In 2017, its director Joseph Galliano visited the Queer British Art exhibition at Tate Britain and “realised you could create a blockbuster exhibition around queer subjects”. Launching a museum is an ambitious endeavour, and Queer Britain has come together with impressive speed. Its opening is an important milestone for a minority that has only enjoyed widespread public acceptance and significant legal protections for the briefest of periods, and is, in a sense, still blinking, slightly dazed, in the light. Opening its doors to the public on 5 May, the space is ideally situated in King’s Cross, both for Londoners and for those visiting the capital by rail. So this really is an opportune moment to launch what is, astonishingly, Britain’s first ever national LGBTQ+ museum, established by the charity Queer Britain. Trailblazing Labour MP Maureen Colquhoun with the Gay Defence Committee in 1977. Nevertheless, in this period LGBTQ+ people flourished culturally and artistically, while from the 90s onwards, hostile public attitudes crumbled precipitously as anti-gay laws were struck from statute books. The 1980s HIV/Aids pandemic, ravaged a generation of gay and bisexual men, attitudes towards gay people hardened and a moral panic culminated in the passing of section 28, banning the “promotion” of homosexuality in schools: the first anti-gay legislation passed since 1885. “Let me remind them that no amount of legislation will prevent homosexuals from being the subject of dislike and derision, or at best of pity,”Īfter the Sexual Offences Act was passed in 1967, convictions of gay men for gross indecency actually increased, and gay people were still characterised as would-be sexual predators and threats to children. “Lest the opponents of the new bill think that a new freedom, a new privileged class has been created,” he declared. When Lord Arran co-sponsored the bill that ended the total criminalisation of same-sex relations between men – after his gay brother had killed himself – his preamble was bleak. His rationale, which he speaks about in more depth in his autobiography Help, is that he never got to experience being romantic with an 18-year-old when he was young himself, due to challenges around his own sexual identity and dealings with shame and trauma which forbade him from experimenting as freely as he’d have liked.I t is little over half a century since homosexuality was partially decriminalised in England and Wales, and it’s a period defined by both progress and trauma. The comedian Simon Amstell, 40, still says his “type” is an 18-year-old guy. One resultant effect is that gay men are far more likely to fetishise body image and form deep sexual attractions to certain types of men – such as an insistence on dating particularly masculine, particularly feminine or particularly old or young men – and are likely to carry those image obsessions with them throughout their lives.
Science tells us that trauma is often carried with us for life and can lead to complicated repercussions when it comes to sexual attraction. This might take place in the playground or the workplace, or with family or friends and has drastic knock-on effects for queer relationship-building. Statistically, many more people that define as queer have been through trauma than straight people. While we celebrate media personalities like Phillip Schofield for coming out in their later years (it’s never too late!) the public can be guilty of expecting queer people to act like their straight counterparts when it comes to relationships when of course queer relationships are different.