workingclasshistory:

On this day, 20 February 1988, 20,000 people in Manchester marched against Margaret Thatcher’s homophobic section 28 law, which made it illegal for public bodies to “promote” homosexuality, which included banning schools teaching the “acceptability of homosexuality as a pretended family relationship”. The law was abolished in 2003, although later Conservative prime minister David Cameron voted against the complete scrapping of the ban. Current Conservative prime minister Boris Johnson voted in favour of scrapping section 28, although he had previously compared gay marriage to bestiality in a book he published, and referred to gay men as “tank-topped bumboys” while working as a journalist.
Learn more about homophobia and the struggle against it in the 1980s in our podcast episodes 27-29 about Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners. Find it on every major podcast app or on our website: https://workingclasshistory.com/2019/06/10/e23-25-lesbians-gays-support-the-miners/ https://www.facebook.com/workingclasshistory/photos/a.296224173896073/1655976984587445/?type=3