An Introduction

This transcript is of an interview conducted by J. Kurisunkal with John Roberts at the Starbucks Coffeehouse in the Northcenter neighborhood of Lakeview, Chicago, Illinois, on Memorial Day, May 29, 2006.

Mr. Roberts is a 34-years old gay man. Originally from the Midlands of England, he was educated at the University of Bristol, and lived in Australia and the UK before settling in the United States. He currently resides in Chicago where he works in high technology development.

This interview attempts to chronicle the changing attitudes towards homosexuals in the United Kingdom from the 1980s and onwards. Clause 28, known in the record books as Statute 28, and its implications are discussed, as well as the legal cautions created for homosexual male youth by the altering age of consent. Reactions towards the civil partnership act are recorded. Throughout, the extent of the media, religion, and traditional family values are explored. Finally, Great Britain, her laws, and her future, are evaluated as a greater part of the European continent.

Hyperlinks to full-text archives of laws are provided at the end of the transcript, as are articles and orations regarding the topics explored.

The Transcript

Start 4:45 PM

James Kurisunkal: Tell me about yourself.

John Roberts: Well, I’ll talk about my childhood. I grew up in the Midlands, which as you can guess, is in the middle of England, in an area around Nottingham. It’s a working class area. My family was working class. My father owns an engineering business and my mother was just a housewife. I had a very typical working class upbringing. I went to school in the local area. I did very well in school. I didn’t know that I was gay, but thinking back, it was kind of obvious. There were things – there were actually, well, it wasn’t obvious you were gay at the time. You had nothing to compare it with. You think everyone feels like that.

JK: Now, looking back in retrospect, you would have seen those signs.

JR: It kind of didn’t occur to me. The obvious thing was I fancied men. But, having said that, that’s really the definition of being gay. I had girlfriends, a long-time girlfriend, at 18, we did everything that boys and girls do. In a way, I’ve always had this idea where I could just explore. Perhaps it was about being bisexual. I mean, they had girlfriends. And maybe they are bisexual, but then they later realize they are gay. This is very common.

JK: Growing up in the Midlands, did you ever visit London?

JR: You didn’t tend to. It wasn’t a thing we used to do in our family.

JK: What venues did you have to recognize gay culture?

JR: When I was in school, it was all through television and newspapers.

JK: How old were you?

JR: Around 14. Remember this is the eighties. And the AIDS crisis first really hit us. There was a lot of news about this mysterious plague that was killing gay men. I listened to that on the news. If ever I was in the room watching the news, my father would say “that’s disgusting,” “they deserve to die.” I didn’t think it was fair. I was curious to what it was. I wanted to know what gay men were. They were portrayed always negatively on television.

JK: How were they portrayed?

JR: They were portrayed as having things wrong with them. On the shows, they would portray effeminate men. We have a number of high-profile younger men like Larry Grayson, Kenneth Williams. Kenneth was also a personality and originally a radio-host, a comedian, on television. Grayson was a quiz-show host. And then you had people like Mr. Humphreys as being so, it became very popular to camp up. The humor was based around euphemisms. Things like back passages. People found it very funny and it became popular.

JK: What is a back passage?

JR: It’s a euphemism. I’ll let you figure it out. It was all about making euphemisms about sex. Of course, my family would laugh at it and say something negative about gay people to make sure that you didn’t think they were gay.

JK: What did they say to begin with, and how did you feel? Would you say stop, I don’t want to hear this…? Or would you just breathe it in?

JR: Oh, I wouldn’t say anything. My father said that gay people should be grabbed up and chopped. It didn’t upset me because I didn’t yet realize I was gay. There was also quite racist news. There were such extreme views. I knew that coming out would be difficult.

JK: I know you’re from the middle class. How would the upper-class, or even the lower-class, react or respond to you, or homosexuality, rather?

JR: Back then, I didn’t know. I only knew about my family and others in the area. It was a universal opinion that being gay was bad, and if you were gay, you deserved to die. That’s how strong it was.

