It ish are to pinpoint an actual time, just milestones. Roy Jenkins as Home Secretary introduced a lot of sexually liberalising measures, which gave us more freedom of sexual expression at the time.
Then there are things like the founding of the Terrence Higgins Trust, the opening of the likes of the George and the Admiral Duncan pubs (Britain's first overtly gay pubs I believe) and the organising of Gay Pride events which gave homosexuals a voice of expression and portrayed them positively.
After that came the unusual situation of a gay serial killer in London, which actually worked in their favour by engendering sympathetic reaction within the wider public. This was then followed up by the economic boom of the 90s and 00s, where gay people (with the highest disposable income of all social demographics) started to use their expanded monetary power, and institutions started to get wise to this.
But I think it is a gradual attitudinal shift since the Sixties, where the liberalising and the release of creative energies, gave rise to a wider embrace of all types of people; and the dissolving of fear and suspicion. Attitudes which have borne fruit now.
In many ways, political opinion ran ahead of public opinion. The Wolfenden Committee was set up in 1954 to consider whether homosexual acts between men in private should be legalised (they had never been illegal for women) after a number of high profile cases such as the conviction of Lord Montagu had caused the question to be asked of what is the point of convicting people for what they do in private. The committee report in 1957 concluded that they should be legalised. Not surprisingly, the committee had difficulty finding any gay men to talk to it!
But no government did anything, and only in 1967 was sex legalised between two men in private. The Act was brought forward as a Private Members' Bill, with government support, rather than as a government Bill. It was rather later that TV companies started feeling safe enough to show, say, a gay kiss in a drama, and not until 2003 that what is legal in private was equalised with heterosexuals.
80s
It started before clever writing
brought the issues up to speed
1969 to 1974 in production of
Monte Python's Flying Circus.
Some people always have accepted gay men and lesbians. Some never will. the fact is only very small minorities are 100% heterosexual or 100% homosexual. Most people to some degree are both
Thousands of years ago. It was not an issue until much more recent times, perhaps in the 20th century.
In the 70's and 80's.
Attitudes changed a LOT since the likes of that bit3h THATCHER out of power.....
