We look over some of the most significant moments of gay history and LGBT rights to have occurred over a twenty year period 1994 – 2014.
1994
February: In the reform of the Criminal Justice and Public Order Bill in Parliament, Conservative MP Edwina Currie tables an amendment for the gay male age of consent to be lowered from 18 to 16. It is defeated by 307 votes to 280. Gay rights group OutRage! clashes with police outside Westminster in anger at the outcome.
Wendyl Harries of OutRage! says: When we were taking on the age of consent battle, you had all these organisations working together focussing on the campaign for the age of consent from twenty-one, and we all agreed the same policy: sixteen or nothing. A compromise would be worse because we’d have to start fighting all over again. If you’re going to discriminate against us you might as well leave it as it is. That was the big push… And then Angela Mason from Stonewall nearly got strung up on a lamppost outside the Houses of Parliament. They had the vote on a cold February, and we’d worked really hard, there must have been more than a thousand of us waiting outside in a candlelit vigil, whilst Angela Mason was inside. Derek Jarman had just died a couple of months before and all he wanted was the age of consent, and I’m glad that he’d died before this, because it would have broken his heart to see us lose. Then Mason comes out and says: ‘We’ve won! It’s eighteen!’ There was nearly a massive riot, and we had to start the campaign all over again.
8th June: Stonewall and sixteen-year-old Euan Sutherland launch an appeal regarding the age of consent to the European Court of Human Rights, in a case named ‘Sutherland vs United Kingdom’.
October: QX launches its first ever issue after reinventing itself from the short-lived ‘MX’. The tag line is ‘Clubs, Bars, Food, Fags and Lots of Other Stuff’. We dropped the food bit shortly after.
November: OutRage! names ten Bishops as gay at the General Synod of the Church of England and urges them to ‘Tell the Truth’.
1995
June/July: 200,000 people attend London Pride in Victoria Park, the biggest ever.
1996
OutRage! warns twenty closeted gay MPs that they’ll be outed if they keep voting against equality. Most stop.
1997
1st May: New Labour wins General Election, with seats to out-gay men including Stephen Twigg and Ben Bradshaw.
3rd May: Chris Smith becomes Britain’s first out-gay cabinet minister.
1998
22nd June: House of Commons votes to set the age of consent for gay men at 16.
22nd July: House of Lords defeats the clause.
1999
30th April: Bomb goes off in the Admiral Duncan gay pub on Old Compton Street, following similar attacks on Brixton and Brick Lane by the ‘London Nail Bomber’. Three people at the Admiral Duncan die, and several are injured.
Mark Healey of 17-24-30 No to Hate Campaign says: I passionately believe that it is as important today as it has always been to remember what happened during the London Nail Bomb attacks that took place in April 1999 which is why I founded the group 17-24-30 No To Hate Crime Campaign. It is important to remember what happened so we can prevent it happening again. Over the period of two weeks David Copeland set out to stir up fear and hatred in the hope that it would lead to the election of the British National Party. Luckily he was caught and his plan failed but not before he had killed three people and injured many more. It is important we remember those who lost their lives – John Light, Nick Moore and Andrea Dykes and her unborn child, that we continue to support those affected by these horrendous events and that we continue to encourage the black, Asian and gay communities to work together to eliminate hate in our communities.
28th July: The Children’s Society lifts their five year ban on lesbian and gay people fostering and adopting.
2000
12th January: The ban on LGBT people serving in the British armed forces is repealed by the New Labour government.
2001
8th January: Gay age of sexual consent reduced to 16.
5th September: Two same-sex couples in London are ‘married’ under the London Partnerships Scheme, witnessed by current London Mayor Ken Livingstone.
Linda Wilkinson, who participated in a ceremony with her partner Carol Budd said: “We are doing this because we believe it is another nail in the coffin of the prejudice that denies us our fundamental rights as human beings and makes us second class citizens in our own country.”
2002
7th November: The Adoption and Children Act affords equal rights to same-sex couples applying for adoption.
