Will We Survive the 1980s? A Snapshot of a Gay Cultural Mili

Contents:

• THE 13 GAYT MIC VIOS OF THE '80S
• GAY RIGHTS MOVEMENT
• HOW THE EARLY ’80S CHANGED GAY WRG FOREVER
• GAY RIGHTS
• WILL WE SURVIVE THE 1980S? A SNAPSHOT OF A GAY CULTURAL MILI

THE 13 GAYT MIC VIOS OF THE '80S

The Gay Black Group (formed 1981 by a number of Black and Asian gay and lbian people who found that most LGBTQ+ groups had a lack of mory members, makg hard for them to fd empathy and people to talk to who would unrstand) approached the Greater London Council 1982 to requt fundg. In 2003, Stonewall was granted charable stat and has sce gone on to help achieve the equalisatn of the age of nsent, lift the ban on LGB people servg the ary, secure legislatn which allowed same-sex upl to adopt, helped secure civil partnerships and then same-sex marriage and ensured that the recent Equaly Act protected lbian, gay and bi people terms of goods and servic. "Particular Voic" is an extraordary visual rerd of the flowerg of queer voic the wake of Stonewall and the AIDS crisis, while also payg homage to many earlier 20th Century activists and wrers who had urged the creatn of a muny inty, or otherwise gave public voice to gay and lbian sensibili.

THE B-52s - “LOVE SHACK” (1989)As if The B-52’s John Waters-spired athetic and out-and-proud ontman Fred Schneir weren’t gay enough for you, this mpy vid for their late-’80s h featur a pre-fame meo by the one and only RuPl. ” Durg the first half of the 1980s, many artists found mercial succs wh songs and vios that openly picted or referenced queer life, particularly gay nightlife — as seen work of Frankie Go to Hollywood, Pet Shop Boys, Soft Cell and others.

Sectn 28 of the Lol Government Act 1988 stated that lol thori uld not "tentnally promote homosexualy or publish material wh the tentn of promotg homosexualy" or "promote the teachg any mataed school of the acceptabily of homosexualy as a pretend fay relatnship". (date unknown)Censorship of LGBT Issu be archaic 1988 law "banng homosexual or gay topics wh school classrooms" was donatns by MSMs be banned (fe ferral) 1988, Denmark had a life-time ban on blood donatns for men who have sex wh men.

GAY RIGHTS MOVEMENT

Homosexual activy be illegal (ath penalty as punishment) homosexualy is punishable by stong; female homosexualy is punishable by f or imprisonmentsJuly 8Servg openly ary be homosexualy is illegal, servg the ary by LGBTQ+ dividuals are also illegalJune 26Homosexual activy be Supreme Court lg issued Lawrence v. Acrdg to Amerin Pk(date unknown)Blood donatns by MSMs be banned (fe ferral) on blood donatns om MSMs appli to any man who has had sex, even once, wh another man on or after January 1, donatns by MSMs be banned (fe ferral) on blood donatns om MSMs appli to any man who has had sex, even once, wh another man on or after January 1, employment discrimatn be sexual orientatn and genr law prohibs employment discrimatn on the basis of "homosexualy" and "transgenr stat". Missg non bary to change legal genr be legal, but requir is legal for dividuals to change their legal genr whout havg to go through genr reassignment 4Equal age of nsent be age of nsent France is 15 for both male-male, female-female, and male-female 8Homosexual activy be illegal (imprisonment as punishment) to 5 years imprisonment and/or 1, 000, 000 anc 14Right to change legal genr be legal, but requir surgery.

Sectn 8 § 1 of the German Transsexuellengetz (Transsexuals Act of September 10, 1980) stat that transgenr people n change their first nam and genr entry unr the ndn of genr-affirmg surgery, sterilizatn, and 13Homosexual activy be male illegal, female legal.

Homosexual acts were legalized prr to the feral lg which legalized homosexualy for all feral jurisdictns donatns by MSMs be banned (fe ferral) to November 2011, a lifetime ban was place for MSMJanuary 1Homosexual activy be legal.

