It’s a sin

 The most perfect piece of television writing is currently on our screens. Russel T Davis is an actual genius but you don’t need me to tell you that. 

Genius

He has been writing brilliantly for television for years and years (see what I did there?) and at the same time normalising all sexualities. His characters are human and real.

I have only watched the first two episodes of ‘It’s a sin,’because even a dedicated binge watcher with a side helping of emotional masochism, like myself, can’t take the heartbreak, which seems to be heightened by being broadcast during a pandemic that is indiscriminate.

The politicians keep saying that Covid-19 doesn’t discriminate and that’s why we all need to play our part. We know that all viruses do discriminate. There are always some people that are more susceptible and some behaviours that encourage spread, however, the implication is that if the virus discriminated against a group of people or set of behaviours of which we didn’t approve then we wouldn’t all have to play our part.

I was 15 when AIDS first appeared on the scene. My generation were just discovering sex at a time when a sexual plague was sweeping the nation. We still lived in quite a buttoned up conservative society. Our parents sniffed at anyone on the TV who didn’t appear to fit into the normal sexual conventions. I remember Dad getting quite angry about Boy George and Mum deciding that Victoria Wood was probably *mouthed* “a lesbian,” because she wore dungarees. The implication was that ‘nice’ people couldn’t love someone of the same sex or wear clothes that didn’t accurately gender them. My parents grew up in a time when being a gay man was a crime and although they were generally liberal thinkers there was always some residual fear and anger about gay men. Our MP was Harvey Proctor, who lived with a man. For my dad this just doubled down on his crime of being a Tory and when the People newspaper engineered a situation where they could take photos of him with men under the age of 21 and forced his resignation, my dad said, “Well, what do you expect from a shirtlifter?”

It’s crazy to think that in 1981 the age of consent for homosexual men was 21, lowered to 18 in 1998 and it wasn’t given parity with other sexual consent until 2000. What did lawmakers think gay men were going to do, while all their peers were having sex? Sleep with women, just in case? Actually, that’s what many did and it caused so much more pain for everyone.

At 15 I subscribed to The New Scientist magazine because... Because I was a nerd. I had been reading about AIDS but I didn’t for one second think it could relate to me. It probably didn’t because I was a nerd but my friends were sleeping with multiple partners and the girls were all on the pill, so sex was most definitely unprotected. Boys didn’t like to use condoms, was the rumour. The scientific evidence was suggesting that unless you’d rogered a monkey you’d be fine. No one seemed concerned. 

By the time I left University we knew what it was, how it was transmitted and the first antiviral drug to treat it was developed. There were TV adverts warning us all not to die of ignorance and one of my nephew’s first words was condom, which he would say repeatedly, as though it was a little song while he pushed his little Thomas Tank Engine Walker around the living room.

The problem with a drama as good as ‘It’s  a sin’ is that it’s all consuming. Even if it’s too painful to binge watch you think about it all the time. I wish I hadn’t started it because I have things to do today.