In this exclusive audio interview Emmy Winner Charlotte Robinson host of OUTTAKE VOICES™ talks with United Kingdom’s legendary LGBTQ and human rights activist Peter Tatchell, director of the Peter Tatchell Foundation. Tatchell began campaigning for queer freedom in 1969 at age 17 inspired by the teaching of Mahatma Gandhi, Sylvia Pankurst, Martin Luther King and Malcolm X adapting their peaceful protest methods and actually inventing a few of his own. In 1971 Tatchell was a leading activist in the UK’s Gay Liberation Front and was the defeated Labour candidate in 1983 which turned out to be the most violent and homophobic British election in the last 100 years. In 1990 he helped found the queer rights group OutRage! which outed 10 Anglican bishops in 1994 accusing them of hypocrisy for publicly conspiring with the church’s homophobic stance. He went on to remove outdated UK laws against our LGBTQ community and eventually created the Peter Tatchell Foundation, an independent, non-party political organization based in the United Kingdom which promotes and protects the human rights of individuals, communities and nations in the UK and internationally in accordance with established national and international human rights law. We talked to Peter about what he hopes to accomplish with his work and his spin on our LGBTQ issues.
When asked what his personal commitment is to LGBTQ civil rights Tatchell stated, “Well I have worked through in the early days the Gay Liberation Front in the 1990’s with OutRage! the queer rights direct action group and now as director of my own small human rights foundation the Peter Tatchell Foundation which works on both LGBT+ rights but also on other human rights issues as well supporting the struggle for democracy and human rights in countries like Russia, Pakistan, Uganda and many others. It’s very interesting the way in which my work on non LGBT issues has inadvertently helped raise the profile and awareness of LGBT rights. For example I’ve done work supporting the democracy movement in Pakistan and in particular the national liberation struggle of the people of Balochistan who have been occupied by Balochistan since the late 1940’s and because I am a gay man, an openly gay man and because I support LGBT rights even without mentioning it this has created an awareness, a mind change among many people in Pakistan who previously never met an openly gay person and who you know regarded LGBT people as demons or whatever. Because I have supported their struggle it’s helped bring about change in values and attitudes a much more sympathetic attitude towards LGBT+ rights.”
Recently during the 2018 World Cup games in Moscow, Russia Tatchell was arrested and released after bravely staging a one-man protest against Putin’s failure to act against Chechnya’s torture of our LGBTQ community that brought international attention to this issue. For almost fifty years Peter Tatchell has unselfishly fought for educating, advocating and lobbying for the elimination of exclusion and discrimination on the grounds of ethnicity, race, gender, disability, religion, belief, age, sexual orientation, gender identity, economic, social, cultural or refugee status.
For More Info: petertatchellfoundation.org