HOW THE EARLY ’80S CHANGED GAY WRG FOREVER

E., for lbians, gays [homosexual mal], bisexuals, transgenr persons, and queer persons); seeks to elimate sodomy laws; and lls for an end to discrimatn agast LGBTQ persons employment, cred, hog, public acmodatns, and other areas of life. ) Gay rights prr to the 20th century Relig admonns agast sexual relatns between dividuals of the same sex (particularly men) long stigmatized such behavur, but most legal s Europe were silent on the subject of homosexualy and bisexualy. Dpe Paragraph 175 and the failure of the WhK to w s repeal, homosexual and bisexual men and women experienced a certa amount of eedom Germany, particularly durg the Weimar perd, between the end of World War I and the Nazi seizure of power.

In the Uned Stat this greater visibily brought some backlash, particularly om the ernment and the police: the ernment often fired gay civil servants, the ary attempted to purge s ranks of gay soldiers (a policy enacted durg World War II), and police vice squads equently raid gay bars and arrted their patrons. In the Uned Stat the first major male anizatn, found 1950–51 by Harry Hay Los Angel, was the Mattache Society (s name reputedly rived om a medieval French society of masked players, the Société Mattache, to reprent the public “maskg” of homosexualy), while the Dghters of Bilis (named after the Sapphic love poems of Pierre Louÿs, Chansons Bilis), found 1955 by Phyllis Lyon and Del Mart San Francis, was a leadg group for women.

In Bra 1957 a missn chaired by Sir John Wolfenn issued a groundbreakg report (see Wolfenn Report) remendg that private homosexual liaisons between nsentg adults be removed om the doma of crimal law; a later the remendatn was implemented by Parliament the Sexual Offenc Act. In the 1970s and ’80s, gay polil anizatns proliferated, particularly the Uned Stat and Europe, and spread to other parts of the globe, though their relative size, strength, and succs—and toleratn by thori—varied signifintly.

GAY RIGHTS

Now headquartered Geneva and renamed the Internatnal Lbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex Associatn (ILGA World), plays a signifint role ordatg ternatnal efforts to promote human rights and fight discrimatn agast LGBTQ and tersex persons.

This support, along wh mpaigns by gay activists urgg gay men and women to “e out of the closet” (ed, the late 1980s, Natnal Comg Out Day was tablished, and is now celebrated on October 11 most untri), enuraged gay men and women to enter the polil arena as ndidat. At the lol and natnal levels, the number of openly gay policians creased dramatilly durg the 1990s and 2000s, and 2009 Jóhanna Sigurðardóttir beme prime mister of Iceland, which ma her the world’s first openly gay head of ernment. In Ai, Asia, and Lat Ameri, openly gay policians have had only limed succs wng office; notable electns to natnal legislatur clud Patria Jiménez Flor Mexi (1997), Mike Waters South Ai (1999), and Clodovil Hernans Brazil (2006).

WILL WE SURVIVE THE 1980S? A SNAPSHOT OF A GAY CULTURAL MILI

Other issu of primary importance for the gay rights movement sce the 1970s clud batg the HIV/AIDS epimic and promotg disease preventn and fundg for rearch; lobbyg ernment for nondiscrimatory polici employment, hog, and other aspects of civil society; endg the ban on ary service for gay and lbian dividuals; expandg hate crim legislatn to clu protectns for gays, cludg transgenr dividuals; and securg marriage rights for same-sex upl (see same-sex marriage).

Ary’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy (1993–2011), which had permted gay and lbian dividuals to serve the ary if they did not disclose their sexual orientatn or engage homosexual activy; the repeal effectively end the ban on homosexuals the ary. Spoiler alert:Both Malone and Sutherland e to bad (if ambiguo) ends, the general tradn of the time, whereby gay characters were allowed onto the b of narrative as long as they were thrown off aga before the b reached s said, Malone and Sutherland float away as much as they expire — their partur are more like that of Ophelia “Hamlet” than they are like that of Tennsee Williams’s Sebastian Venable, hacked to ath and eaten by village children. Gay people and traveno dg ers — those most at risk at the time — had been emed dilemma of the self-hatg homo lookg for love all the wrong plac paled — paled for some of — the face of a plague about which no one power seemed to give a damn.

