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LGBT+ community and the police

If you are older you will remember, that just a few decades ago, police officers were staking out public toilets (cottages) and cruising areas to entrap and arrest gay men. If you are younger, you are more likely to see Met officers on a Pride march, some out and proud.

Yes, there has been change in policing, much of it for the better. However, we should not forget for a moment, that the police exists to uphold the law (delivering the will of Parliament and government of the day who have been elected by the people (that’s you).

Not even a lifetime ago policing was very different, and we should not forget so easily just because it waves a rainbow flag at Pride.

“In 1988 Section 28, the first anti-gay legislation in a hundred years, became law. The re-criminalisation of male homosexuality was high on the Tory wish list, and the police were doing their best to make wishes come true. In the dying years of the 1980s, arrests of gay men for “gross indecency” doubled. But while the “pretty police” struggled into their leather chaps, the better to entrap us, something else was happening: violence against gay people was spiralling out of control.”

The worst of times | The Guardian | 14 Aug 2002