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THE BEATL STAR REVEALS THE BAND’S ATTU ABOUT GAY PEOPLE
So on 27 July 1967, the day that male homosexualy was partially crimalised the UK, the UK No 1 was All You Need Is Love. Photograph: Hulton Dtsch/Corbis via GettyFrom early on, Brish rock stars, om Cliff Richard and Billy Fury through to the Beatl, had a softer masculy that reflected the gay showbiz i as well as the target market of young femal.
No major Brish star me out as gay durg the 1960s: the fluence of homosexualy, while embedd ep wh pop culture, was still ’s also important to note that the passg of the act had no direct put om pop culture. Unlike Ameri, where the homophile movement – as was lled 1966 – was pursued by young activists and termed prsure groups, the attempt to change the UK laws was unrtaken wh tradnal lobbyg and parliamentary guil. Most of the people ncerned – the two policians who unrtook the bnt of the work the ho, Leo Abse and Lord Arran, as well as the members of the Homosexual Law Reform Society, which beme the Campaign for Homosexual Equaly – were olr, pre-pop.
Although the Sexual Offenc Act loosened the legal rtrictns agast gay men, people weren’t dancg the streets when was passed. Some people thought was about time, while some olr gay men, born well before the send world war and steeped the reprsive atmosphere of the 1950s, rented the fact that the whole topic had been ma public and the supposed glamour of illegaly removed. “I never worried about whether my homosexualy was ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ – bee seemed perfectly natural to me and by the time I had bee aware of society and the law’s attus, was too late for me to change me.