A re-recorded and expanded version was released in 2017 under the name of The Age of Reason, with Bronski, Ian Donaldson, and new singer Stephen Granville.

By 1984, many European countries had reduced the age of consent for homosexual acts to 16, but it remained at 21 in the United Kingdom, having only been partially decriminalised in 1967.

[citation needed] The album was produced by Mike Thorne; the recording sessions took place in London and New York City.

[citation needed] The inner sleeve of the album has a table listing the minimum age for lawful homosexual relationships between men in each country in Europe, accompanied by the telephone number of a service giving gay legal advice.

[16] It was accompanied by a video of Jimmy Somerville with fellow band member friends Larry Steinbachek and Steve Bronski, who, while cruising at a public swimming pool and changing room, are attacked and beaten up by a gang of homophobes.

Somerville is returned to his family by the police; he leaves home alone and has a reunion with friends Steinbachek and Bronski, travelling to a new life on a train.

The promotional video opens with Steinbachek and Bronski buying artificial bombs and a small statue of Michelangelo's David in a mad supermarket.

Meanwhile, Somerville is singing behind a counter of sausages and salamis and, seeing the dilemma in progress, starts complaining to the checkout girl.

All three are arrested by "the thought police" and made to appear for trial before a puppet court and senile judge (Somerville's father in "Smalltown Boy").

The thought-police actors who arrest the trio are the swimmer / homophobic gang-leader from the "Smalltown Boy" video and "Martin", a friend of the band whose situation in a gay relationship with a younger man actually inspired the lyrical content of the song.

The third single "It Ain't Necessarily So", the George and Ira Gershwin/ DuBose Heyward song (from the opera Porgy and Bess) that expresses opposition to biblical literalism, was released in November 1984 and reached the UK top 20.

The track features Arno Hecht from The Uptown Horns on solo clarinet and the openly gay male choir from London, The Pink Singers.

A version of the medley had already appeared on The Age of Consent, combining Donna Summer's seminal disco classic "I Feel Love" with John Leyton's "Johnny Remember Me", which had topped the UK charts in 1961.