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Gay liberation: 1970-2000
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Thirty years after it started, the London Gay Liberation Front was 're-formed for a day,' at the Mardi Gras, Saturday 1 July 2000.
See this introduction for some of the demands of the GLF in its 1971 Manifesto.
This is the second of four pages of pictures of the day by me, Andrew Hodges.
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In the middle of Grosvenor Square stands a statue of Franklin Roosevelt and this choice of words from the Four Freedoms of 1941:
It is now the United States military which (with Hollywood) leads the field in institutional homophobia, although in my experience the practice of US servicemen is very different from the official theory.
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I don't think Roosevelt could actually stand like this; the press never showed his disability. Maybe we are surrounded by hype and spin now, but the old world was built on lying, censorship and hypocrisy.
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Anyway, he is now confronted by young people from Greenwich (the setting of Beautiful Thing, and very unlike Greenwich Village)
whose float is more eloquent about Freedom than anything else in Grosvenor Square.
The GLF manifesto's emphasis on the experience of youth is still as relevant as ever. Section 28 of the Local Government Act went into law in 1988 precisely to counter the ideas expressed by GLF. It is a law about ideas, unlike the old laws on homosexual 'acts,' and simply enshrines discrimination in legal dressing. As some bishop put it recently, arguing for its retention, it is a symbol and signal. The passing of this law did a great deal to revive and unite the lesbian and gay movement in 1988, and it is the main parliamentary battleground now.
Some things we never thought of in 1971, and one of them was support from local government, like the London Borough of Greenwich.
 | Other things never thought of then:- businesses
- computers
and
- HIV.
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