Pride Month - My Personal View

Why I will never adopt the queer word. The Bridge to 2030 Garden & the Don’t Say Gay bill.

1986, I was a painfully shy, spotty and somewhat lanky 15 year old who had a closeted extrovert side deep within him bursting to come out. At school one day we were made to watch a VHS tape distributed by the British government about AIDS and HIV. It focused on the words “AIDS: don’t die of ignorance” with AIDS carved onto a tomb stone crashing to the ground. It struck fear into the hearts of the British public and as a young gay teen it scared me half to death!

Most people who grew up in the mid to late 80s will remember that advert. Most of you, however, will not have seen it as a threat to your very existence. I was just starting to think deeply about my sexuality when I first saw it and it made me extremely anxious about sex for years to come. Most of my school ‘friends’ weren’t bothered by it: “It’s only queers that get it, innit?”

QUEER - It’s a word that has been adopted by the younger generation of the lgbtq+ community. They have reclaimed it, they say, a way of sticking two fingers up at all the haters. Each to their own and I can see how it is deemed as a means to empowerment, but it’s a word I will never use. To me, it’s just as bad as the N word and I find both abhorrent. Perhaps that’s because it was used with vicious, often violent intent against me and many others for a large part of my life, particularly at school. There is no joy in the word for me, gay is just fine and I’ll stick with that thank you very much.

Two years after that advert the UK government passed Section 28, a law prohibiting the promotion of homosexuality as “normal” within schools. This law gave every bigoted homophobe huge freedoms and made hate crime against the LGBT community much worse.

Most of you won’t even recall that clause because it didn’t affect you. But I know it did for thousands of young gay people growing up in that era. It was passed just after I had left school, but I went to many strict Catholic institutions, which effectively had the ban in place decades before then. If I had been taught at school that who I am was normal, then I can’t imagine how different my life would be now.

Right-wing MP Peter Bruinvels, who I sincerely hope is ashamed of himself now, said at the time: “I do not agree with homosexuality. I think that Clause 28 will help outlaw it and the rest will be done by AIDS, with a substantial number of homosexuals dying of AIDS. I think that’s probably the best way.” A similar law was passed in Russia in 2013 and in 2022 the Florida Senate passed the so-called “Don’t Say Gay” bill, which bans the teaching of sexual orientation or gender in schools. We’re literally going backwards.

HIV and AIDS brought shame on a whole generation of gay men, who were dying just for loving another person. It was a disease shrouded in misinformation. I remember a photo of Princess Diana holding the hand of an AIDS patient just to try and show that it wasn’t contagious.

In the mid-eighties, so very little was being done by governments around the world. It was hushed up, so vastly different from the response to COVID-19. There is a line in the last episode of the TV series ‘It’s a Sin’: “If straight young men were dropping like flies just for having sex, something would be done about it”.

From the age of 18 I had an AIDS test every three months. I would sit waiting for those results with dread. Every time was like Russian Roulette. We saw many friends die. The sight of my boyfriend’s best friend dying in the Chelsea & Westminster Hospital, covered in lesions will stay with me forever.

To date over 85 million people around the world have been infected with the HIV virus and some 40 million have died of HIV. Globally, 39 million people were living with HIV at the end of 2022. To give you some context, Coronavirus is estimated to have taken 7 million lives worldwide.

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When I applied for my first mortgage in 2000 I had to lie about being gay or having an HIV test just to be accepted. The law requiring people to disclose this information wasn’t abolished until 2010 in the UK. When Mr C and I met back in 1998 there was no civil partnership and no gay marriage. At the time there was no hope of us ever having equality in that way. So, the day we got together became our anniversary. However, in 2005 a law was passed to allow us to celebrate our union with a civil partnership, which we did in style in the summer of 2010. Full gay marriage didn’t become law until 2014. It took another six years for Northern Ireland to follow suit. Now we have two anniversaries, but the one we celebrate the most is still the day we met.

2019 commemorated 50 years since the Stonewall riots in New York that started the LGBT movement. It’s a time for joy and happiness, but it’s also a time to remember and recognise that the fight is in no way over and in many parts of the world it seems to be going in reverse.

Being gay is still illegal in 73 countries, including most of the Caribbean, the Maldives, Tunisia, Malaysia, UAE and many other popular holiday destinations. It is punishable by stoning to death in Brunei, Iran, Saudi Arabia and many other Countries. Even in some countries where it is officially legal the treatment of the LGBTQ+ community can be hostile, including parts of the U.K and the United States.

So when people ask why I still prefer to go away somewhere that is gay-friendly I’m quite astonished. Just reverse the discrimination for one  moment. The whole world is gay and you are the minority. Would you take your family to a country where you could be killed for just being you? The problem is, the options for safe travel are getting smaller. Even my beloved Key West has changed for the worse.

I have experienced homophobia where I live today and abroad in the last few years and it’s not acceptable and the fight is definitely not over! I watched a story on Instagram a while back where someone was on holiday in Turks & Caicos and I remembered the awful treatment we and our friends had there from islanders and hotel staff. The maids gave us dirty looks and put pillows down the middle of the bed each day to try and separate us! Imagine spending thousands to go on holiday to be treated like that!

Pride is a joyful celebration of the amazing vibrant people within the LGBT community and every win must be celebrated with jubilation, but we must never forget that there are many millions of people still suffering. It is also still a protest against inequality. In many countries, gay rights have come along way and that must be recognised, but the fight is nowhere near won. 

It’s easy for a lot of the younger people from the lgbtq+ community today to be apathetic and think that that the war has been won. But, they are wrong! They might enjoy freedoms never seen in the history of mankind, but that’s due to the people before them that didn’t stay silent, that fought tooth and nail, that were imprisoned, or even died for the cause.

In 2018-19 UK police recorded 14,491 crimes committed against people because of their sexual orientation. In 2022-23 the figures rose to 24,102. Police recorded a further 2,333 offences against transgender people because of their gender identity. According to Stonewall UK, only one out of five hate crimes against lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people is reported to police.

Recently, at The RHS Chelsea Flower Show, the ¹Terrence Higgins Trust Bridge to 2030 Garden, designed by Matthew Childs, featured a huge slate monolith used as a bridge over a flooded, rejuvenated quarry. The water level rises and falls, revealing the stepping stone, a bridge to the 2030 vision of no new HIV cases. Of course, it represents that slate tombstone used in the 1980s advert, but in a new, positive way, filled with resilience, community and love. I had the huge privilege of being able to walk through the garden and found it extremely moving, yet it gave me a renewed sense of hope.

Today and forever more, I just want to celebrate everyone, gay, straight, bi, transgender and everything else in between, every human being alive. We’re all the same you know. We’re all human and no one is any better than the next person, regardless of gender, race, creed or ethnicity. One human family. In the immortal words of Forest Gump: “and that’s all I’ve got to say about that!”

Please, if you have a moment, a restack click, a heart ♥️ , or a comment really helps with visibility and gets HOME & HORT to new friends. Thank you. Xx

Pride wreath by the astonishingly talented Alison from The Big Door Wreath Company. Floral arrangements in my bath and my old steps by Kingfisher Farmshop, Abinger Hammer. Pride celebrationary tomfoolery by me.

1. Terrence Higgins was the first named person to die of AIDS-related illness in the UK in July 1982.