JK: Did you have gay friends growing up? So that you could relate to others?

JR: No, I didn’t. I didn’t know any.

JK: So, you were growing up by yourself, gay?

JR: Yes.

JK: You said you had a girlfriend at age 14. Were you going through a bisexual phase, where you were going through sexual phases? I’m gay, I’m straight, I’m gay, I’m straight… this type of bisexual fury that culminates in coming out?

JR: I don’t think I was confused. It didn’t quite occur to me. I didn’t feel isolated. It was just something that was there. Given the opportunity when I was older, I thought that I would explore it then, which is what I ultimately did. I wasn’t particularly screwed up as a child.

JK: Were you restricting yourself? Were middle-class values restricting you, holding you back from exploring yourself then? Society was saying that what you were was wrong.

JR: The thing is, when I did come out, I left home. I was in Australia, I took a year off. I was away from my working-class family and friends. I knew that I was going away. I planned to be away from them to do what I wanted to do.

JK: Um, so, you were by, yourself, growing up without gay support, until you went to Australia. You told me earlier that you had a boyfriend then. Was that where you met him?

JR: No, I didn’t meet him until later. I met him in Bristol. So a year after that.

JK: So, you took a year off after college, went to Australia for your gap year, and came back to Bristol for university.

JR: Bristol is not my hometown. So, basically, I left home when I was 18. I came out while I was in Australia. My mother was on the phone with me. It was early in the morning there. She was very sharp. I didn’t plan to tell her. She knew something was wrong and planned to quiz me. What’s the matter? Nothing. Yes, there is. No. Have you gotten a girl pregnant? No. Is it a boy? Yes. And then I was really surprised by her reaction. I was surprised by her reaction, I thought she would be cool about it, but she was freaked. She said that she couldn’t believe this, this is a catastrophe. I told her not to tell my dad. She did. Straight away, as soon as she put the phone down. The family fell apart. It was awful for them. I wasn’t there, I was well out of there. And my dad went through this amazing reaction where he was depressed, he was crying. After this, my mother described it as being worse than had I died.

JK: So, let’s go back to the chronology. You left for Australia for your gap year, which is where you came out of the closet to your mother on the phone and it wasn’t planned at all.

JR: That’s right.

JK: Did they pay for your education at Bristol?

JR: No. I had to pay for myself. In fact, there was this… because they were not rich, I qualified for state grants. My father had to sign this declaration to say that his earnings was at a certain level so that he wouldn’t have to pay for anything, but he didn’t want to sign the form because he was still in denial that I existed at this point. How could he sign a form when I didn’t even exist? That is what… things were really bad at home. I wouldn’t have been able to study had he not signed the form. My mom said that this had to stop and she threatened to leave him.

JK: That ultimatum made your father accept you?

JR: It was the start of a very long process. And it went from really bad at home for both of them, from 2 years, and gradually, they started talking to me.

JK: Did you come home for the holidays?

JR: I did for one holiday in those 2 years. Other than that, I didn’t. Things were so bad, I couldn’t. My father was in tears. He said he needed to get me to the doctor’s for help. It was really textbook, Catholic reaction. My attitude was that I don’t have a family anymore. I’ll just get on with the rest of my life, which is sad, but I was prepared.

JK: You wanted to divorce yourself from your family for your sexuality, for yourself?

JR: I didn’t want to but if that was what was going to happen, then I was prepared to accept it.

JK: At the time, you were grounded in your sexuality. Was the thinking… I’m more valuable, I know myself, and I don’t need your opinion or judgment?

JR: Well, not so much. Basically, the fact is I’m gay. I have no choice. Whatever you do is up to you. If you want to reject me, go ahead. I won’t reject you. I’m still here.

JK: Growing up, you saw the television, your parent’s reactions… how would the school system address gay and lesbian issues? Were there programs in school? Abstinence, safe sex, campaigns during secondary school?

