00:00:00.000 - 00:00:26.460

early age that I was different. I didn't know how I was different. And the kids at school knew that I was different. And I got a bashing for that from time to time, yes. But yes, gay bashing's not exactly a new phenomenon. And as I say, I knew I was different. I didn't know how I was different. I couldn't work out how I was different, but I knew I was

00:00:26.460 - 00:01:01.160

different. And at the time I was 16, I knew what the difference was. I mean, I realized that I was, well, as we would now say, a homosexual. As my parents would have said at that time, I was one of them. Not that they knew, until many years later that was the case. And so, yes, I found my teenage years quite difficult, really, because when everybody else was running

00:01:01.160 - 00:01:36.440

around talking about their girlfriends, I didn't have a girlfriend. You may have experienced this, I don't know, but it's an odd situation. And at that time, I mean, life was actually sort of quite difficult for gay people. Being a homosexual was still, or defying the forces of nature, as we used to say, was not acceptable. It was something you didn't talk about. And

00:01:36.440 - 00:02:07.640

in my case, it was something I preferred not to think about. And it was really quite nasty because, you know, you were regarded at that time as either being very sinful, if you came from a religious background, or seriously deranged, mentally deranged, if you didn't. I came from a religious background, so I was both deranged and ill, according to the

00:02:07.640 - 00:02:36.880

likes of the time. And I used to find, I don't know whether I thought my doctor had got X-ray eyes, but I always used to be petrified about going to see the doctor, because I thought somehow or another he was going to realise that I was one of them, and then there'd be trouble. Fortunately, it never actually happened. The church I went to at that time, which was

00:02:36.880 - 00:03:04.680

Dorset Gardens Methodist Church, I think there is still a church there, was, well, it wasn't very keen on people who were gay, let's put it that way. And I remember one famous occasion when we had a visiting preacher, I don't know who he was, but I certainly didn't like him. It was just about the time the Waffenden Report recommending the legalisation of homosexuality

00:03:04.680 - 00:03:34.380

came out, and he obviously didn't agree with us at all. And he thundered away, in good Bible-bashing form, telling us that homosexuals were damned in the eyes of God, which I found to be difficult at the age of 15. So obviously this was something we didn't talk about at all to anyone. And, yeah, I decided that if it was something you didn't talk about,

00:03:34.520 - 00:04:07.980

it was something you could ignore, and perhaps it might go away at some point. I spent quite a lot of time praying that it would go away. It didn't go away. It just didn't. So I went through several years of, I call them my wilderness years, because I couldn't be me. I felt very not a second-class citizen. I felt not really a person at all. I was this disgusting one

00:04:07.980 - 00:04:39.240

of them. And so I troddled off to college. I attempted to seek some advice from a psychology lecturer at college, who told me it was just a natural phase of growing up, which of course was the way Freud thought of it at that time, or it was thought of by Freudians. And so it was just a phase I was going through. I thought, well, it's a blimmin' long phase,

00:04:39.340 - 00:05:06.640

that's all I can say about it. And I lived an immaculate, sexless life. And it was a bit, my mother used to tell me all sorts of stories about what wicked men did with little boys, and I used to think, bring them on. You were supposed to be horrified by this, but I wasn't particularly horrified. I was rather intrigued, actually.

00:05:08.880 - 00:05:35.120

So was the psychologist, was that the first person you'd ever spoken to about it? I had tried to talk to one of our ministers at Dorset Gardens Methodist Church, and he told me that, because I told him, I thought I had a problem. And he said, yes, this is, you know, he came up with the usual stuff about how sinful this was, and how the Bible

00:05:35.120 - 00:06:04.240

prohibited it, and all the rest of it, and I'd better get rid of this problem fairly quickly. So I decided that wasn't a very... Well, in actual fact, I sort of didn't go to church for, oh, about 13 or 14 years after that, because I just felt that I wasn't worthy to go into church, which was sort of very confusing to me, really.

00:06:06.500 - 00:06:32.120

So, and as for my parents, you wouldn't dare tell them, and when I did tell my mother many years later, I mean, I was absolutely right not to have told her before, really what happened. She just refused to speak about it. She absolutely refused to speak about it. One of my friends, who, well, I thought he was a friend at the time, I don't think he is now, took it upon

00:06:32.120 - 00:06:58.580

himself to tell my mother that I was gay. He happened to be visiting us for Christmas, he went into my, what I call my workshop, or library, or call it what you will, it was a little box room, I used to keep all sorts of things in. He eyed the books on my shelf and said, are you trained to be gay? And I said, well, I am. And he, we didn't have

00:06:58.580 - 00:07:31.920

much time to discuss it, he passed this fact on to my mother, which was not terribly helpful, and her response was simply to just clam up about the thing. I mean, by then, we're now talking in the mid-70s, I was sort of wanting to share this bit of information, I suppose in a way, maybe it was a selfish voice on my part, but I'd always been very close to

00:07:31.920 - 00:08:02.760

my mother and I didn't want to have any secrets. So I didn't tell her, or I, well, I tried to tell her, tried to discuss it. Her response was simply to say, I don't want to hear about this, don't talk to me about it, I don't want to hear about it. So that made life a bit difficult. And we had a famous Christmas, when my parents came to stay with us and one

