SHARE YOUR PRIDE #DMSALWAYSPROUD SHARE YOUR PRIDE #DMSALWAYSPROUD SHARE YOUR PRIDE #DMSALWAYSPROUD SHARE YOUR PRIDE #DMSALWAYSPROUD SHARE YOUR PRIDE #DMSALWAYSPROUD SHARE YOUR PRIDE #DMSALWAYSPROUD SHARE YOUR PRIDE #DMSALWAYSPROUD SHARE YOUR PRIDE #DMSALWAYSPROUD SHARE YOUR PRIDE #DMSALWAYSPROUD SHARE YOUR PRIDE #DMSALWAYSPROUD SHARE YOUR PRIDE #DMSALWAYSPROUD SHARE YOUR PRIDE #DMSALWAYSPROUD SHARE YOUR PRIDE #DMSALWAYSPROUD SHARE YOUR PRIDE #DMSALWAYSPROUD SHARE YOUR PRIDE #DMSALWAYSPROUD
SHARE YOUR PRIDE #DMSALWAYSPROUD SHARE YOUR PRIDE #DMSALWAYSPROUD SHARE YOUR PRIDE #DMSALWAYSPROUD SHARE YOUR PRIDE #DMSALWAYSPROUD SHARE YOUR PRIDE #DMSALWAYSPROUD SHARE YOUR PRIDE #DMSALWAYSPROUD SHARE YOUR PRIDE #DMSALWAYSPROUD SHARE YOUR PRIDE #DMSALWAYSPROUD SHARE YOUR PRIDE #DMSALWAYSPROUD SHARE YOUR PRIDE #DMSALWAYSPROUD SHARE YOUR PRIDE #DMSALWAYSPROUD
Pride generations presents - Peter Tatchell
The power of
protest to win
LGBTQIA+ Freedom
As part of Pride Generations, we want to use our platform to share stories from members of the queer community. We commissioned lifelong LGTBQIA+ activist Peter Tatchell to tell us how he's used protest to affect change and why it remains a vital tool for equality.
WORDS: Peter Tatchell
IMAGES: Peter Tatchell
READ TIME: 9 mins
Pride generations presents - Peter Tatchell
The power of
protest to win
LGBTQIA+ Freedom
As part of Pride Generations, we want to use our platform to share stories from members of the queer community. We commissioned lifelong LGTBQIA+ activist Peter Tatchell to tell us how he's used protest to affect change and why it remains a vital tool for equality.
WORDS: Peter Tatchell
IMAGES: Peter Tatchell
READ TIME: 9 mins
“WE WENT FROM THE MARGINS TO THE MAINSTREAM, FROM OUTCAST CRIMINALS TO EQUAL CITIZENS, AFTER 2,000 YEARS OF PERSECUTION.”
“WE WENT FROM THE MARGINS TO THE MAINSTREAM, FROM OUTCAST CRIMINALS TO EQUAL CITIZENS, AFTER 2,000 YEARS OF PERSECUTION.”
On July 1st, we celebrated the historic 50th anniversary of the first Pride parade in the UK. We also celebrated the huge progress that the LGBT+ community has made over the last five decades – how we went from the margins to the mainstream, from outcast criminals to equal citizens, after 2,000 years of persecution.
It was a long hard slog and protest was central to our success. The Gay Liberation Front (GLF) led the way in the 1970s. I joined in 1971, aged 19. We challenged, often for the first time in history, the homophobia of politicians, bishops, police and psychiatrists, with often feisty irreverent protests.
Right-wing moral crusader Mary Whitehouse launched the Festival of Light (FoL) in 1971. It was a bid to overturn what she called “the permissive society” and its “moral evils” of homosexuality, abortion and “smut” on TV. GLF responded by disrupting the FoL’s launch rally, at Central Hall Westminster, with a kiss-in led by LGBTs dressed as nuns and by the release of mice into the audience, which sent the Festival of Lighters screaming and running in all directions. It was naughty but a lot of fun – and very effective. We stole their thunder. Much of the media coverage was about the GLF protest, not the FoL.
"I WAS VIOLENTLY DRAGGED FROM THE MEETING AND DUMPED IN THE STREET. NOT LONG AFTER THIS AND SIMILAR GLF PROTESTS, THE MEDICAL PROFESSION CEASED TO CLASSIFY HOMOSEXUALITY AS AN ILLNESS AND STOPPED ITS BARBARIC TREATMENTS."
The following year, I interrupted a medical seminar where Prof Hans Eysenck, then one of the world’s leading psychologists, justified the use of electric shock aversion therapy to supposedly cure same-sex attraction. I debunked Eysenck’s claims that the treatment was effective and only caused minor discomfort. It was not what the audience wanted to hear. I was violently dragged from the meeting and dumped in the street. Not long after this and similar GLF protests, the medical profession ceased to classify homosexuality as an illness and stopped its barbaric treatments.
Two decades later, OutRage! spearheaded the fightback in the 1990s. I was involved in those campaigns too. In this era, queer-bashing violence, including murders, was rife. But the police often did shoddy, half-hearted investigations and many times the killers were never caught.
Instead, police poured huge resources into arresting same-sex couples for mere kissing, and gay men for simply chatting up each other and for sex in parks in the middle of the night.
