On a Street Like This

Another year is drawing to a close.  Among other things, 2014 has seen a historic Scottish referendum, Winter Olympics in Russia and a World Cup in Brazil.  And in February this year, Russell T. Davies’ taboo-busting series Queer as Folk turned fifteen years old.  Fifteen.  One whole Nathan Maloney.  Nathan would be thirty now - the same age Vince turned halfway through the first series.  Stuart’s son Alfred would be fifteen himself.  And Stuart and Vince would be in their mid-forties.

Queer as Folk depicted the drug-fuelled, sex-filled party life of promiscuous Stuart, his luckless best friend Vince, and the series of events following one damp Thursday when Stuart picks up 15-year-old Nathan who’s on his first night out on Manchester’s Canal Street.  Not only was Queer as Folk ground-breaking, it was also a fantastic piece of television.  From its pitch-perfect soundtrack - ranging from club classics, to cheese pop, to Murray Gold’s pulsating, electronic score - to Davies’ brilliantly crafted script, it was an unrivalled success.  The script, in parts witty, in others excruciatingly acerbic, is trademark Davies.  His distinctive dialogue, capturing the randomness and warmth of everyday speech patterns, so familiar now to viewers following his revival of Doctor Who in 2005, is flawless.  Queer as Folk was unashamed, delightfully quirky and, above all, bursting with life – characters don’t walk, they run; through schools and hospitals and right down the middle of the road.  It’s a show you wish there was more of whilst being simultaneously glad that there isn’t.

The two-part second series that aired in 2001 leaves you wondering what the characters might be up to now.  Vince, I like to think, is happy.  Doctor Who is back on the telly, and, one hopes, he did eventually get that shag.  I imagine Nathan all grown up, bored now of being king of his small world and ready to hand on the mantle to his own protégé.  But what would Stuart Alan Jones make of 2014?  Re-watching the show in 2014, although it’s as vivacious as ever, some aspects have clearly aged.  The chunky mobiles, dial-up internet and Vince’s video tape collection all seem a little retro.  And, some might argue, the gay scene of the 1990s has changed beyond recognition.

In terms of gay rights, 1999 was a very different place.  Back then, the age of consent for homosexual couples was 18, making Nathan’s age all the more shocking.  It was lowered to 16 in January 2001, and since then, gay rights have crept towards equality at a fairly steady pace – the Sexual Offences Act of 2004 finally removed all reference to gender, civil partnerships were legally recognised by the end of 2005, the same year in which same-sex adoption became legal, and finally, in March this year, same sex marriage was officially recognised in the UK.  Homophobia is now outlawed and discriminating against someone based on their sexuality, in any area of public life, is illegal.

In Queer as Folk, Stuart is out and proud and wants nothing whatsoever to do with the heterosexual lifestyle.  He accuses Vince of being “a straight man who f*cks men” and of “wanting a wife”, simply because Vince appears to want to settle down in a monogamous relationship.  For Stuart, being gay means promiscuity, drugs and clubs; it means embracing a whole alternate lifestyle – there are no grey areas.  As he tells Martin Brooks (he of the wife and dodgy roof) – “you either do it or you don’t, but don’t be a tourist.”

In part, the development of the gay culture that Stuart embraces was a reaction to the increasing homophobia and marginalisation of gays throughout the latter half of the 20^th century.  Homosexual acts may have been decriminalised in 1967, but by no means did this allow gay people to enjoy the same lifestyle as their heterosexual peers.  They had no hope of marriage or children, the things that many people aspired to.  They were ostracised in every area of society, from education to the military, and media and politics.

This reached a head in the 1980s, with the AIDS crisis heightening the stigma of promiscuity and recklessness, and with the introduction of Section 28 of the Local Government Act in 1988, which stated that a local authority should not intentionally promote homosexuality or present it as normal.  In the light of this, it is little wonder that a gay subculture developed.  If society deemed them to be abnormal, then they would reject everything that society said they should be, and places such as Canal Street developed to accommodate these separate communities.

Canal Street itself developed as Manchester’s gay village following the decline in the use of canals and the collapse of the cotton industry by the 1960s.  The unlit and unvisited Canal Street made a good place for clandestine meetings.  During the 1980s, Manchester’s Chief of Police, James Anderton, an evangelical Christian, encouraged police officers to “stalk its dank alleys and expose anyone caught in a clinch, while police motorboats with spotlights cruised for gay men around the canal's locks and bridges.”

Everything changed in 1990, with the opening of the glass-fronted club Manto - an antithesis to the notion that gay people should hide themselves away.  The club lost money initially, as people were afraid to be seen there, but other clubs and bars soon grew up around it, transforming Canal Street into a vibrant gay community.

Manto closed its doors last year.  The face of Canal Street, the Village and the gay scene as a whole is changing. People complain that Canal Street is now too ‘straight’, overrun with hen-dos and tourists, in part a result of the ‘Queer as Folk-effect’.  Gay bars elsewhere in the UK are losing money too, since there is a declining desire for segregated bars.  And now there is a division opening up between those in the gay community who want to retain their separate lifestyle and those who want to live the traditional heterosexual lifestyle, now that they can have it too.  There has been some tension over customers being turned away from clubs for ‘not looking gay enough’.

What would Stuart Jones make of all this?  Would he be a middle aged party boy still holding the same beliefs or a responsible father embracing the changes?  Could Stuart’s world still exist in 2014?  It’s true that homosexuality is becoming more accepted but it has not yet been normalised.  Although traditional gender roles are gradually becoming more blurred, homophobia certainly hasn’t been stamped out.  Fifteen years has gone by, and we’re all getting older.  Some things have changed, but others, sadly, haven’t: there is still a long way to go before a person’s sexuality doesn’t define them.  Stuart and Vince and Nathan may well still be out there partying away.  And if Russell T. Davies is so inclined, there’s certainly a few fans who would be interested in finding out what they're up to.