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It is about solidarity, support and fighting for what is right for evryone and anyone who can’t fight themselves that is why the governments changed laws and opinion is changing we could become a civil society where we can all find happiness and not live in fear. I believe now is as important as then for human rights they are being eroded by government and media promoting fear and lies while a few private companies profit survivors like me suffer from cancers disabling bone disease nerve damage blindness from the high doses of toxic drugs and the existing HIV medication taken over 20 years.ĭon’t take things for granted I was part of a few people who relaunched ‘Pride’ when it went bankrupt I saw it commercialised it’s not about the bars and advertisers using us as billboards, I survived miraculously maybe beacause I was younger or just lucky it doesn’t always feel like it. I watched them die from the toxic drugs tuning into ghosts. I fought for our human rights and with the most amazing people and my friends and my partner work colleagues. I fought for gay rights in the late eighties was on all the marches, witnessed AIDS first hand that discimated our community. It was ‘the gay agenda’ made real – and right at the heart of America’s democracy. I guess it could be argued that the National March did influence some subsequent events because, simply as a demonstration of increasing LGBT organisation, it probably scared our enemies and spurred them into intensifying their own efforts to counter the ‘threat’ we posed. So I don’t think the National March inspired subsequent events but, more accurately, was just one manifestation (albeit a huge one!) of the LGBT movement’s increasingly strategic approach towards getting our rights. They had mooted the idea of a national march even then but political and organisational difficulties meant that progress was slow – but it finally happened in 1979 (Perfect timing for the arrival of Ronald Reagan in 1980!) The National Gay Task force was formed in 1973 as part of this. One reason it happened was because activists across the country had realised the importance of building the various local initiatives into a national movement during the 70s.
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The 1979 March on Washington was a milestone in that development as you say, it was the first and the biggest national LGBT rights march in the USA.
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I don’t think ‘inspired’ is probably the right word in my view, the events of the 80s were part of a developing social/political movement that had been running since at least the early 20th century. (A finding that the US government tried – unsuccessfully – to conceal). Some regional legislators in places like the UK, US and Australia introduced anti-discrimination laws.Īnd even the US Army, who had declared homosexuality to be “incompatible with military service” in 1982, were forced to admit in 1989 that gay recruits were “just as good or better” than heterosexuals. Of course, it wasn’t all doom and gloom every now and then there was a glimmer of hope. And I’m proud to say I was in there doing my bit! The battle was on – at a global, national, and local level. In 1986 Pope John Paul II labelled us “evil” and ordered the Church to withdraw all support from gay Catholic organisations. In the UK, the Thatcher government created Section 28 of the Local Government Act, making it illegal for local authorities to support anything that might promote homosexual relationships as a viable alternative to heterosexual ‘family life’.Īnd, unsurprisingly, the Catholic Church continued it’s attack on gays. For example, in the US, the Court of Appeal ruled that there was no ‘fundamental right’ to be gay. The appearance of HIV/AIDS was most certainly a factor: it ripped through our communities but, at the same time, engendered a spirit of unity and resistance that transcended national borders.īut there were many other storms – great and small – that had to be weathered too. Ironically, much of this was driven by adversity. The gay genie came right out of its little pink bottle and into the streets (and the media…and politics…and the arts…) That decade saw a major shift towards the emergence of a global gay culture.