ABSTRACT
What changed for gay men in the seventies? As time goes by, it becomes increasingly difficult to fully understand or appreciate just how dramatically things did change, and the number of people who, in one way or another, were affected by the changes. The casual use of the term ‘gay men’ is itself a product of the climate of the seventies. Before then we were, even to ourselves, at best ‘homosexuals’, more often ‘queers’, ‘poofs’ or ‘nancyboys’. The idea that we constitute a minority group in society with a right to live visibly gay lives as equal members of society no longer seems radical. But less than twenty years ago you could almost count on two hands the number of people who were prepared to affirm this principle, and, probably on one finger those who were prepared to state this openly as gay people.
