This clause in the Local Government Act 1988 stated that local authorities (thus including schools and libraries): ‘shall not intentionally promote homosexuality or publish material with the intention of promoting homosexuality’ or ‘promote the teaching in any maintained school of the acceptability of homosexuality as a pretended family relationship’. Wow. Yeah, that was a thing that happened.

The ‘acceptability of homosexuality as a pretended family relationship’? Fucking hell.

This of course meant that teachers and librarians were terrified that if they helped or supported young LGBTQ+ people in any way, they would be persecuted. A culture of clanging silence fell over schools, libraries and youth clubs. For twelve long years, teenagers went to school unable to ask their teachers, counsellors, mentors and librarians questions on burgeoning feelings about themselves, their bodies, their minds, their desires.

I was one of those teenagers. Being a gender nonconforming queer youth was WELL FUN in the nineties, let me tell you. I remember one time an entire football team scooped up handfuls of wet mud off the pitch and hurled them at me, shouting ‘DOLLY DAWSON’. My poor PE teacher, himself a gay man, could only stand at arm’s length and ask, “Who did this?”

“All of them,” I replied, in tears. And he couldn’t do a thing to help. There were no measures in place for homophobic, transphobic or biphobic bullying. How could there be? That might be seen to ‘promote’ homosexuality.

The government of the era made my life worse. I am still covered in scars – real and metaphorical – because of that piece of legislation. It was eventually scrapped by the Labour government in 2000.

Sorry, did that come across as political? Welcome to being LGBTQ+. Your life is inherently political. Politicians, all the world over, are still discussing whether or not you should have the same fundamental human rights as straight or cisgender people.

The final reason I didn’t start my transition until I was twenty-eight was the media. Ooh, the media is a powerful, powerful thing. I have mixed feelings about being a very small cog in that thundering, polluting social engine. As discussed, banning a book was instrumental in the introduction of Section 28. The Mail announced in 1985: ‘Britain Threatened by Gay Virus Plague’. The Sun said ‘Blood from Gay Donor Puts 41 at AIDS Risk’. Fast-forward to 2017 and The Times declared ‘Children Sacrificed to Appease Trans Lobby’. The Mail: ‘NHS Pressured Our Kids to Change Sex’.

Almost thirty years have passed, but we have the same moral panic. Gay people, trans people, bi people, queer people: the media wants everyone to think we are a risk. A risk to your health, a risk to your children. Utter, unrepentant, unreserved bigotry and prejudice.

But with Section 28 gone, media attitudes towards (cisgender) gay and lesbian people improved over the course of the late nineties. Will & Grace and Queer as Folk appeared on Channel 4; Ellen DeGeneres came out; Graham Norton got his own chat show; Dana International won Eurovision; Doctor Who had a bi companion (Jack Harkness) and then a lesbian one (Bill Potts); Big Brother heralded the dawn of Reality TV and with it, household names Brian Dowling, Anna Nolan, Rylan Clark-Neal, Will Young, Nadia Almada. Which came first? Media representation or the shift in attitudes? Chicken or egg?