague”, public disapproval began to retreat again, falling back to 64% by 1993, and progressively thereafter, to as low as 28% in recent years.
What made the change possible? I would argue that two factors were decisive: visibility and community.
Visibility was important, because it brought the idea of homosexuality out of the shadows. Campaigning by CHE, events such as Pride, and people's own willingness to come out all combined to drive two important effects: one, there began to be role models for gay people who were struggling with their sexuality; and two the wider population became more used to the idea of gay people within their own communities or circles of friends and acquaintances. It was more difficult to condemn a whole anonymous group of people out of hand when that you got on well with the gay neighbours - or that the actor or pop singer you liked turned out to be gay or bisexual.
Community was important on all sorts of levels: at its most basic, it ended the feelings of isolation which so many gay people experienced when first coming to terms with who they were. For most of us, that moment at a CHE meeting, in the pub or the disco when you looked round and realised that there were so many others like you was a defining experience.
Then there was the caring and compassionate side of the community – evidenced in the early days by organisations such as Gay Switchboard which helped so many with counselling, advice or just a friendly voice at the other end of the phone. It was from this impulse to help that sprang the numerous HIV/AIDS charities around the world that offered support, practical help and consolation to those suffering from the disease.
Here in the UK, we have made enormous strides over the years in reducing prejudice and getting across the crucial core message that lies at the heart of the issue: sexuality is not a choice, but something you are born with. There is still a long way to go, and as a community we can never truly relax.
For me, the task was summed up very well in the revived Netflix series Queer Eye by one of the presenters, Doncaster-born Tan France. He explained that Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, the first incarnation of the programme made in the early noughties, had been seeking tolerance for gay people; this time round, the producers were seeking acceptance. As one of the few highly visible gay men of the Muslim faith and South Asian origin, he understands very well what’s at stake.
Acceptance may seem a hugely ambitious goal, but when we look back to the days of It’s A Sin thirty years ago, it is amazing to remember just how far we have come.