Rising Free
Recorded live November or December 1977
Released as ‘(Sing If You’re) Glad to Be Gay’ on Rising Free EP [EMI EMI2749], 1978
Also released on:
Tom Robinson Band [EMI EMS1005], 1981 (reissued on Fame FA3028, 1982)
12 inch of 2468 Motorway reissue single [EMI 12EM28], 1987
Rising Free – The Very Best of TRB [EMI 7243-8-57889-25], 1997
Power In The Darkness (reissue) [EMI 7243-8-66764-29], 2004
[Lyrics new to this version are marked in bold]
This song is dedicated to the World Health Organization, it’s a medical song and it concerns a disease whose classification according to the International Classification of Diseases is 302.0
The British police are the best in the world
I don’t believe one of these stories I’ve heard
‘Bout them raiding our pubs for no reason at all
Lining the customers up by the wall
Picking out people, knocking them down
Resisting arrest as they’re kicked on the ground
Searching their houses, calling them queer
I don’t believe that sort of thing happens here
Sing if you’re glad to be gay
Sing if you’re happy that way
Pictures of naked young women are fun
In Titbits and Playboy, page three of The Sun
There’s no nudes in Gay News our one magazine
But they still found excuses to call it obscene
Read how disgusting we are in the press
The Telegraph, People and Sunday Express
Molesters of children, corruptors of youth
It’s there in the paper it must be the truth
Try and sing if you’re glad to be gay
Sing if you’re happy that way
Don’t try to kid us that if you’re discreet
You’re perfectly safe as you walk down the street
You don’t have to mince or make bitchy remarks
To get beaten unconscious and left in the dark
I had a friend who was gentle and short
He was lonely one evening, he went for a walk
Queerbashers caught him, kicked in his teeth
He was only hospitalised for a week
And he still bears the scars
Sing if you’re glad to be gay
Sing if you’re happy that way
And sit back and watch as they close all our clubs
Arrest us for meeting and raid all our pubs
Make sure your boyfriend’s at least 21
So only your friends and your brothers get done
Lie to your workmates, lie to your folks
Put down the queens, tell anti-queer jokes
Gay Lib’s ridiculous, join their laughter
‘The buggers are legal now, what more are they after?’
Tell them!
Sing if you’re glad to be gay
Sing if you’re happy that way
Sing if you’re glad to be gay
Sing if you’re happy this way
Explanatory notes:
“This song is dedicated to the World Health Organization, it’s a medical song and it concerns a disease whose classification according to the International Classification of Diseases is 302.0”
It really is what it sounds like.
The UN body has a listing of diseases called the International Classification of Diseases, each given its own code number. Homosexuality was listed among the mental and behavioural disorders, given the code 302.0. In 1975, the definition was amended to ‘ego-dystonic homosexuality’ (ie being straight really but thinking you’re gay). It was not removed until the tenth edition of the ICD in May 1990.
The struggle’s not over. The current list of ‘disorders of sexual preference’ still retains fetishism (F65.0) and sado-masochism (F65.5), neatly sandwiching oh-so-similar paedophilia (F65.4). Molesters of children, corrupters of youth.
The widely used American Psychiatric Association’s equivalent to the ICD is the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM). Homosexuality was removed from the list of disorders in the seventh printing of the DSM-II, in 1974.
As with the ICD, it was not deleted entirely but amended to retain bigoted views of those whose sexuality is ‘not normal’. The DSM swapped homosexuality for ‘sexual orientation disturbance’ (latterly called ‘gender identity disorder’) which describes the attributes related to transsexuality, transgender identity, and transvestism.