2003
18th November: After fifteen years Section 28 is repealed from the law.
Section 28 of the Local Government Act 1988 prohibited local authorities from ‘promoting’ homosexuality or gay ‘pretended family relationships’ and prevented councils spending money on educational materials and projects perceived to promote a gay lifestyle.
Peter Tatchell said of the repeal: Section 28 was the first new anti-gay law in Britain for over 100 years. It was the first law that directly impacted lesbians. It led to a huge crackdown by schools and local councils. They feared prosecution, so most of them cut funding and facilities to LGBT organisations. It hit support for LGBT youth really hard; betraying a whole generation. I was overjoyed when Section 28 was repealed after 15 years. But I also realised that repeal would not automatically result in LGBT-positive education in schools and more gay-friendly local services. These are battles we are still fighting, more than a decade after Section 28 was scrapped.
2004
1st May: The Sexual Offences Act 2003 comes into force and repeals the anti-gay sexual offences of buggery and gross indecency. It creates, for the first time, a criminal code that does not discriminate on the grounds of sexual orientation.
2005
5th December: Civil Partnership Act 2004 comes into force with first civil partnerships registered taking effect from the 21st December. A civil partnership is described as a legal status similar to a marriage but for two people of the same sex.
2008
May: The Criminal Justice and Immigration Act offers legal protection against incitement to hatred on grounds of sexual orientation, although has a religious defence after amendment by the House of Lords.
2009
April: Equality Bill introduced to Parliament in an aim to replace separate laws on gender, race, disability, age, sexual orientation, gender identity and religion or belief with an all-inclusive legal framework.
However, Peter Tatchell writes in The Guardian in December of that year: ‘The equality bill denies LGBT people protection in cases of homophobic harassment by school authorities, by the owners and managers of properties and by the providers of services. Similar harassment is specifically outlawed on the grounds of age, disability, race and sex. This omission gives a green light to homophobes. Under this section of law, they won’t face sanctions for anti-gay victimisation.’
25th September: Ian Baynham, a gay man, is attacked by three teenagers as he walks through Trafalgar Square holding hands with his partner. One attacker, Ruby Thomas, stamps on his head when he lies on the ground. He dies in hospital eighteen days later.
30th October: Thousands of people attend a candlelit vigil against hate crime, organised by Mark Healey of 17-24-30, in Trafalgar Square.
2010
May: General election results in a coalition government of the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats with David Cameron as Prime Minister. More openly lesbian and gay MPs are elected to the House of Commons than ever before.
June: Government publishes its LGB and T policies paper which covers religious civil partnerships, lobbying other countries to repeal homophobic laws, remove historic convictions for consensual gay sex from criminal records, tackling homophobic bullying, better recording of hate crimes and ending the deportation of LGBT asylum seekers fleeing homophobic countries.
Four years later, when QX interviews Russian LGBT asylum-seeker Irina Putilova in 2014, she says: People just asked me all information from my passport and information that doesn’t say anything about you. There was just one question to do with why I left Russia and you’re supposed to answer in a couple of sentences and that’s it. And that’s how they make a decision. So basically all this hour, this person was asking me all these facts, date of my birth, where I lived, all this factual information, nothing about me as a person but me as a piece of paper. And then, based on this information, they decided to put me on the fast track for detention. They put me in a so-called ‘removal centre’, the place from where people are usually sent back, so they probably wanted to send me back as fast as possible just to get rid of me.
2011
January: Civil partners Martyn Hall and Steven Preddy are successful in their case against B&B owners Peter and Hazelmary Bull. The Bulls refused Hall and Preddy a double room at the B&B on the basis of their sexual orientation.
January: Ruby Thomas, 18, and Joel Alexander, 20, are convicted of manslaughter for their involvement in the killing of Ian Baynham, with sentences enforced by the 2003 Criminal Justice Act.
2012
20th January: Three Muslim men are convicted at Derby Crown Court of inciting hatred on the grounds of sexuality after distributing leaflets calling for gay men to be killed. The first prosecution under hate crime legislation.