JR: Almost absolutely not. In my final year, my English teacher showed us a film called the Two of Us. It was a made-for-television film. It was an example of the BBC starting to portray homosexuality on TV. She recorded it on video. It was about gay school kids and them coming out. She didn’t accompany it with a discussion. Nonetheless, it was a positive. A few months later, Cause 28 would have outlawed that, it would have made it illegal for her to show it to us. It didn’t provoke a major reaction from the class… they just carried on.

JK: So you met your boyfriend in Bristol. What year was that?

JR: 90 or 91. My first year.

JK: Were you going out with him while you were coming out? Was it concurrent?

JR: No, I dated him six months prior to that.

JK: How old was he? How old were you?

JR: I was 19. He was 28.

JK: Was he a student at Bristol?

JR: He was. Not then, but he did study in Bristol. He worked for the City Council. I met him at a nightclub. We started dating. I moved in quite quickly. I don’t think he expected me to do that. I was on a mission to get a boyfriend.

JK: How was gay social life when you were 18 or 19, when you were finally allowed to, where you could socially network with other gays? Were bars and clubs the only venues? What did you think of that?

JR: I think it was very good, actually. The university had a social group for gay, lesbian, bisexual. I went to that one in my first term. Immediately, you knew others. There were only 15 in that group.

JK: How large is Bristol?

JR: It’s quite a big one in the UK. It has a good reputation.

JK: 15 out of that huge population was out? A lot of people were still confused. So you were up there, in terms of advancement and maturity.

JR: Yeah.

JK: Spending that year in Australia, what did you do there? How did you support yourself?

JR: I lived in Adelaide for four months. It was great. Then I went to Melbourne and got a job as a barman in a gay bar. It was me going into the deep end. That was the first gay bar I had been in. And then life changed at that point. I was right in the epicenter of gay culture in Australia. It was very hard, there was a lot of partying and drugs.

JK: In England, gay people were shown as effeminate, generally people you didn’t want to be. How were they portrayed in Australian media?

JR: They would have had similar representations. To be perfectly honest, I don’t think I watched television much then. I was reading the gay press.

JK: When you were in Australia, did you talk to other secondary school students? Have you talked to others about their secondary school experiences and coming out?

JR: I hung out with a group of friends, and they were all out, so no, I can’t think of anything notable. I was probably the youngest at 19.

JK: Back to Bristol, in your first semester, you became involved with a 28-years old man. What is the age of consent in Britain?

JR: He was 21. Both parties had to be 21.

JK: What would have happened if someone had found out about your relationship?

JR: He would have been prosecuted and sent to prison. I think it was the only older party that would have been prosecuted. It would have been similar; they would be treated as pedophiles. I think the police did actually pursue these laws in certain parts of the country. However, had someone made a specific compliment, then they had to follow the law. It was a criminal offense.

JK: Did you have to hide your relationship, then?

JR: No, it was common knowledge. My parents knew of it. There wasn’t a culture of trying to hide it for legal purposes. We didn’t quite hide it. My friends at university knew.

JK: If someone had made a complaint, he would have been sent to prison.

JR: Yes.

JK: Do you think these laws are fair? Do you think the lawmakers were right?

JR: That law was wrong. The age of consent was different for gay people and straight people.

JK: What was it for straight people?

JR: 16.

JK: OK.

JR: The law wasn’t particularly useful. A lot of children have sex at 14, probably younger. The police weren’t active to this. Even though it was a criminal act. I think it’s wise that people wait because you’re emotionally mature at 14. They’re not ready yet. But, UK, it’s very different. You can drink when you’re 18. Kids do that at 14. People grow very quickly.

JK: With your boyfriend, was he originally cautious about pursuing a relationship with you, in light of your age? That he might very well end up in jail.

JR: I think it didn’t occur to him. I was on a mission; I was very keen on him and he was very keen on me. He liked me. He probably did have concerns and he was worried. But I was 19. It’s not like, even though there is a age gap and it is illegal, it was pretty clear to me that there would be nothing wrong. We are not criminals.

