HomoQuotable - Patrick Strudwick

"What did it feel like to be a gay teenager back then [in the nineties]? The following thoughts ran in a depressive loop: I will not be able to have sex legally until I am 21. My teachers are not allowed to talk to me about being gay. Any business can refuse my custom. Future employers are free to fire me. Violence and hatred will stalk me, a prison for no wrongdoing. AIDS could well bring a gasping, early death. I will never have children. I will never enjoy the family life I was raised within. I will never marry. Imagine inflicting those thoughts on a child.

"No one can go back and comfort me - or anyone from my generation. But at no time since then have I wished more desperately that I could return brandishing a newspaper to bring the Good News: Look! In 22 years' time the law will be completely on your side! Protection and equality! Teachers can talk to their pupils. Drugs give people with HIV near-normal life expectancy. You can have children. And the change that would have meant the most, because we all lean towards love’s light like saplings: you can get married." - Patrick Strudwick, writing for Britain's Independent. (Tipped by JMG reader James)