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Dire Straits – Les Boys Lyrics 4 years ago
@[guy:37919]-paul10 homosexuality wasn't legal in NZ until the mid 80s. Still an issue at the 1990 election.

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Dire Straits – Les Boys Lyrics 4 years ago
@[guy:37904]-paul10 some of the business men in the seventies ... if theyd been 18 in 1940 they'd only be 58 in 1980. Maybe they brought their own ss caps. German people at that time would still apologize for the war. And the bader meinhof gang claimed any German over 40 was guilty.


Things looked a lot different then. The battle of Britain was more recent to them when this song was released than the songs release is to us today.

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Dire Straits – Les Boys Lyrics 4 years ago
@[guy:37903]-paul10 that does not mean the German disco story isn't true.

When this song came out, in NZ anyway, homosexuality had been illegal a few years before. We took it to mean gay people could be more open as well as a wry comment about how some of those opposed to homosexuality were gay, particularly the wide spread belief the SA leadership was gay and the Nazi party was founded in a Munich gay bar. Beliefs still used to try to discredit gay people in the 70s.

At the time, popular images of gay people was that they were effete limp wristed girlie boys. Then you had the village people, and the whole macho gay thing happening.

It was a time that saw the start of questioning male sexuality in response to the women's movement and the gay rights movement in the 70s. A couple of years later, Joe Jackson put out real men.

See the nice boys, dancing in pairs
Golden earring golden tan
Blow-wave in the hair
Sure they're all straight, straight as a line
All the gays are macho
Can't you see their leather shine

Being a teenager in the 70s and 80s meant having to examine what it was to be male our female, gay or straight. People today are lucky we suited all that out and they don't need to worry about it.

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