We tried to negotiate a non-homophobic policing policy but were rebuffed by New Scotland Yard. So OutRage! launched a wave of protests: invading police stations, interrupting police press conferences and exposing ‘pretty police’ – young attractive officers who dressed up in a gay style and were then used as bait to lure gay men into committing offences.
We revealed that officers were hiding in secret compartments in public toilets, and in camouflaged hideouts in parks, to catch gay men in the act.
OutRage! organized masses of news reports that highlighted how gay men were being entrapped by the police and then prosecuted for consenting behaviour where no one was harmed and no member of the public complained. It was a PR disaster for the police. They were seen as waging a homophobic vendetta and wasting resources on hounding victimless behaviour instead of concentrating on harmful crimes like domestic abuse, sexual assault, racist violence and gay-bashing.
The upshot was that within a year, the Met agreed to most of OutRage’s demands for a non-homophobic policing policy. Within three years, the number of men convicted for victimless same-sex acts fell by two-thirds – the biggest, fastest fall ever recorded. We saved thousands of men from fines or imprisonment, and from knock on effects like being sacked from their job and mental breakdown.
Many of us in GLF and OutRage! were inspired by the protests of the black civil rights movement in the US and the suffragettes here in Britain. We adapted their methods to the fight for LGBT+ liberation and achieved three very important things:
First, we shamed and embarrassed homophobes, often prompting a change of policy.
"IT IS NO USE LEAVING CAMPAIGNING TO OTHERS. THEY MAY BE LEAVING IT TO YOU. WE NEED YOU TO BE PART OF THE NEXT GENERATION OF CHANGE-MAKERS, JUST LIKE MY GENERATION WAS FIVE DECADES AGO."
Second, our often daring, witty protests were reported on news bulletins, which raised public awareness about discrimination and helped change hearts and minds. This shift of public opinion in our favour emboldened MPs and gave them the confidence to legislate LGBT+ law reform.
Third, our fightback was a massive morale boost for the queer community. Instead of seeing themselves as passive victims of prejudice, we inspired many LGBTs to get up off their knees, campaign for equal rights and to demand nothing less than total acceptance and full citizenship.
Although the LGBT+ community has achieved so much in the last 50 years, the battle for our rights and freedoms is not yet over.
Nearly four years ago, the government promised to outlaw unethical, harmful and ineffective conversion therapies that seek to turn LGBTs straight and cisgender.
In March, the then Prime Minister ditched that pledge. Then, faced with a huge backlash, even from some Tory MPs, he did a partial u-turn: conversion therapy to change a person’s sexual orientation will be banned but not attempts to change a person’s gender identity. A ban that excludes trans people is not a ban at all.
"We are now lobbying MPs to support an amendment to the upcoming conversion therapy Bill to include a prohibition on trans conversion practices. In the meantime, if you are in the UK – you can help by signing this petition here, urging the government to ensure that trans people are fully protected by the conversion therapy ban.
Another big issue is the government’s decision to deport many asylum applicants to Rwanda, despite its poor human rights record. For LGBT+ refugees fleeing persecution abroad, Rwanda is bad news. It has been condemned for homophobic discrimination, violence and abuses by the country’s security agencies. If you are in the UK, you can help us fight this plan by lobbying your MP here to oppose the off-shoring of LGBT+ and other refugees to Rwanda.
The reason many LGBTs seek asylum in Britain and other western countries is because 69 nations still criminalise homosexuality, with sentences ranging from a few years jail to life imprisonment. Twelve countries have the death penalty. In two-thirds of the world, discrimination against LGBTs in housing, employment, health-care and education is legal by de fault. They have no legal protection or redress.
For all these reasons and more, we need a new generation of activists to reignite the protest traditions of GLF and OutRage! – to challenge anti-LGBTs and complacency in our own community. It is no use leaving campaigning to others. They may be leaving it to you. We need you to be part of the next generation of change-makers, just like my generation was five decades ago.
If history teaches us anything it is that rights are not given. They have to be fought for and won. Nor can we assume that rights gained will remain. Right now, I cannot imagine the LGBT+ reforms of the last two decades being undone. But who can say what might happen in 30 years time? In 1930, Berlin was the queer capital of the world. But just three years later Hitler came to power. Gay bars were closed and the first gay men were carted off to concentration camps.
As we celebrate 50 years of Pride, let’s remember that the price of freedom is eternal vigilance.
Peter Tatchell is the Director of the Peter Tatchell Foundation.
A documentary about his 55 years of campaigning, Hating Peter Tatchell, is streaming on Netflix.
PRIDE STORIES: BARCELONA
Proud then. Proud now. Proud always. We chat to our store staff about what Pride means to them.
THE PROGRESS PRIDE FLAG
Docs sat down with multi-talented graphic designer and Portland native Daniel Quasar who created the Progress Pride Flag.
PRIDE STORIES: BERLIN
Proud then. Proud now. Proud always. We chat to our store staff about what Pride means to them.
FOR PRIDE
As part of our commitment support the community, we donate to LGBTQIA+ charities across the globe. Check out what we've been up to.
THE DM’S PRIDE PLAYLIST
Celebrating Pride. Check out our Spotify playlist of LGBTQIA+ anthems and classics – the old and the new.
PRIDE STORIES: ROTTERDAM
Proud then. Proud now. Proud always. We chat to our store staff about what Pride means to them.
THE TALKING TOUGH PODCAST
Shining the spotlight on those who have overcome adversity and carved their own path. New episodes released every Friday.
