[hot2go]

35 years ago it was illegal for gay men to have sex before the age of 21 but straight guys could have sex at 16. You could go to war and kill a man but you could not go to bed and love one. At the height of the AIDS epidemic Mrs Thatcher introduced Clause 28 forbidding the mention of gay lifestyles across every school and public place of teaching in the country, she made being gay a dirty word. One of her Tory back benchers proposed gay people shud be gassed to rid the world of their self made disease. Tory newspapers ran jokes about it...." I've got bad news and good news, the bad news is I am gay, the good news is I have AIDS " Ronald Reagan pulled the plug on any public support of the gay community and Thatcher backed him. Meanwhile medical companies were making billions for the USA and themselves by abusing victims with lies and fake miracle cures and using them as Guinea pigs until most of them died, not from the disease but from the side affects of experimental drugs....the only gay guys affected by the disease back then and still living today are the ones who refused to take the drugs in the 1980s because they didn't trust the government and the drug companies.
Wasn't until 1999 that a diversity law was put in place to protect gay people from discrimination in the work place, before that it was professional suicide to tell people at work that you were gay.
1981 and 1999 may seem like Jurassic times to younger people but for people who are old enough to remember it seems like yesterday. So of course some of people find Ryan and Hughies trivial care free life style and their lack of knowledge about why they have it, irritating sometimes, especially when it's being used to confront and poke fun at someone who respects what the cost of that freedom was for so many people.