Related: Internet pastor: Don’t masturbate because it’s gay sexĬhange would come in the form of both medical innovation and heterosexual allies. “I think the anxiety on the part of parents and many teenagers who would never be in danger from AIDS exceeds the good it may do… adverts where every young person will read and hear of practices they never knew about will do harm.” Turning point She once wrote: “I remain against certain parts of this advertisement. In the United Kingdom, a controversial campaign called ‘Don’t Die of Ignorance’ was launched by the Conservative government in the late 80s and sparked somewhat of a panic among the general population.Īlthough the campaign went: “Gay or straight, male or female, anyone can get aids from sexual intercourse,” Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher was condemned for not wanting the ads to be widespread. Initially there was very little understanding of how the virus was passed on between individuals, and it was only when cases were being seen in the heterosexual population did governments decide to act. The term was later changed to AIDS (Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome), but despite the change in name the condition would still be viewed as a “gay disease.”Īn increasing number of gay men were dying each year, as the virus that we now know to be HIV spread across the world. Margaret Thatcher was Prime Minister during the AIDS crisis (Hulton Archive/Getty) The following year, doctors believed the condition to be linked solely to gay men and coined the term “GRID” or gay-related immune deficiency. It wasn’t clear to doctors what was causing this unusual immune deficiency among gay men. In 1981, five previously healthy gay men living in Los Angeles developed a rare lung infection called PCP (Pneumocystis carinii pneumonia).Īt the same time, groups of gay men living in New York and California had been diagnosed with Kaposi’s Sarcoma, a particularly aggressive cancer.īy the end of that year, 121 men had died. Related: Men convicted of gay sex offences in New Zealand to have convictions erased Politics continues to dictate gay sex even today (Creative Commons) Don’t die of ignorance The Sexual Offenses Act 2003 would bridge a previous divide in the law between same-sex and opposite-sex sexual offenses, treating offenses in either context as neutral or the same. There were three conditions to this law: same-sex acts had to be consensual, they should take place in private, and only people aged 21 or above could have sex.Ĭhange regarding the age of consent for gay men would be slow, initially being lowered to 18 years of age and then finally to 16 years of age in 2001. In the 1950s, the police in the United Kingdom arrested over one thousand gay men for simply having sex.Īt the time, the law stated that sex between men was illegal.Ĭhange would come in the form of a partial decriminalisation of homosexuality in the UK in 1967, when a change in the law meant that gay men could have sex without being arrested. We know that, for example, man-on-man sex certainly existed in ancient Rome, and there is also evidence of same-sex acts being discussed in ancient Greek plays.īut when relating to more relevant, more recent sexual history, physical relationships between men have been the subject of political and societal criticism.
Gay men and gay sex have been around since the start of civilisation. People are calling for queer sex education to reach wider audiences (rawpixel) A brief history
However, many gay men are still attempting to navigate their sex lives with very little guidance at all. The UK government are currently introducing an inclusive LGBT+ sex and relationship education curriculum, to enable a new conversation about sex between gay men to empower them to make informed choices about their sex lives.
There are lots of myths circulating about sex between gay men, perhaps fueled by societal homophobia and a lack of information and awareness of sex within the LGBT+ community. Sex between two men should be about pleasure, but sadly it has been defined by politics.Īlthough in the UK gay men are now able to have sex legally, and at the same age as their heterosexual peers, this hasn’t always been the case and nor is this true everywhere in the world.