![]() ![]() I had only ever seen two men kiss on TV so now to see two of them having sex on my screen was something I had never experienced before. This wasn’t just because I didn’t want anybody at home to know I was watching a show about the lives of gay people, but also because there was sex-graphic sex!! I had to sneakily watch the show with the volume turned right down while being perched practically on top of my set so I could quickly change the channel if anybody came near my bedroom. But it was the year 2000 and I was young…that’s my excuse anyway. I dressed outrageously and probably had no business walking around in crop tops and bleached jeans with rips up to my arse. I was the same age as Nathan when I discovered my (very small) local gay scene and I went through a similar experience of finding a confidence I didn’t know existed within me. We’ve all been young, we’ve all gone clubbing for the first time, and we’ve all discovered a new found confidence and cockiness through doing this. Ultimately they are all three versions of the same person that we’ve all probably experienced being at some point in our lives. Nathan is 15 years old, new to the scene, and is too sure of himself. Vince is his best friend who is quiet, loves Doctor Who, and also loves Stuart. Stuart is cocky, good looking, confident, and can get any guy that he wants on the scene. It centered around the gay characters of Stuart Allen Jones (Gillen), Vince Tyler (Kelly), and Nathan Maloney (Hunnam), and sought to give us a glimpse into their lives both on and off the gay scene of Manchester’s Canal Street. ![]() This is where the title of the show was formed. It was used in the movie The Full Monty when two of its characters are staring at a gay couple. The world was hostile, but the show was a big gay “fuck you” to that hostility.įor those that don’t know there’s an old saying in Northern England of “there’s nowt as queer as folk” which basically means there’s nothing as strange as people. In a dark world that was filled with unapologetic homophobia in the streets, on the screen, in schools, and in the media it felt like a true breath of fresh air when Queer As Folk burst on to our TVs. Long before Aidan Gillen was Littlefinger in Game of Thrones, before Charlie Hunnam was Jax in Sons of Anarchy, and before Antony Cotton and Craig Kelly had become household names for their roles on Coronation Street or as a prolific voice-over artist… they all went a bit Queer As Folk. Can you see now why I was petrified that I was secretly gay? I needed something to help me something to show me that there wasn’t anything wrong with being gay something to give me hope. Section 28 was created by the UK government in 1988 as a way to “protect children from predatory homosexuals and advocates seeking to indoctrinate vulnerable young people into homosexuality. This went for schools too as apparently teaching anyone about any sort of LGBT lifestyle or community would be “undermining real marriages”. Other parts of the country weren’t much better as we still lived under the rule of Section 28, which meant that any public authority “shall not intentionally promote homosexuality or publish material with the intention of promoting homosexuality”. It was a typical laddish environment that was a struggle to get through and I found myself having to adapt and hide the real me in order to fit in. ![]() LGBT was never mentioned in schools and there was more chance of a teacher throwing around a bit of casual homophobia instead of teaching us about acceptance and tolerance. Less than 20 years before I was born it was still illegal to be gay and you could literally face a lifetime jail sentence because of it. I grew up in North East England in a town called Middlesbrough and boy was it a tough place to exist in it still is 20 years later. The media’s main messages just kept telling me that I would die of AIDS or have a lonely and miserable existence never knowing what it was like to be a “real man”. Seeing this kind of backlash had given me cause for concern as it seemed that gay people were never meant to have a happy life. Smaller homosexual stories on screen in soap operas like Eastenders and Brookside had been met with outrage by both the media and the public. Davies’ show Queer As Folk first aired on UK television screens in 1999 I was a closeted 13-year-old who had never seen anything solely dedicated to being gay on TV. This week Martin Hearn looks at Queer as Folk. June is Pride Month and here at 25YL, we want to look at TV and Film that made us proud with their representation of LGBTQ issues and themes. ![]()
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