The 1988 Show
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sexuality. In every way, in fact, 1988 was a terrible year in terms of gay
history.
On February 10, 1988, a three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit
Court of Appeals in San Francisco struck down the Army’s ban on
homosexuals, but the decision was quickly overturned at a higher level,
and being found to be a homosexual once again was grounds for
discharge from the armed services. On May 24, 1988, the U.K
conservative government passed “Section 28” which banned “the
promotion of homosexuality” by local government. It was a move that
Reagan and Bush had championed as well and, in many ways, started the
first skirmish that would be called “the culture wars” ten years later in
the U.S. Nineteen-eighty-eight was also the first year that the restaurant
chain Chick-Fil-A was faced with a discrimination lawsuit by an
employee who was gay and claimed to have been fired due to his sexual
orientation. More than twenty-five years later, Chick-Fil-A continues to
be in the business of hate, working to prevent gay marriage from being
legalized.'' The 1988 lawsuit against Chick-Fil-A would be followed by a
dozen more, though in the ‘90s the number of lawsuits declined because
the company began instituting a new policy of hiring employees that
involved a series of interviews that could last more than a year and often
included talking to the families and neighbors of the prospective
employee. Truett Cathy—who was CEO during those years and is the
current CEO, Dan Cathy’s, father—said that he would fire any employee
who he found to be “sinful” in any way. It made more sense to make sure
gays were never hired to begin with, then, by asking friends and
neighbors.
Nineteen-eighty-eight was also the founding year of the
American Family Association. This is a group that has tried to keep gay
soldiers from being buried in Arlington National Cemetery, has
boycotted Home Depot and McDonald’s for their “gay agenda,” and
whose leader claimed that “homosexuality gave us Adolph Hitler.” Since
moving online in 2010, the AFA has increased its sponsorship to more
than two million members.^
The culture at large in 1988 was thus openly hostile to gays. A
1988 poll, in fact, indicated that 89% of the population opposed gay
marriage and a startling 75% of the population thought that same sex
relations of any kind were “always w r o n g . I t is little wonder, then, that
AIDS was called “the gay cancer” and had been virtually ignored by the
government. It was also in 1988, however, that the World Health
Organization organized the first ever “World AIDS Day” to spread