The line "hit me with those laser beams" is a reference to the controversial song Relax by Frankie Goes To Hollywood which was famously banned by the BBC due to sexual references. The song promptly jumped from number 35 to number 1 in the charts 3 weeks later in January 1984, a rare feat at that time.
The episode ends with a rendition of Only You being performed at a Christmas party. The Flying Pickets version made number 1 in December 1983.
One of the publications about AIDS that Colin collects in New York at Jill's request is the March 14-27, 1983, issue of the New York Native. The Native was a biweekly gay paper that was one of the only regularly published gay-focused periodicals in New York during the early days of the AIDS epidemic. The specific article visible on screen is "1,112 and Counting" by the playwright, novelist, screenwriter, and early AIDS activist Larry Kramer. Kramer, who was a cofounder of the early AIDS advocacy organization Gay Men's Health Crisis (and later a cofounder of the activist group AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power [ACT UP]), used this New York Native article to issue an angry warning to gay men whom he felt were not taking the specter of AIDS seriously enough; his article was highly controversial on its first publication, with many dismissing Kramer as overly alarmist or prudish, but time proved that Kramer had been absolutely correct. Ironically, the New York Native later became notorious for its promotion of unscientific conspiracy theories about AIDS, which led to the paper's closure in 1997. Kramer went on to write the seminal 1985 play The Normal Heart, which (like It's a Sin) is about a group of gay men dealing with AIDS.