JK: Do you know anyone who actually was a criminal for dating someone younger?

JR: Not anyone I knew or my friends. But there were stories of it in the gay press. The activists, that was their major concern. They would run stories against it, to revise the age of consent.

JK: When did Clause 28 come?

JR: It was mid-eighties, near 1984. It was tagged inside a much larger bill, something about local education. The point of it was to stop left councils, like the Labor Party, to quit spending money on social things. The Conservative party- they didn’t want money wasted on looney policies. But they tagged in, this specifically, on homosexuals. That is where the discrimination came in.

JK: This was under Margaret Thatcher’s regime. She held very conservative values. How did the monarchy feed into this? Did they remove themselves?

JR: Yes. Certainly the Queen. It is a sovereign tradition that the monarchy would not interfere in matters of the state. They were still the figurehead, but they would not interfere. They leave all the running of the country to Parliament.

JK: What did Clause 28 say exactly?

JR: It was illegal for councils to spend money promoting homosexuality.

JK: What did that mean? Promoting homosexuality?

JR: It can be read to mean, even talking about homosexuality in a public light… it is illegal. It stopped councils from speaking about it, and because schools are funded by councils, then the teachers felt if they had a gay student, they thought they couldn’t deal with it because they were funded by the council. It would be illegal for them to do so.

JK: It didn’t restrict the press.

JR: It was purely about funding schools.

JK: You said that there were no active campaigns addressing gay issues, relationships, safe sex in schools. So they were restricting things that didn’t exist?

JR: I think there were things like that in school. Clause 28 confused everybody. I would find it incredibly surprising if someone was prosecuted for Clause 28. It was pointless to have, and thus a negative kind of thing. Teachers were confused. Yeah, it was a big mess, a big mistake. It stayed on the books for quite some time. In the last few years, it had been deleted.

JK: How did the country react to this? How did the greater Bristol community react to this?

JR: It was really only about schools. The university is not funded by councils, not the Local Educational Authority, so it didn’t apply to universities. There was no concern on the campus. Activists were still describing Cause 28 as something they wanted to scrap.

JK: What would be some things activists would do?

JR: It would certain around marches, like pride events. They would have handed out leaflets, in gay bars, encouraging people to write to their MPs.

JK: Did this work?

JR: It was an innocuous piece of legislation. It snubbed gay people. You can’t have equality. You have people thinking it was alright to be homophobic because the law was homophobic. It was important that they got rid of it. Even though it wasn’t be used, people weren’t prosecuted, there were still quite a few protests.

JK: How did Cause 28 end?

JR: The Labour government, now in their third term, in their first election manifesto, to get rid of it among other gay equality issues.

JK: What were some of those other issues?

JR: The age of consent, Cluse 28.

JK: What was their suggested age of consent?

JR: They initially entered at 18, and then it came back to 16. Interestingly, they were all done on free votes. That means the Parties weren’t telling their Members of Parliament how to vote. There was no Whip. Each MP vote as they chose. It was down to their personal feelings. When it first came down to 18, it was a compromise, because they wanted it at 16, but they felt it was too young.

JK: They had an education council that explored this issue actually. They concluded, I think that it was 18?

JR: OK.

JK: And I remember reading the arguments between the two opposing parties. Somehow they compromised at age 19.

JR: 18. But in a couple years it was 16.

JK: Throughout this time, for heterosexuals, it was still 16, throughout?

JR: Yes.

JK: These people who weren’t gay, themselves, were given the right to vote… it’s like in America where people, who don’t even have the right… they don’t have the right to give or take away someone else’s vote. Do you think these MPs had a right to set an age of consent?

JR: They obviously have the right to pass whichever law they want. It’s a democracy. Their decision to make this choice is simply discriminatory. I don’t think you should be a gay politician… they just need to make the right decision.

JK: When was this revoked?

JR: In the late 1990s.

