The gay community has made great gains, but true liberation is yet to come.
We’ve come a long way baby! Yesterday’s lesbian and gay pride celebrations mark the thirtieth anniversary of the formation of the London Gay Liberation Front. GLF made history. It was the beginning of the modern movement for lesbian and gay human rights.
For the first time ever, lesbians and gays stopped hiding their sexuality and suffering in silence. Inspired by GLF, thousands came out and marched with pride for gay liberation. Spurning the defensive, apologetic pleas for tolerance voiced by earlier homosexual law reformers, GLF demanded a gay-positive and sex-affirmative society, where everyone could love whoever they wanted without guilt, fear or discrimination.
Given the recent strides made by the gay community, it is easy to forget how bad things were in 1970. I remember the painful prejudice of that era. Gay people were sacked from their jobs, arrested for kissing in the street, denied custody of their children, and refused service in pubs. Films stereotyped homosexuals as limp-wristed figures of ridicule, and gays were only mentioned on the news if they were mass murderers, spies or child abusers.
Queer bashing was rife, but ignored by the police. There were no openly gay public figures or sympathetic gay characters on television, and no gay switchboards or help-lines for those in need. No wonder there was so much self-loathing, depression, alcoholism and suicide.
Many gay people were ashamed and wished they were straight. Some went to doctors to get “cured”; others were sentenced by the courts to undergo “treatment”. In those days, the medical profession still classified homosexuality as an “illness”. Leading psychologists, such as Prof Hans Eysenck, advocated electric-shock aversion therapy to turn gay people straight. The consequences were tragic: most ended up sexually and emotionally disturbed.
It was these cruelties that motivated me to join GLF. Defying the bigotry of centuries – which had always insisted that gay was mad, sad and very, very bad – GLF declared “Gay Is Good!”. Back then, it was deemed outrageous to suggest there was anything good about being gay. Even liberal-minded heterosexuals mostly supported gay people out of “sympathy” and “pity”. Many were aghast when GLF proclaimed: “2-4-6-8! Gay is just as good as straight!”. Those words were empowering to gays everywhere, but they frightened the life out of smug, arrogant heterosexuals who had always assumed they were superior.
While politicians, priests and police viewed homosexuality as a social problem, we argued that the real problem was society’s homophobia. Instead of gays having to justify their existence, GLF demanded that gay-haters justify their bigotry.
In the 30 years since GLF, there have been many notable advances. Gay people are more visible than ever before and public attitudes are moving towards greater acceptance. Positive gay images and characters abound on television. Politicians and entertainers are openly gay. The police are serious, at last, about tackling homophobic hate crimes. Gayness is no longer classified as a sickness.
But when it comes to law reform, the gains are derisory. Apart from ending the ban on gays in the armed forces and easing the immigration restrictions on foreign same-sex partners, nothing has changed in three decades. The discriminatory age of consent will be equalised, but not yet. While Section 28 has gone in Scotland, repeal in England and Wales may take much longer.
There has, so far, been no progress at all on reforming the laws governing sexual offences, partnerships and protection against discrimination. These are destined to become the big equality issues of the next few years.
Homophobia is enshrined in the criminal code, where gay sex is insultingly defined as a “gross indecency” and an “unnatural offence”. The same “gross indecency” law that convicted Oscar Wilde in 1895 remains on the statute book today. Every year it is used to arrest over 500 men for consensual homosexual acts. This law applies only to gay sex and – surprise, surprise – does not penalise equivalent heterosexual relations.
There is still no legal recognition of same-sex partnerships. They do not exist in law. Unlike both married and cohabiting heterosexual couples, homosexual lovers have no rights at all – not even acknowledgement as next-of-kin. This means that when one partner dies, the surviving partner has no legal right to inherit their property or pension.
It continues to be lawful to sack someone from their job because they are gay. There is no statutory redress comparable to the way women, black people and the disabled are protected against discrimination. The Labour government has – much to the dismay of the gay community – three times vetoed parliamentary amendments that have attempted to prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation.
Although progress towards legal equality is shamefully slow, homophobic discrimination is doomed. It is then that the gay community will face an unexpected challenge.
Gay identity is largely a defence against homophobia. Faced with victimisation, we have to defend our right to be gay and create our own community institutions to fill the void created by an uncaring society. But when legal equality and social acceptance have been won, will there be any need for a separate gay identity and community? If one sexuality is not deemed superior or more valid than the other, the raison d’être for distinguishing between gay and straight disappears.
This is the ultimate paradox. Gay liberation creates the conditions for the dissolution of gay (and straight) consciousness. The more successfully we assert our human rights as gay people, the sooner the differences between homo and hetero lose their significance. When no one cares who is gay and who is straight, there is no need to maintain a distinction between the two sexualities, and labelling people and behaviour becomes irrelevant.
Thirty years after GLF, I am still celebrating gay pride, but my eye is firmly fixed on the real prize: a world beyond gay and straight.
Published in an edited version as “It’s now OK to be gay, but what’s next?” in The Observer, 2 July 2000.
Copyright Peter Tatchell 2000. All rights reserved.