Never forget

Just going down memory lane partly because me and Kirk were chatting about the mid 90’s gay scene with a bloke down the pub last week. It turns out the first gay club I went into is now a hipster ‘rock and roll pool hall‘. Hmm, like Coleherne toilets now being the gastropub kitchen, it’s rather funny what these notorious places became and how oblivious the current punters are. And the other part is because I’m listening to Disco Discharge Gay Hi NRG and Pink Pounders compilations…full of queer 80’s disco loveliness!

But came across a site talking about the gay history before my time (turns out the club I went to was called the Copacabana in Earl’s Court) and stumbled on this note:

The Good Old Days

1953, I was just sixteen and while I knew what my feelings were about sex, when I looked around I didn’t see anyone else at all like me, except in the pages of the News Of The World.
There I could read every week about men having sex with other men and being cast into prison, a warning indeed to less adventurous souls such as myself.
It is interesting to look at some statistics from that year taken from the Home Offices own files.

In 1953 5688 homosexual offences were known to the police
2166 men were sent for trial for various homosexual offenses (in 1950 it has been 1635.) An indicator of the increasing effort being made by the authorities to harass gay men
1277 people were found guilty in trials at the Assizes and Quarter session of which 510 received prison sentences. Over half these sentences were for 6 months to 2 years but 136 gay men received sentences of between 3 and 10 years.

In Magistrates courts, 718 men were charged of whom 650 were found guilty. 154 were fined but 188 also received prison sentences of up to 6 months. The rest were placed on probation or given conditional discharges. 21% of the men accused were under 21 years old.

It is worth noting that anal intercourse was classed with having sex with an animal and carried a maximum of life imprisonment.
Even attempting to commit an act of anal sex or having the intent to commit such an act carried a maximum of 10 years imprisonment.
It is incredible that these draconian sentences existed into the sixties and even the modest changes introduced in that year did not prevent men being prosecuted and sent to prison.

As an example to a sixteen year old boy, the message was clear, keep well clear of sex or you will end up in jail. This of course was exactly the message the establishment wanted to send out to ordinary people. Many were brave enough to ignore it but too many paid a high price with many committing suicide before their cases were heard, others suffering loss of jobs, families and friends.

Good old days ? Not from where I was looking.

It’s worth noting also these people have never been pardoned, even though gay consensual sex over 21 was decriminalised in 1967, obscenity laws still were on the books and used until 2003 – and all these people still are marked on the sexual offences register. It’s not just Alan Turing who suffered this, and think about what we lost in that one case, greatest mind of his generation, invented the computer, won the war etc. So multiply it by those numbers above. THIS is why I get angry when it looks like via yellow press and moral panics we are going back there, that the 1950’s are returning under a veil of religion and false ‘won’t somebody think of the children?’. Far too easy to go back there, a time I cannot even imagine but even in my time some of this has changed (age of consent to 18, then 16; changing attitudes over AIDS, civil partnerships etc).

But then you look at what happened to Lucy Meadows and think there for the grace of a god-I-don’t-believe-in go I.

That’s why I don’t really trust most straight people that far, especially ones in authority, especially coppers, especially Tories and Liberals…because look what they used to do to us. While you’re arranging your soon-to-be white wedding, while you’re bouncing up and down in a club high as a kite, while chatting down the crypto-gay pub which now hides all the magazines, while your life is so fabulous and glamorous, never, ever, forget that.