1999 might prove to be a watershed year for gay people in Britain. At last real change seems to be in the air – many of the campaigns that we have been fighting for the past twenty years appear to be on the verge of fulfilment.
So what happened in the final year of the Millennium that gave us such cause for optimism? It didn’t have a very promising opening. There was a whole slew of political outings, starting with the agriculture minister Nick Brown whose sexuality was rather spitefully revealed by The News of the World. To his credit, Nick (a member of the Parliamentary Humanist Group) put up his hands and admitted that it was a fair cop. No denials, no lies, no half truths. This proved to be a wise tactic, and he had probably learned a valuable lesson from the experiences of Peter Mandelson. Mr Mandelson, you will remember, was famously outed by Matthew Parris on Newsnight. In January, Mandy was suffering again for his inability to be up-front about his sexuality. Punch magazine had discovered that he had been on a jaunt to Brazil – at taxpayers’ expense – and had enthusiastically sampled the gay night life while there. Strangely, despite all the prurient press interest in his sexuality, it was actually Mandy’s finances that eventually brought his downfall. An undeclared loan from Geoffrey Robinson was just what was needed to find Mandy banished from political life, albeit only for a few months.
Then Prince Edward – long regarded as the Queen’s most likely-to-be-gay offspring – got himself engaged to Ms Sophie Rhys-Jones. This event brought forth a torrent of cynicism from the press, which was best summed up by this piece of doggerel in the Daily Mirror:
And so it’s time for all to squirm
At the latest wedding of the firm
Another union of chinless wonders
To rank with all the other blunders
And so to Edward the mantle falls
His marital life to make a balls,
A prince who’s suffered many sneers
From lovey types with ginger beers
But now he’s killed all bitching moans
By falling for Sophie, not Griff, Rhys-Jones.
Next to be outed in the political arena was Tory MEP Tom Spencer, who was caught by Customs on the way back from Amsterdam, carrying gay porn and drugs. The fact that Mr Spencer has a wife and daughter added extra spice to this story and the press thought they were on to another winner. But instead of going down the usual Tory route of trying to cover up misdeeds and getting the wife and kiddy to stand at the five-bar gate and say that everything is hunky dory, Mr Spencer decided, like Nick Brown, to be totally honest. In fact he was painfully up front. He invited reporters into his house and answered all their questions. He told them all about his ex-porn-star boyfriend (who just for good measure is HIV-positive). His wife said she’d known all about Tom’s proclivities since before they were married and didn’t mind in the least. In fact, she liked having his boyfriends round to stay. Such candour did not save Mr Spencer, though, and he was forced to resign from his job in the European Parliament.
After these political shenanigans, the country was regaled with a rip-roaring dramatic portrayal of gay life as lived in Manchester’s “village” in the form of Channel 4’s drama series Queer as Folk. The series became a kind of yardstick for gay representation on television. Many didn’t like it (“We’re not all heartless, predatory old queers, who wouldn’t know intimacy if it punched them in the teeth” said Boy George.) While others thought it broke down the barriers, and at last showed gay life truthfully and entertainingly. I had a visit from an American journalist who had been sent over to this country by the gay magazine, The Advocate. She was simply astonished that Queer As Folk was being shown on a national television channel. It would be impossible in America, she said. The religious right would storm the TV station and burn it down. That gave me a little jolt of superiority.
While Fleet Street’s fascination with all things gay continued unabated, a series of bombs were let off in London, obviously targeted at the ethnic minorities. It was easy to be complacent when it was happening to someone else, but then it arrived on our own doorstep. The Admiral Duncan explosion – tragic as it was for those directly involved – brought a sea change for gay life. It made it very apparent that our complaints about prejudice and hostility were not, as so many claimed, simple exaggeration and special pleading. After the Soho bomb, everyone – even the Daily Telegraph and the Mail – was defending us. “It is outrageous to seek out homosexuals in this way,” editorialised the Daily Telegraph on the day after the Soho carnage. “Such stupefying evil must be met by only one response: cold, quiet but deeply angry resolution.”
But however outraged the papers were about this murderous attack on the gay community, their sympathy was short-lived and it wasn’t long before the press gay-bashers were at it again. This time it was Ron Davies, the MP whose famous “error of judgment” on Clapham Common had already given him one drubbing. Mr Davies was caught by The News of the World cruising once more in a Welsh beauty spot near his home. And finally he had to admit that he was, at least, bisexual. His career lay in ruins about his feet.
Taking a longer term view, there is little doubt that the hostility in the press is gradually receding (it’s still there in some papers, and we’re likely to see a resurgence in antipathy when the latest parliamentary moves are debated). But generally they aren’t nearly as bad as they used to be, and are actually often quite sympathetic. No, the emphasis of hate has now shifted to the churches.
At a time when its own fortunes have never been at a lower ebb, religion ruthlessly uses homophobia as a means of reviving itself. When the Church of England’s Children’s Society announced that it was dropping its ban on gays and lesbians adopting, it was put under huge pressure from the increasingly sophisticated religious Right. “Compassionate” Christians started withdrawing their financial support from the Society left right and centre. Even though there is no evidence that the Children’s Society has ever given a child to a gay couple, and no probability that they ever will, they lost hundreds of thousands of pounds in donations from parishes that buy the right-wing message of intolerance. The people who withdrew their support don’t seem to be able to see anything beyond their rampant homo-hatred. They don’t seem to realise that they aren’t hurting gay people by this action, they are hurting the disadvantaged and suffering kids that the Children’s Society supports.
Fortunately the objections of the religious fanatics have not stopped progress completely. Important court judgments – such as the one in the House of Lords which defined gay couples as “family” – will have huge ramifications. The Government has been forced to review its ban on gays in the military as a result of the ruling by the European Court. The age of consent for gay men is expected to be reduced to 16 next year, although the repeal of Section 28 is likely to face tough opposition in the House of Lords. Remember, Anglican bigot Baroness Young is still there and the Christian Institute has been beavering away furiously to increase its influence in the second chamber.
Best of all, in October next year we will see the introduction of the Human Rights Act, an event which is likely to change all our lives in a fundamental way.
We have reason to enter the new Millennium more optimistic than we have been for many decades.