Member-only story
I Know it Will Get Better for Queer People: I Lived Through Section 28
There is always hope for us
I was nine years old when U.K. Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher gave her infamous speech on family values at the 1987 Conservative Party conference. She expressed outrage that children were being taught that they had “an inalienable right to be gay.”
Homophobic headlines were already prolific in the pages of the tabloid press in the UK before Thatcher’s speech, at the height of the AIDS crisis. When a children’s book, “Jenny Lives with Eric and Martin” was found in a school library in London, the Daily Mail was outraged. “Save the Children from Sad, Sordid Sex Lessons,” ran the headline.
Even a gay character in a popular soap opera, Eastenders, fed the hateful rhetoric. “Eastbenders” they called it. Michael Cashman, the actor who played the character, had a brick thrown through his window when one newspaper published his address. When his character shared the briefest of kisses with his on-screen partner, the hate just grew.
The right-wing media used the AIDS crisis to legitimise its hate of queer people. Headlines included mention of the “Gay Virus Plague” and “I’d Shoot My Son if he had AIDS.” The hate and fear was relentless.
