Gay communist spies and KGB honey traps - The surprising history of the Lavender Scare
Poking through the old slashfic archives for The Man from UNCLE, one soon notes that where other fandoms have hooker AUs, MfU has the popular Illya Kuryakin: Gay KGB Honey Trap fanon backstory. Like so many old 90’s slash tropes, this one seems to have waned in popularity in today’s (at least theoretically) more culturally sensitive times, which
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I do read and enjoy the more realistic fic - I just have no yen to write it.
Although, in its own way, some of my own fic can be quite dark and downbeat. Just not historically so.
I do keep an old mini-atlas to hand though - I try to be as nebulous about place as the series often was, but I like to keep a handle on my Cold War borders.
It was Waverly's generation who decriminalised homosexuality in the UK in 1967 - the Govt will be celebrating that next year. Many things straight couples would take for granted remained illegal - but at least you could no longer be sent to prison or chemically castrated for simply trying to live as a gay man.
I don't know if you ran across this in your researches: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-37438800
Still a long way to go though - both Northern Ireland and the CofE are still to get with the programme.
I'm hoping by the time I'm picking up me pension it'll all look irretrievably silly - like votes for women. No one questions that now.
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