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This homophobia did not spring out of nowhere, but was part of a joint effort, in the run up to the 1987 election, between the right-wing media and Margaret Thatcher’s Conservative government to paint Labour as the “ loony left”, who were apparently prioritising the needs of minority groups over “normal” – white, heterosexual – families. The paper branded the book “vile”, “perverted”, and a direct threat to the children of Britain. In 1986, for example, The Sun “ discovered” that a teachers’ resource library in the Labour-held London borough of Islington held a copy of a children’s book called “ Jenny Lives with Eric and Martin” about a young girl and her two gay dads. The right-wing press in Britain has a well-deserved reputation for homophobia. This was not an isolated incident, but the tip of a growing iceberg of thinly-veiled homophobia since the EU referendum. The grammar breathed new life into the old, homophobic idea that “real” marriage can only take place between heterosexuals. In May this year, the Daily Express put the word “marry” in inverted commas when tweeting about the openly-gay, Olympic medal-winning diver Tom Daley. Whether national treasure or person on the street, in recent years these representations have become increasingly negative. This is why media representation has been, and remains, such an important issue in the struggle for LGBT rights. For many heterosexual people, it is through the media that they encounter LGBT identities. The media plays a central role in shaping public opinion, offering partial, selective and ideologically-loaded access points to the world beyond our everyday experiences. It is no different now: following the 2016 EU referendum vote, homophobic hate crimes rose by 147%. Post-World War II, for example, there was a spike in arrests for homosexuality. History has shown that conservative attitudes towards sexuality and gender tend to flare up during periods of social and political uncertainty. Yet in the last year there has been a rising tide of anti-LGBT sentiment. To the point that it might now seem like the British LGBT+ community is on an unstoppable ascent to acceptance and equality. The intervening years have seen vast changes in the legal rights and cultural visibility of LGBT+ people in the UK. The Sexual Offences Act 1967 decreed that, in England and Wales, it would no longer be illegal for two men over the age of 21 to have sex behind closed doors. On July 27 2017, it will be 50 years since the first major gay rights reform in British history.