Blimey, how old are you?! Once you get beyond the state persecution of folk like Alan Turing, i.e. the WWII generation and before, few of whom are still with us, things became exponentially more liberal. Most ‘old’ people today are the ‘flower power’ generation and the real drivers of the civil rights movement.
I was born a little later in the first half of the 1960s and therefore grew up in the ‘70s. As an electronica geek I was always aware of Wendy Carlos, my childhood and early-teen years were framed with the gender-fluidity of Bolan, Bowie, Roxy Music, Lou Reed etc etc, and today I’d make a strong case that there should be a giant statue of Sophie Wilson somewhere as she (along with Steve Furber) quite literally changed the world we all live in today.
I’m obviously a music fan. My whole political world stems from a truly obsessive interest in music and the arts. As such as a now 59 year old I’ve never questioned the idea of LGBTQ+ rights. It has always been there in my life. Images on the covers of my LPs and words I didn’t understand as a young child, but they diffused any potential for future prejudice. As such I never had anything to rebel against, I always knew which was the right side of this argument.
