Staggering to think I was a young adult when official attitudes were still like this, let alone on the street – even down to the old canard of justifying discrimination on the grounds of ‘blackmail risk’, something never faced by adulterous straights, of course. Notice that it is even cited in the case of someone ‘flaunting’ themselves. You can’t be blackmailed about what you are eager to show to people. Total irrationality in reasonable Civil Service tones.
Those sort of attitudes remained up until the early 90′s post Thatcher. One of the most important things Tony Blair did was to replace most of the top civil servants and allow modern thinking into Whitehall.
it shows we’ve come a considerable way – even thought there’s lots of work to do. A point worth remembering, is to see things in the context of the Cold War (for those of you too young to remember, the nuclear war film ‘Threads’ by Barry Hines is on YouTube…) I’m afraid that if public attitudes were so bad, the government would have been petrified at the thought of a member being open to blackmail by e.g. the KGB.
“it shows we’ve come a considerable way – even thought there’s lots of work to do”
I agree Adrian, I was just thinking the very same thing. This wasn’t that long ago, and we have made monumental leaps forward – even if sometimes it doesn’t seem like that.
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Staggering to think I was a young adult when official attitudes were still like this, let alone on the street – even down to the old canard of justifying discrimination on the grounds of ‘blackmail risk’, something never faced by adulterous straights, of course. Notice that it is even cited in the case of someone ‘flaunting’ themselves. You can’t be blackmailed about what you are eager to show to people. Total irrationality in reasonable Civil Service tones.
Those sort of attitudes remained up until the early 90′s post Thatcher. One of the most important things Tony Blair did was to replace most of the top civil servants and allow modern thinking into Whitehall.
Abi – you’ll find that there are plenty of senior civil servants who don’t their ranks should contain openly LGB staff.
If however he associated with seedy sections of the homosexual world
of cause there is no hetrosexual alternative to this is there, even in the 70s…………NOT
it shows we’ve come a considerable way – even thought there’s lots of work to do. A point worth remembering, is to see things in the context of the Cold War (for those of you too young to remember, the nuclear war film ‘Threads’ by Barry Hines is on YouTube…) I’m afraid that if public attitudes were so bad, the government would have been petrified at the thought of a member being open to blackmail by e.g. the KGB.
“it shows we’ve come a considerable way – even thought there’s lots of work to do”
I agree Adrian, I was just thinking the very same thing. This wasn’t that long ago, and we have made monumental leaps forward – even if sometimes it doesn’t seem like that.