It paled as nights spent hospals replaced nights spent on the dis mordant (if all too te) tale of gay men enjoyg themselv to ath ma way for the (all too te) AIDS-era tale of gay men fgered randomly by ATTEMPT TO name the noteworthy narrativ about gay life sce 1981 would volve too many omissns.

Fire Island might as well be on another pla protagonists “Angels Ameri” are nonted not only by homophobia and self-stctn but also by their own natur, by love’s power and love’s failure, by censor religns and llo policians, by racism and classism. Ironilly enough, “Dancer” ends wh the mise of s primary characters, whereas “Angels” ends wh liv ntug we open this segment of the ongog gay story, then, 1978, wh an amb tale of gay self-stctn, we wriggle through the wormhole of 1981 and emerge 1991, wh an epic about gay men who refe to be stroyed. Army service World War I, Gerber was spired to create his anizatn by the Scientific-Humanarian Commtee, a “homosexual emancipatn” group ’s small group published a few issu of s newsletter “Friendship and Freedom, ” the untry’s first gay-tert newsletter.

Ernment signated Gerber’s Chigo hoe a Natnal Historic Pk TriangleCorbis/Getty ImagHomosexual prisoners at the ncentratn mp at Sachsenhsen, Germany, wearg pk triangl on their uniforms on December 19, gay rights movement stagnated for the next few s, though LGBT dividuals around the world did e to the spotlight a few example, English poet and thor Radclyffe Hall stirred up ntroversy 1928 when she published her lbian-themed novel, The Well of Lonels. Addnally, 1948, his book Sexual Behavr the Human Male, Aled Ksey proposed that male sexual orientatn li on a ntuum between exclively homosexual to exclively Homophile Years In 1950, Harry Hay found the Mattache Foundatn, one of the natn’s first gay rights group.

”Though started off small, the foundatn, which sought to improve the liv of gay men through discsn groups and related activi, expand after foundg member Dale Jenngs was arrted 1952 for solicatn and then later set ee due to a adlocked the end of the year, Jenngs formed another anizatn lled One, Inc., which weled women and published ONE, the untry’s first pro-gay magaze. Post Office, which 1954 clared the magaze “obscene” and refed to liver Mattache Society Mattache Foundatn members rtctured the anizatn to form the Mattache Society, which had lol chapters other parts of the untry and 1955 began publishg the untry’s send gay publitn, The Mattache Review. That same year, four lbian upl San Francis found an anizatn lled the Dghters of Bilis, which soon began publishg a newsletter lled The Ladr, the first lbian publitn of any early years of the movement also faced some notable setbacks: the Amerin Psychiatric Associatn listed homosexualy as a form of mental disorr followg year, Print Dwight D.

”In fear of beg shut down by thori, bartenrs would ny drks to patrons spected of beg gay or kick them out altogether; others would serve them drks but force them to s facg away om other ctomers to prevent them om 1966, members of the Mattache Society New York Cy staged a “sip-”—a twist on the “s-” protts of the 1960s— which they vised taverns, clared themselv gay, and waed to be turned away so they uld sue. They were nied service at the Greenwich Village tavern Juli, rultg much publicy and the quick reversal of the anti-gay liquor Stonewall Inn A few years later, 1969, a now-famo event talyzed the gay rights movement: The Stonewall clanste gay club Stonewall Inn was an stutn Greenwich Village bee was large, cheap, allowed dancg and weled drag queens and homels the early hours of June 28, 1969, New York Cy police raid the Stonewall Inn.

" This sign was wrten by the Mattache Society–an early anizatn dited to fightg for gay reportg the events, The New York Daily News rorted to homophobic slurs s tailed verage, nng the headle: “Homo Nt Raid, Queen Be Are Stgg Mad.