The film was genuinely subversive for its time and place: Depicting gay kids who don’t succumb to the “plague” or ultimately bow to pressure from their bigoted peers was no small thing at a moment stricken by an especially virulent, anti-LGBT mood. It was here-in the immediate aftermath of the Thatcher era, and while the world was grappling with the AIDS crisis-that Beautiful Thing was born. The final vestige of this pernicious piece of legislation wasn’t repealed until 15 years later. In 1987, Britain’s Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, gave a speech complaining that, rather than learning to respect “traditional” values, children were being taught that they “have an inalienable right to be gay.” It was hardly a coincidence that Section 28-an amendment that prohibited local authorities from “promoting homosexuality” or teaching in schools the “acceptability of homosexuality as a pretended family relationship”-was enacted by Thatcher’s government the following year. While the United States was ground zero for the epidemic, Britain wasn’t immune to the fear and moral panic it inspired. AIDS, then a terrifying new disease, had started killing thousands of gay men the previous decade. Despite Beautiful Thing’s title, gay life in the early 1990s was anything but pretty.
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