A Ltle Gay History of Wal, Leeworthy

Contents:

• A LTLE GAY HISTORY OF WAL
• A LTLE GAY HISTORY OF WAL
• A LTLE GAY HISTORY OF WAL
• LTLE GAY HISTORY OF WAL
• A LTLE GAY HISTORY OF WAL

A LTLE GAY HISTORY OF WAL

"A Ltle Gay History is a feat of redisvery. Daryl Leeworthy has med an astonishg diversy of sourc to brg to the light the unrground stori and polil stggl of gay men and women a changg Wal. "Dpe s tle, this is a big book – big on ias, analysis, and empathy, and big on tracg the lived experience of gay people Wal.

Book:A Ltle Gay History of Wal.

Catn:Profsor Kirsti Bohata, review of A Ltle Gay History of Wal, (review no.

A LTLE GAY HISTORY OF WAL

Held aloft ‘were signs intifyg the plac the maly lbian and gay marchers had lived and where they were om to disprove the popular notn that “there were no gays Wal”.

A LTLE GAY HISTORY OF WAL

125) As lerary, soclogil, and historil studi have begun to show, queer liv lived Wal were more ubiquo and visible than the ‘no gays Wal’ ephet suggts. (1) Daryl Leeworthy’s A Ltle Gay History of Wal is the first staed study of queer history Wal and is, as s thor bluntly stat, a book ‘that should have been wrten a long time ago. Concentratg on the 19th and 20th centuri, A Ltle Gay History of Wal offers a brief overview of same-sex sire om medieval tim to post-volutn.

In his analysis of medieval legal rerds, Leeworthy intifi an archival ‘gap’ England and Wal, where prosecutns for crimal homosexual acts were snt pared wh some other parts of Europe. The unlikely alliance between the NUM the Dulais Valley and LGSM (Lbians and Gays Support the Mers) is perhaps the bt known example of queer valleys experience, havg bee the subject of the film Pri 2014. Importantly, the support was mutual and June 1985, ‘Dozens of mers om the South Wal Area of the NUM and their fai joed the gay pri march through London… Not only was this the first pri march to feature non-gay people; was perhaps the largt ntgent of Welsh men and women that had yet taken part gay pri events the pal.

Leeworthy scrib the plac people did (or didn’t) go, offerg a glimpse of gay social life across more than a century, om workg-class and disreputable ffee taverns and pubs the late 19th-century, through to the inic gay dance clubs of Cardiff and Swansea. This is no small feat as the nnectns of particular venu wh lbian and/or gay muni, particularly the 1970s and 80s were generally rmal, temporary, and often tenuo.

LTLE GAY HISTORY OF WAL

In one log, a volunteer rerds takg a b driver om Merthyr to one of the gentler gay pubs Cardiff, the Kg’s Cross. In the by now obligatory chapter on the ‘Legal limatns’ wh which gay men existed for so long, Leeworthy charts the uneven applitn of the law, wh a wele foc on the tersectn of race, class, genr, and sexualy. Commted to ‘fairns wh the legal system and to tolerance’ Abse and others were simultaneoly outspoken about their distaste for homosexualy (p.

A LTLE GAY HISTORY OF WAL

Other Labour MPs tend to be supportive only behd closed doors and there was a mixed picture on gay rights adoptn amongst the other parti of Wal through the 1970s and 80s. There is, neverthels, a perceptible sense of disappotment the scriptn of Cardiff gay culture the new lennium ‘given over to alhol and dgs… but absent the polil unrpngs of the liberatn movement of the 1970s and the HIV/AIDS activism of the 1980s’ (p.