Sir Ian McKellen came out as gay on BBC Radio 30 years ago today. What was the reaction like in the UK and the US?

You can listen to the BBC Radio 3 discussion where McKellen publically came out here, in conversation with the (very conservative) editor of the Telegraph, Peregrine Worsthorne. The first discussion of McKellen's coming out I can find is a profile of McKellen in the British newspaper The Independent from February 20th, 1988, which is preserved on Ian McKellen's webpage as his writing (which it clearly is not). McKellen's coming out is portrayed as political activism in opposition to 'Clause 28', mooted legislation forbidding local governments to promote the idea that homosexual relationships might be normal. McKellen became involved in activism against Clause 28 in early January. Maybe one could say that the future Gandalf was trying to tell parliamentarians: you shall not pass...this bill. (Despite McKellen's activism, it became law in May)

According to the summary of McKellen's activism about Clause 28 in the Independent article:

On Sunday, 24 January, he walked on stage and on to television screens at the Laurence Olivier Awards. "The greatest surprise", says one of the invited audience, "was the roar of approval that greeted him when he mentioned Clause 28". The next day he shepherded a host of stars, and one baby, on stage at the Playhouse, before journalists and Lords bussed down the Embankment for the occasion. The radio and television blitz followed, and by the end of the week homosexuality and censorship were issues of national interest in a way unknown since the late Sixties.

To achieve this, McKellen played a very private card. One friend describes it: "Coming out is the essence of gay liberation, and Ian understands that. There are only two or three other working actors who have done it, because it is dangerous. But he knew it was time to stand up and be counted." Though he described himself as gay in a World Service programme on 19 January, the declaration was made to most of Britain on Radio 3's Third Ear, on 27 January.

The occasion was a spirited argument with Peregrine Worsthorne. It provoked a remark about "disgusting homosexual practices" from the editor of the Sunday Telegraph, and a query laden with innocence from McKellen: did Mr Worsthorne mean the Garrick when he spoke about gay clubs? The following Sunday's leader did the Stop Clause 28 campaign no harm at all.

Unfortunately, the archives of the London Telegraph do not appear to go back more than 20 years, and Peregrine Worsthorne's response to McKellen's coming out in his paper is not accessible online as far as I can tell.

Additionally, McKellen wrote a piece for Capital Gay magazine summarising his rather eventful 1988. In it, he essentially claims that his homosexuality was not particularly a surprise to anyone in his life, given the theatrical circles he moved in:

That I had actually come out probably surprised me more than my being gay can have shocked any listener who knew my work. Indeed, some of them have written to say that they'd known I was gay for years and couldn't care less. When I told my step-mother, soon after, she said the same. My friends had always known; so had my fellow actors, because backstage there are few secrets. But I'd always avoided saying I was gay to the media - even to the gay press - insisting that my private life was my own. My complacency had involved nothing more embarrassing than the occasional white lie about not being married - I was never, though, one to talk about looking for the right girl and relishing parenthood.

In terms of reaction in the US, the first mention I can find on Factiva is a reference in the Boston Globe to McKellen, in April 1988, winning the Norton Award for the best achievements in Boston-area theatre, for his one-man show, 'Ian McKellen Acting Shakespeare'. Giving a speech, accepting the award, according to a Boston Globe story by Jeff McLaughlin:

With regard to the denouement of McKellen's remarks -- in which he recounted his decision to publicly acknowledge his homosexuality and work for tolerance and rights for gay people in Britain -- not even Elliot Norton knew what was coming. Norton said, in a Wednesday note, that McKellen had asked for at least 20 minutes to speak, but did not discuss his topic beforehand. "But he had planned it," Norton wrote, "to the point of writing out his whole talk and, in the half hour or so before the ceremony, studying part of it before a dressing-room mirror."

McKellen's speech may well approach historic status, and it certainly will become part of Boston theater folklore, since no one had thought ahead of time to set up a tape recorder.

