Contents:
- SIMON CALLOW: PRAISE OF GAY SWEATSHOP
- HOW 1967 CHANGED GAY LIFE BRA: ‘I THK FOR MY GENERATN, WE’RE STILL A LTLE B UNEASY’
SIMON CALLOW: PRAISE OF GAY SWEATSHOP
Such has been the transformatn attus to homosexualy my lifetime. I was born 1949, theoretilly the Dark Ag of homosexual experience.
Gay men and women who had popped their heads over the parapet ducked down aga out of sight, but they were jt bidg their thori began to feel embattled. By the 1950s, particularly durg the tenure of the fiercely anti-gay Tory home secretary David Maxwell Fyfe, prosecutns for “unnatural vice” rose drastilly. It was to a large extent the Wil se that had engenred the attus to homosexualy that prevailed throughout most of the first half of the 20th century.
HOW 1967 CHANGED GAY LIFE BRA: ‘I THK FOR MY GENERATN, WE’RE STILL A LTLE B UNEASY’
By the time I me home, I had disvered the existence of somethg lled “homosexualy”, which seemed, by and large, to scribe my suatn. Rned wh my rather racy fay, my ears pricked up at any mentn of “queers”, “homos” or “nancy boys”.
Not that my fay was unduly censor – was jt that “homo-queers” were clearly not as others. Why, I wonred, did homo-queers behave like that, some mad parody of women?
In the bigger world beyond my personal bewilrments, there was a rash of homosexual sndals which the participants variably end up prison or ad. A pesal of DJ Wt’s wily available Pelin paperback Homosexualy (1960) yield the disuragg rmatn that my feelgs were a rult of my upbrgg, and that I uld expect a wretched life on the margs of society, perpetual nial of my te self, except perhaps, furtively, among my fellow holiday: Osr Wil on holiday Italy.