Hatred of LGBTQ people still infects society. How can we celebrate? | Owen Jones

Anger, searing fury, not gratitude: that’s how the 50th anniversary of partial decriminalisation of homosexuality in England and Wales should be marked. That we are no longer legally persecuted in this country – and that we are less hated and judged than we were – is not something to be thankful for. Gaining treatment others take for granted is not some special gift: equality is not a privilege.

Gratitude implies that the state eventually buckling to the demands of LGBTQ people represented some sort of sacrifice on the part of our persecutors. Legal rights were won by LGBTQ people who were spat at, reviled by the press, demonised by large swaths of the public, persecuted by the law, incarcerated, chemically castrated and driven to suicide.

We should mark this day by saying: how dare they deprive us of our rights in the first place, and how dare they still not fully accept us as proper equals. Gratitude should only be awarded to those LGBTQ people who needlessly had to waste their lives to win us rights and freedoms that they themselves were denied.

Five decades ago, the British justice system decided to celebrate partial decriminalisation by arresting more gay and bisexual men than they had before this supposed emancipation. Scottish gay and bisexual men had to wait until 1980, four years before I was born.

Now the state offers pardons to those it persecuted and whose lives it ruined. Pardons? It is a grovelling apology that should be offered: it is up to LGBTQ people whether they choose to pardon the state for the cruelty inflicted on them. Like 81-year-old Keith Biddlecombe, for example: locked up by the state in the 1950s for having sex with other men. The state demanded he give them names of his sexual partners to drastically shorten his incarceration: one of those men took his own life.

Yes, social attitudes in Britain have shifted dramatically – and that’s down to us, to LGBTQ people. Straight couples hold hands in the street without even thinking about it. For same-sex couples one of the most basic acts of human affection feels like a defiant political statement whether they like it or not. Earlier this year, a young man held hands with his boyfriend in a pub in Peckham. He had a glass smashed in his face. Last year, another couple holding hands in Charing Cross filmed themselves being verbally abused. Most don’t report the hate they get for the audacity of showing affection to those they love.

Society is diseased with homophobia and transphobia, crude and brutal devices used to police and enforce gender norms. This bigotry is internalised by children at the earliest age. Gay, queer, poof: these words are flung at boys – straight or queer – for any behaviour deemed “unmanly”, from a lack of athletic prowess, not getting into enough fights, not talking about girls in degrading enough terms. There’s the irony: straights suffer, too. Suicide is the biggest killer of British men under 50: partly because talking about feelings is seen as a bit, well, gay. But for LGBTQ teenagers, it is considerably worse. Growing up internalising a sense of being inferior, of being dirty, of being wrong, causes incalculable damage.

For trans people – despite recent strides forward – the crisis is particularly acute. Last year, it was reported that transphobic hate crimes had surged, but that prosecutions were scarce. According to Stonewall figures, eight out of 10 trans young people have self-harmed; nearly half have attempted suicide. This is partly down to internalised shame: but the shame should not be theirs. The shame belongs to a society that leaves many of its younger people – trans, gay, bisexual, whatever – growing up with fear, tortured by self-loathing, thinking that they are somehow wrong, or dysfunctional, or dirty. The damage inflicted at such a young age does lifelong damage: bombs are planted that detonate 10, 20, 30 years later. But the government isn’t addressing this crisis. Instead, its ideologically driven cuts programme has decimated the very LGBTQ and mental health services that could help reverse some of the damage.

Fifty years on from partial decriminalisation, the British government is propped up by a party which, quite frankly, would prefer LGBTQ people to not even exist. The abhorrent DUP denies same-sex couples in Northern Ireland the right to marry, and its founding leader once led a campaign called “Save Ulster from sodomy”. Homosexuality is “disgusting, loathsome, nauseating, wicked and vile,” as Iris Robinson – an ex-MP and wife of the former leader – put it. “I am pretty repulsed by gay and lesbianism,” said DUP MP Ian Paisley Jr. What message is sent to Britain’s LGBTQ citizens when the Tory Michael Fallon – who voted against equal marriage – says his party has “more in common with the DUP than the other parties”?

Ours is a government that agitates for closer ties with Saudi Arabia, ruled by a despicable regime that beheads people for being gay, and which exports an extreme ideology that menaces LGBTQ people. Theresa May herself has repeatedly marched through the voting lobby to deny LGBTQ people their civil rights. When she was home secretary, gay refugees would film themselves having sex to avoid being deported to countries where they faced persecution, torture, even death.

No, there will no gratitude offered for the last 50 years. No amends can be made for what has happened. But the least our society can do is stop further damage being inflicted. It must root out every last vestige of the bigotry which still infects this country. This anniversary is no cause for celebration. It is a time to remember those who struggled and suffered – and to achieve the final triumph of their cause.