12th April: Mayor of London Boris Johnson steps in to ban an advertising campaign due to run on buses by a Christian group suggesting that gay people can be ‘cured’ by therapy.
7th July: The 40th anniversary of London Pride is held in the capital, in conjunction with World Pride. However, at an emergency meeting on 27th June the festivities are scaled back because of financial difficulties and mismanagement. A new Pride organisation is set up after the board steps down.
2013
5th February: The Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Bill legalizes same-sex marriage for couples in England and Wales. It passes 400-175 in the Second Reading in the House of Commons.
27th March: The National AIDS Trust sends an open letter to the London Councils calling for effective action to address a recent and rapid rise in the use of crystal meth, mephedrone and GHB/GBL on the London gay scene. Drawing on evidence from Antidote (the one LGBT drug support service in the capital) and from the Club Drug Clinic and the clinic at 56 Dean Street, NAT’s letter draws attention to the massive increase in the use of these drugs by gay men in the context of high risk sex. There are also high rates of injecting (‘slamming’) reported.
Deborah Jack, Chief Executive of NAT, says: HIV prevention services for gay men in London have failed to effectively address this issue. They have been too slow to respond to the fast changing trends in drug use on the gay scene.
QX reports full-length features on the issue of ‘chemsex’ twice in print during the year, ‘It Starts With You’ in September and ‘What’s Up, Doc?’ in November.
We also publish online our ‘In Conversation With’ interview with leading LGBT drugs expert David Stuart, formerly of Antidote and now working for 56 Dean Street.
May: Leading gay men’s charity GMFA has the majority of their statutory funding slashed, along with other significant decreases in funding for LGBT institutions, such as THT. QX reports on how these changes may affect the London LGBT community in ‘Cut To Your Heart’.
30th June: President Vladmir Putin signs into law an ‘anti-propaganda bill’ in Russia, effectively banning the mention of the word gay on the streets in order to ‘protect minors from non-traditional relationships’. Parallels to the UK’s Section 28 are remarked upon, but it also arrives with a steeped rise in homophobia in Russia.
QX reports on the issue three times during the year:
July: ‘To Russia, With Hope’.
September: When QX Editor Cliff Joannou organises the ‘Love Russia, Hate Homophobia’ day of action, in association with Peter Tatchell, at Whitehall. The event results in Tatchell meeting with the Home Office to discuss the issue. Following the action, Prime Minister David Cameron raises the subject with President Putin at the G20 summit.
October: When we cover Rachael Williams (of the Dalston Superstore)’s event, organised in conjunction with Daniel Vais of TedXHackney, ‘To Russian LGBT With Love’.
October: The ‘States of Minds’ report is released, covering the mental wellbeing of HIV+ men, and revealing that three-quarters experience mental health problems. QX speaks to a selection of gay men living with the virus within the London LGBT community about this issue in ‘Beautiful Minds’.
December: Following on from this initiative, and to mark World AIDS Day on the 1st December, QX speaks to another selection of men about what it’s like living with HIV in London’s gay community in ‘Me, My Life & HIV’.
2014
March: With the ‘chemsex’ and attendant HIV/STI infections still rising in London’s gay community, QX Assistant Editor Patrick Cash organises the first ‘Let’s Talk About Gay Sex and Drugs’ event at Manbar, Soho, in association with David Stuart from 56 Dean Street. An open-communication forum for gay men to come talk freely, and without judgement, about how they perceive sex and drugs within the LGBT community, the event is a success. The next one is scheduled for Monday 12th May. QX reports on why they’re running the event in the magazine in a ‘Let’s Talk About Gay Sex & Drugs’ article.
29th March: Same-sex marriage is officially legalised in England and Wales under the Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Act 2013. QX interviews a selection of voices from around the scene on their opinions of what this means for the modern gay community in ‘Is Gay Marriage Making Us the Same or Tame?’
8th May: QX publishes its 1,000th issue, marking nearly twenty years of weekly gay publishing.