JK: When did civil partnership begin legislation?

JR: 2 years. 2 years ago, about. It’s been going through the government process. It was made law in December of last year.

JK: This was by the Labor party.

JR: Yes, I could not see this being introduced by the Tory party. Maybe now, maybe they would, if it was on the statutes book now. It was illegal to discriminate based on race or sex, but it was legal to discriminate if you were gay. These sort of discrimination laws come in now.

JK: How do you feel being separated for your sexual orientation? There are laws for skin color. Gay people are yellow, black, white. We are just like everyone else. How do you feel being discriminated?

JR: I think it would be wrong for an employer to discriminate based on several factors, being gay is one of them. Unless no one was being discriminated, you wouldn’t need the law.

JK: Do you feel, as if, the law was passed or introduced by the MP as an individual or was it a consensus of the British people? Were the people still in disgust of gays? Were they writing to their MPs to keep Cause 28?

JR: I imagine that most people didn’t care.

JK: A lot of the times, our representatives don’t represent what we want, their constituents, but themselves, their own personal beliefs. Do you think a lot of this was people’s change of mind or the representative?

JR: It was a part of society changing. The attitudes towards homosexuality has changed over the years. The reason why Cause 28 was placed was because of Margaret Thatcher. She had a very strong government and they passed it through. It was an important thing for her to get in. Getting rid of it, it wasn’t a major thing because it wasn’t even applied. For the activists, it was because they put pressure on the government. They would have went on and on, and it was because of them that the Labor party passed it. Ordinary people, straight people, they don’t care. Tax, gas prices… they don’t have concerns over anti-gay discrimination laws?

JK: Were you living in England when they passed the civil partnership laws?

JR: Yes.

JK: A) How did gay people respond? B) How did the general population react to the proposal of the civil partnership law?

JR: It was welcomed by the gay community. You know, the gay community is quite fickle. It wasn’t considered a major success. Gay men thought that oh, I can inherit. I didn’t get the impression that people were so opposed. There was only a minority who would be against it, and they would do that out of religious reasoning. It was against God to be gay, and it devalued straight marriage. It’s a very clever thing by not calling it marriage. They didn’t unite two laws. They introduced a new law. If any legislation fell, it meant they could put new legislation in. It wasn’t marriage. They appeased Christian activists by not calling it marriage.

JK: I was reading Newsweek and they said that only 60% of Englishmen identify themselves with a formal religion. The Bishop of Durham said that he would be opposed to any blessing of gay couples by the Church, and if any priest, rector, or bishop were to bless a gay couple, he would oppose it strongly and take it upon the greater Church of England, causing a sort of ecclesiastical rift. Is the populace more in tune with the Bishop’s stance? Do they support whatever the Church says is right?

JR: The reach of the Church has been getting less effective. There is a big chunk of people who are gay and Christian, and it is them who fight for homosexuality to be approved by religion. I personally don’t care.

JK: Are there couples you know who have gotten the civil partnership?

JR: I don’t know anyone. And I don’t see much, and I don’t think many would have it blessed by the Church. It’s much less popular, religion, than it is in America, and even less popular in the gay community. Nevertheless, if they want to do it, they can do it.

JK: In America, I know many people would be very happy even receiving a civil partnership. However, it seems in Britain, that, it wasn’t so heralded.

JR: Well, They welcomed it. It’s a good thing. I was surprised that it wasn’t celebrated more.

JK: Civil partnerships, essentially, are what heterosexuals have, except for a change in rhetoric. The main points being: it gives you the right to inherit your spouse’s wealth, you share a house and property, adoption rights, and being able to make decisions for your partner while s/he is sick. It doesn’t concern you that you can’t call your partner your husband. Names don’t make a difference.

JR: The thing that’s most important to me about the law is whether or not someone is discriminated, whether it treats them equally. Marriage is loaded with religious connotation. I don’t think it’s important to go further than a civil partnership. Maybe there should be an argument to allow heterosexual couples a civil partnership as an alternative to marriage. Perhaps heterosexuals also feel marriage is a loaded term filled with negative connotations. This won’t happen, though.

