My words and thoughts as a teenage were filtered through section 28, through my own family’s lack of understanding of sexuality and the diversity of experience. A world where HIV became as terrifying as teen pregnancy, a life sentence. A world where the greatest game of the tabloids was to “out” people and shame them.
I grew up in the 80’s, the world of Mary Whitehouse and Margaret Thatcher, the world of denial. The genesis of Southampton’s own Pride and the soft beginning of Chrysalis’ transition to the charity we are today. When colour began to return to our world. I have written before of how that shooting, and the memorial we held in Southampton afterwards was our turning point. That final, vile, act of a man who could not allow others to love. I remember waking to the news of an horrific shooting in a gay nightclub. What a long, and tortuous, road we have travelled from that dark morning of 12 th June 2016.
My heart leapt the world came into focus with colour. This morning I blearily checked my phone and saw that Congress has voted to make Pulse nightclub a national memorial on my friend’s timeline. Lockdown has brought a few new things into my life and one of those is a new friend in the US.
