Even terug naar de aanleiding van Dolly’s Arkhive: de eerste gevallen van aids in Engeland binnen de Londense vriendenkring van Dolly en de rol van Terence Higgins en de trust die naar hem genoemd is.

In de documentaire After 82: The documentary: a beautiful commemoration of those lost to aids over de eerste jaren met aids in Engeland kijkt Rupert Whitaker, de vriend van Terry Higgins in 2021 terug op die periode:

I think sometimes we wonder what would people who have died from HIV think about the current state of things, particularly in the LGBTQ community, such as equal marriage and equal age of consent, etc.

Firstly, I think they’d be amazed at how quickly it has been achieved. But if you look a little deeper at that, the question is why was it achieved so quickly? And I think a large part of the answer to that question is because how we responded to the HIV pandemic.

The LGBT community was in the forefront. We led the response. And in doing so, we showed that we are, we’re human. We’re just like everybody else. We suffer. We’ve done our best. We struggle. And that awareness of us just being the same as everybody else was part of people getting to understand that, okay, well, why should we discriminate against LGBT people?

And that was a key to achieving the equal age of consent and the equal marriage. And I think that’s, it’s a wonderful thing.⁷¹

Dolly en zijn Engelse vrienden genoten al zonder meer van de vriendelijke chaos op Koninginnedag. Wat zouden ze genoten hebben van de steeds bonter wordende Canal Parade die van 1996 jaarlijks begin augustus langs de boot van Dolly schuift.

⁷¹After 82: The documentary: a beautiful commemoration of those lost to aids / Steven Keeble and Ben Lord. – [S.n.] : 82 Films Ltd, 2021] / 1:32:33 – 1:33:56 Rupert Whitaker