I arrived to live in London a sheltered, possibly even privileged, young man and, to be frank, the first years were hard. This, I hope, would have pleased her because, in her quiet way, she played a heroic part in that fight. Gay politics and the tortuous fight for dignity and equality are inextricably linked in my mind to my first reading of Mary Renault. Gay men now stand very nearly equal with their heterosexual brothers before the law. Since then, despite predictable and poisonous outbreaks of homophobia, the courage of activists has ensured that the age of consent is now the same as that for heterosexuals, discrimination in the workplace is outlawed and civil partnerships – more popular than anticipated – are an unexceptional part of our lives. For most of the time the subject was ignored. I grew up in a world where the idea of love between two men was, at best, tolerated. During that half century, life for gay men in Britain has changed in ways that I could never have foreseen as a young man.
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