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The Thatcher government's failure to openly accept gay people was wrong, Conservative chairman Francis Maude, has told a gay news website.
Mr Maude, whose brother Charles died from the HIV virus in 1993, said the attitude prompted the "promiscuous" activity among homosexuals at the time.

He told the PinkNews.co.uk website he now regretted voting to ban councils from promoting homosexuality.

The Section 28 legislation, made law in the late 1980s, was repealed in 2003.

Mr Maude, MP for Horsham, said his decision was "in hindsight a mistake, I voted for it, I was a minister".

He added: "We've been seen for a long time as a party which hasn't been very open to gay people. That's wrong."

Asked if it was morally wrong, he answered: "Yes, totally."
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[H]e told the website the Thatcher government's attitude at the time had not helped the gay scene.

"The gay scene in London in the 1980s was quite aggressively promiscuous and I think if society generally and the government I served in had been more willing to recognise gay people then there would have been less of that problem."

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Originally posted by RealityBites:
Or he may actually think that people had lots of unsafe sex to make up for the hurt of being unloved by Margaret Thatcher.

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The withheld love of the Iron Lady...

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Originally posted by RealityBites:
Section 28 banned any safer sex information in schools or other government sponsored institutions. Perhaps that's what he's trying to say?

Or he may actually think that people had lots of unsafe sex to make up for the hurt of being unloved by Margaret Thatcher.

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Still, Francis Maude has done what Ed Schreyer could not, hasn't he?

However, were alcohol to be driven underground I think we would see a dramatic rise in deaths due to unsafe alcohol production, unscrupulous alcohol dealers, and alcoholics would find themselves not just unemployed, but facing jail sentences as well, which in our prison system does little to contribute to treatment of the problem.

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Originally posted by Screaming Lord Byron:

Still, Francis Maude has done what Ed Schreyer could not, hasn't he?

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Well its all stiff upper lip until someone loses a brother.

[ 14 February 2006: Message edited by: Cueball ]

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Originally posted by Screaming Lord Byron:
Still, Francis Maude has done what Ed Schreyer could not, hasn't he?

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Originally posted by DrConway:
If society had been mature enough to recognize the problem and face it head on, the AIDS crisis could well have been nipped in the bud by the late 1980s. Even so, it took until the mid-1990s for gay communities to get a handle on the problem.

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And thousands of Canadian's were infected by tainted blood in that decade from 1986 and 1990. The feds claimed there was no test that might have screened for the virus between those years. But the Krever report discovered that the Red Cross and their American contractors were accepting blood and blood products from highly questionable sources, like high risk prison inmates in the gulag system. Many Canadian's died while waiting for compensation. The French simply crucified their blood czars for criminal negligence.

[ 14 February 2006: Message edited by: Fidel ]

Avec nous le deluge, quoi. After all, that government really was a 'regime', almost defining the polity; I don't think there's ever been anything like it in Canada, except maybe Trudeau in early 70s. Maybe in particular provinces. Certainly not Ed Schruyer!

[ 14 February 2006: Message edited by: Boarsbreath ]