JK: Religion and state, they seem unpopular.

JR: There is a religious voice, the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Pope for the Catholics, but I personally don’t care what they say. I think it’s hilarious when they have their own internal problems about priests who turn gay. I find that all amusing. Religion is important to some people when it comes to marriage and the Church needs to sort that out properly.

JK: Great Britain doesn’t pass laws based on whatever is popular in Europe. For instance, the Netherlands have instituted civil partnership laws since the 1980s. Other countries in the Continent have also passed very similar laws much earlier than Britain. How do Britons see themselves as Europeans?

JR: There is a bit of a divide. There are people who want Britain to be independent and have no ties with Europe at all. There are others who want a unified Europe. It is a polarized opinion in the UK, although I can say that many people are satisfied with an independent Britain. A universal currency is quite popular. When you get strange laws that are passed in Europe, and people in UK don’t like… the unity we have right now in UK is going to last for quite a few decades, I think before any pressure, before things change. There might be a case for less unity, or more unity, but it will remain this way for 20 more years.

JK: In Spain, they passed gay marriage, where the title of marriage is conferred, as is husband and husband, wife and wife. Is that a victory? Is that inappropriate?

JR: You have to explain this. I wasn’t aware of what happened in Spain. There was a referendum…

JK: And they passed it. They have the same rights guaranteed in a civil partnership with the titles of marriage, completely, it is the same for heterosexuals. Is it equal? In terms of rhetoric? Do you think they should fight for this in Britain? Use this for a gay activist front – this desire for marriage, for titles?

JR: Husband-husband, wife-wife, I don’t think it’s important. I know there are some people who do. But some also don’t want this. They don’t want to be the same as straight people. Still, there should be no discrimination, no inequality. These are all just words, names for things. It would be nice to call someone your husband but what is really important is that you have the right to see your partner in the hospital. What’s important is being told the treatment your partner is receiving. Those are the real important things and they’ve passed. That’s enough for me.

JK: To make a sweeping generalization, in the past 20 years, we can say that Europe has changed incredibly in terms of gay rights and gay acceptance. Homosexuals have been granted all the rights they need; there need not be anymore protests or riots.

JR: If you talk to people in the closet, they will say that there is still not enough awareness and people are still being discriminated against. I can accept that they stay in the closet for this reason. Gay people have the rights they need in Great Britain to function as equal persons.

JK: Thank you John, so much, for spending this afternoon with me.

JR: It was my pleasure.

End 5:41 PM

Works Consulted

"All-Embracing Partnership Act." 10 June 2005. 5 June 2006 <http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2005/10/06/nlaw06.xml>.

"Gay Youth UK: Information - the Law." Gay Youth UK. 5 June 2006 <http://www.gayyouthuk.org.uk/info/the_law.phtml>.

Harries, Rt. Rev. Richard. "The Age of Consent." Diocese of Oxford, Church of England. Report of the House of Bishops of the Church of England. Fall 1997. 6 June 2006 <http://newark.rutgers.edu/~lcrew/consent.html>.

United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. Civil Partnership Act 2004. 31 Mar. 2004. 6 June 2006 <http://www.opsi.gov.uk/ACTS/acts2004/20040033.htm>.

United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. Local Government Act 1988. 24 May 1988. 5 June 2006 <http://www.opsi.gov.uk/acts/acts1988/Ukpga_19880009_en_1.htm>.

Woolis, Daniel. "Spain's Gay Marriage Law Goes Into Effect." 365gay.Com 2 July 2005. 5 June 2006 <http://www.365gay.com/newscon05/07/070205spain.htm>.

Mr. Kurisunkal wishes to thank Mr. Roberts for allowing him to conduct this interview and Mr. Scott Plencner for hosting this transcript and its accompanying hyperlinks on his personal website.