Why aren’t gay, lesbian, trans, and queer people full citizens in law? This question enraged gay activists in 1990s Britain. The HIV/AIDS epidemic had fueled increasing levels of queerbashing; the age at which gay men could consent to sex remained higher than for heterosexual men; ‘Section 28’ not only branded same-sex relationships as ‘pretended families’ but also silenced LGBTQ speech. Routine exposure to insults, discrimination, and physical violence, together with legal inequalities, led many queer activists to turn towards questions of citizenship.
George Severs’ article, entitled ‘Queer Citizenship in 1990s Britain’ (freely available online), is an eloquent analysis of the distinctive ways gay men challenged their inferior legal status – and they did so from within national as well as supranational forums. While readers of gay history will be familiar with the story of HIV/AIDS activism in the 1980s and 1990s, which has produced an extraordinarily rich historiography, Severs’ draws our attention to a neglected area of LGBTQ history in the last decade of the twentieth century: that is, sexual citizenship.
A major role was played by OutRage! It was formed in May 1990 by thirty gay activists (including Simon Watney and Peter Tatchell) as a response to the brutal murder of actor and gay man Michael Boothe at the entrance to Elthorne Park in West London. Boothe had been kicked to death by a group of six young men. Modelled itself on the U.S. black civil rights movement, OutRage! engaged in radical, non-violent action against homophobia and discrimination. Unlike their LGBTQ predecessors, who had been more concerned with ideas about freedom from state interference into ‘private’ lives, these activists drew on the increasingly popular notion of ‘citizen rights’. They strove to eradicate inequalities in the treatment and status of gay people. They engaged in ‘zaps’, or theatrical public events designed to ‘perform’ queerness, shame homophobic individuals and organizations, and publicly mourn the dead (displaying what Judith Butler calls the ‘grievability’ of queer lives). When ‘zaps’ failed to change behaviours or policies, OutRage! and similar activist groups brought cases before European courts, where they had more success.
Severs admits that discrimination and threats of violence continued to impair the full flourishing of queer people in the 1990s. He warns against producing ‘whiggish teleologies’ and suggests that, for many gay men, the decade was one of continuity rather than change. Nevertheless, he makes a strong case that the 1990s were a distinctive and important period in expanding British queer citizenship rights. The citizenship debates that were ignited in that period remain relevant today.
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