The huge difference in my lifetime is that you can just go up to

Ian McKellen, a man of great courage and voice, once reflected: “The huge difference in my lifetime is that you can just go up to somebody and make a pass. You couldn’t do that in the 1950s if you were gay. There were secret handshakes, a secret language. There was nowhere you could go to be romantic outside of people’s houses.” These words are not merely a personal memory; they are a testimony of an age when love was forced into shadows. They speak of a world where hearts were bound by fear, and where even the most natural act of affection required secrecy and code.

The ancients understood the cruelty of forbidding love. Plato himself, in the Symposium, spoke openly of love between men as one of the highest forms of devotion. Yet in many later centuries, this openness was buried beneath silence and repression. In McKellen’s youth, society demanded disguises, forcing men and women to live their loves in whispers rather than in songs. The secret handshakes and hidden languages he recalls are symbols of survival: signs of belonging forged in a world that refused to recognize them.

Think of the poet Oscar Wilde, who, in the late 19th century, dared to live and write openly of beauty, desire, and affection between men. For his honesty, he was cast into prison, his name smeared, his health broken. Like those who came after him, Wilde lived in a time where to be romantic openly was to risk ruin. His tragedy was the fate McKellen alludes to: a society that forced love behind doors, into darkness, where it might survive only in secrecy.

But McKellen also speaks of the difference—the change born of decades of struggle, voices raised, and walls torn down. In his later years, he lived to see a time where love could walk more freely in the light. No longer confined to hidden places, lovers could meet, speak, touch, and hope without fear of chains. This change was not given as a gift; it was won by courage—by those who protested, who marched, who refused to remain silent. Their victory gave birth to the world McKellen celebrates: a world where love, once forbidden, could finally breathe.

His words are thus both a remembrance and a warning. They remind us of the fragility of freedom—that what is open today was closed yesterday, and could be threatened again tomorrow. They remind us also of the power of perseverance, that generations who loved in silence paved the way for those who could love in daylight. To hear his memory is to feel the weight of gratitude for those who carried the flame of truth when the world demanded they extinguish it.

The lesson for us is clear: never take for granted the freedom to love openly, nor forget the struggles of those who could not. Where love is still hidden, where shame is still demanded, let us be voices that bring light. Where prejudice lingers, let us be courage. And in our own lives, let us never disguise our affections in fear, but live with openness, honesty, and pride.

So I say to you, children of tomorrow: remember McKellen’s words. Honor the past, when a glance or touch had to be encoded in secret languages, and cherish the present, where romance can be lived in truth. Guard this freedom with vigilance. Live love openly, speak it boldly, and let no one drive it into shadows again. For love is the highest gift of life, and when it is hidden, humanity itself is diminished. When it is free, humanity is restored.