Was the uk in the 90s genuinely more fun and united, or are we just getting old?

To address Homophobia however, historically it was never really a problem until the Victorians (maybe the back end of the 18th century saw it starting to switch gear slowly and begin to rise). Even then the Christian Bible made no mention of homosexual until 1946. Yes, you read that correctly. The English translation of the Bible hasn't even had the word "homosexual" in it for 100 years yet. It wasn't particularly celebrated or embraced before then. But it also wasn't the deeply shameful and terrible thing that the Victorians built. It was just the way life was. There were periods when it was more socially acceptable, and others where it was less so. But the modern idea of Homophobia - a hatred or fear of people attracted to the same sex just wasn't relevant to people's lives. But to remember the 90s as a period when we had made significant progress on Homophobia is also maybe crediting the 90s with some of the huge victories won in the early 00s. (Or at least for the LGBTQ+ community - which is where my knowledge is specialised.) The whole of the 90s was spent under the shadow of Section 28, even mentioning sexuality in school could cause panic in the teachers because they didn't want to be accused of "promoting" it. The papers were still the main mass media and had a focus on weaponised outings to shame and disgrace people in the public eye. My classmates could legally get married, have sex, give birth (OK, have sex, get pregnant, rush a marriage and give birth 😜) to a child who would have started infant school before I was allowed to have sex with a boyfriend (The age of consent remained 21 until 1994 when it was lowered to 18. I can highly recommend reading the Hansard entries about the debate on that if you want to see how it was considered acceptable to talk about in public. 😉) HIV and AIDS had stopped being the "Gay Plague" and instead become a disease that you either didn't "deserve" because you caught it through medical negligence like contaminated blood or proper, normal sex with a filthy deviant. Or you got it because you were a filthy deviant or drug addict. Legally the 1998 Human Rights Act didn't cover sexuality, that was read into it by the courts because the ECHR (convention) that it was based on had "other status" included in the non discrimination section (Article 14). So while I can't speak for Women, I can definitely say that the 90s were still a very dark period for queer people in the UK. (Oh, and a little aside - I have a feeling that your username is ascii art style, or at least I *hope* it is. But just using the number 88 repeated could be seen as a huge red flag for serious and sensible discussions. I would definitely suggest that you search for the significance of the number online if you aren't aware. 🙂)