One journalist's reference to McKellen from the point of view of someone not particularly inclined towards progressive views came from a review of the TV documentary Open Space on BBC2; Martin Cropper in The Times said of Open Space that:

Open Space (BBC2) illustrated the condition [of homosexuality] with some predictable examples: the 'spanking judge', for instance, who resigned his recordership after exposure in the tabloids; the 'out' lesbian who enlisted in the Wrens specifically to meet like-minded adults, without realizing that the armed forces are the only sphere where such activity has ever been illegal. The most intelligent comment was Ian McKellen's plea for respectable homosexuals to help erode prejudice by declaring themselves publically - a move which would, however, posit a different society.

As one has come to expect from access-television, the historical perspective was on the flimsy side. In this country at least, the 'homophobic' backlash started years before Aids had been heard of, for the obvious reason that some 'straights' had had it to here with the hectoring aggression of homosexual propaganda.

Another reference to Ian McKellen discussing his homosexuality comes from an article in the Sunday Times about the filming of a ITV Phil Donahue special (i.e., with the American talk show host filming a British version of the show):

On Wednesday the subject was clause 28. On the panel were two straights, Sir Rhodes Boyson and the Rev David Rushworth-Smith, and two gay actors, Ian McKellen and Michael Cashman, who plays Colin in EastEnders. Noisy claques in the audience booed Boyson and the vicar, and cheered the actors.

Donahue had been told that the reserved British would never speak out; luckily many present were Americans who can utter words like ``sexuality'' without a blush.

The debate goes like this. A fat woman is horrified to be surrounded by these homosexuals; a pigtailed young man says he's heterosexual but live and let live; a lesbian mother with two teenage children is rounded on by a man in favour of "the normal family unit''; Donahue asks who is to say what is normal? And so on. When Boyson says, "God created man and woman'' and McKellen rejoins, "and together they created a homosexual'' such a sequitur is rare.

A grey-haired English woman declares with dignity, "I am the mother of a gay son'', but we hear no more from her: it is time for a commercial break. After it, Donahue has found another old lady. She says: "People who are born like that, it's like being a cripple isn't it? I mean they can't help it] Well, it's sad they're born, isn't it?''

Nobody in the audience knows whether to laugh or cry.

Ian McKellen was not the first theatre actor to come out as gay, as Simon Callow had come out in a book he wrote in 1984. In early June 1988, Callow mentions McKellen in a Diary piece written in The Times:

The latest such event has been inspired by that fumbling piece of legislation, Clause 28 of the Local Government Bill. To raise money for the possible victims of the clause, an extraordinary group of artists Simon Rattle, Dame Judi Dench, Mike Gambon and many others across the spectrum of the performing arts are appearing at the Piccadilly theatre this Sunday. The event has been largely inspired and organized by Ian McKellen. It was his cheeky notion to call the show Promoting Homosexuality (echoing the ambiguous phrasing of the clause itself) but the intention behind the show is not polemical; it simply represents the anxiety of a large number of performers about a piece of law that affects us all.

Elsewhere, most of the references to Ian McKellen in Factiva from 1988 refer to his career continuing as per usual, which makes me suspect that nobody into theatre in England (or Boston) in the 1980s was enormously surprised, or cared particularly that a leading actor was gay; he starred as (the heterosexual) Profumo in the 1989 film Scandal. Ultimately, McKellen was knighted by the Queen in 1991; coming out in 1988 didn't stop him from symbolically being admitted to the establishment.

Nonetheless, anti-homosexual prejudice in the wake of the AIDS epidemic had a support base within the Conservative Party, not least with Conservative leader Margaret Thatcher, who in a 1987 conference speech said that "Children who need to be taught to respect traditional moral values are being taught that they have an inalienable right to be gay...all of those children are being cheated of a sound start in life. Yes, cheated!" Clause 28 remained on the books until the Labor government voted it out in March 2003.

McKellen relates in the Capital Gay piece discussed Clause 28 with Tories at Westminister:

At Westminster, I met our lawmakers — and remembered their words: The Minister — "I don't understand why young homosexuals need their own clubs — why can't they mix with everybody else of their own age?" The Whip in the Commons — "I'm sorry about Section 28 — it's just a bit of red meat thrown to our right-wing wolves." The Whip in the Lords — "I'm sorry about Section 28 — but you appreciate my job is just to get our chaps to vote the right way."