00:08:02.760 - 00:08:30.580

of my gay friends from around the corner and his partner decided to cook a nice boxing dough meal for the lot of us. My parents couldn't have been more difficult. They sat there in stony silence and two days later I phoned my mother up and my mother said, I don't approve of you, I don't approve of your lifestyle, I don't approve of the company you're keeping,

00:08:31.760 - 00:08:59.540

so I find it quite difficult to come and see you. So I said, fine, I'm afraid that's your problem, not mine. And that was quite difficult, I must say. I found it difficult at the time. But that's the way it was. And how did, was that a turning point for you, realising that this wasn't your problem, this was her problem, was that something you got to early or was

00:08:59.540 - 00:09:28.560

that the point back? Well, no, I got very sort of, well I became rather suicidal about the whole thing in the mid-seventies. And I won't go into the details of that, it's not a very nice thing. I did make an attempt on my own life at the time because I couldn't see any way out. By that time I'd managed to get myself married. So I was married, I had

00:09:28.560 - 00:10:00.000

two children and a mortgage and I was gay and I thought I was the only person in the world who could possibly be stupid enough or whatever to get in that situation. And during the, well actually the day I was trying to do away with myself, I literally ran into someone else because I was, my intention was to sort of put myself in front of a train

00:10:00.000 - 00:10:28.320

at Howard-on-the-Hill station. At the last moment I funked it and ran up the stairs colliding with someone at the top who said, are you alright? And I said, no, I'm not. And I spilled the beans to him and we had a cup of coffee. He turned out, fortunately, to be involved with the Samaritans, which was helpful, to say the least. And he was also

00:10:28.320 - 00:10:56.700

gay. His name was Mark and he's still a very close friend of mine. And he said, well, I think you should, there are gay organisations where you could meet other people like yourself and you'd find them very helpful. And he told me about one that there was in the area I was living in, Harrow. It was called Harrow Gay Unity. And I went along to Harrow Gay

00:10:56.700 - 00:11:28.760

Unity, full of trepidation. The organisation at that time met in an upstairs room in a pub called The Goodwill to All. And I approached the stairs somewhat timorously and someone shouted after me, I shouldn't go up there, they're all queer up there. And I said, well, I should be in good company because I am as well. So that was Harrow Gay Unity. And I

00:11:28.760 - 00:11:58.940

found this amazing. I mean, I walked into this room and there were 30 or so people who were all gay of all shapes and sizes. And they didn't bite and they hadn't got horns or anything like that. They seemed to be very nice people. And I actually eventually became chairman of that group. So that's, and I very quickly, it was amazing really, I very quickly

00:11:59.460 - 00:12:35.540

came to the conclusion that I was gay. And that was just the way I was made. And if people didn't like it, they could go and do the other thing. So I learned very quickly to be out and prayed as it were. And so I became chairman of that group. And I was that for about five years. I had a sort of colleague in arms called Paul Oliver who used to work

00:12:35.540 - 00:13:06.420

for Shepperton Studios. And he was nominally secretary of the group and I was chairman of the group and we used to run it between us I suppose really. It was a strange group. It had started off as a bit of gay liberation front. Turned into a campaign for homosexual equality local group. And it was one of the most active actually in the London region.

00:13:06.720 - 00:13:36.640

We had meetings of 40 or 50 people. And we had all sorts of people come along to talk to us. We had Lord Soper come to talk to us because I thought he would be a nice person to have talk to us. He was one of the few people at the time who were reasonably helpful. We had Lionel Blue came to talk to us. Ken Livingstone when he was in his first generation

00:13:36.640 - 00:14:01.480

Mayor of London phase. We were a very active group actually. And how did people find out about the group? How was it? How was it? I think it was, we couldn't advertise. There was one famous occasion when we had a new publicity officer who thought it would be a good idea to put the names and addresses

00:14:01.480 - 00:14:32.740

of all the new committee in the local press. Why? God in heaven knows. I think a certain lack of imagination and brain power probably. Obviously we couldn't advertise. It was largely word of mouth really. We used to do things in the local area. We had a, every so often we would have a friends

00:14:32.740 - 00:14:55.720

and family evening at one of our CHE evenings where people were invited to bring along their friends and families and very rarely did. Were there gay bars or gay pubs at all around at the time? Yes there were. There were. And they were very strange places. There was a club near

00:14:55.720 - 00:15:27.080

Leicester Square called the A&B Club. The arts and battle dress club. And this was very secret. You rang the bell, went up several flights of rickety stairs and you had to either be introduced by a member and you had a password and it was all very hush hush. It was sort of I suppose my first experience outside of Harrow of meeting

00:15:27.080 - 00:15:48.680

gay people. Would this have been in the 70s? Yes. And that had been going since the Second World War, the A&B Club apparently. And yes there were one or two others. But they weren't very thick on the ground.

00:15:50.020 - 00:16:08.860

And I was rather horrified to discover that there were a large number of gay venues in Brighton and I thought my God, I mean I was actually brought up in Brighton. I wish someone had told me about them when I was in my teens. So you just didn't know that they were there?

00:16:09.180 - 00:16:42.840

No. I found out that they were there in a way. I used to work for Schweppes & Waters as a lorry driver's mate during my holidays. And I found out by word of mouth because we used to go to places. There was a pub called The Greyhound which was located near Poole Valley near the bus station. And all of the drivers I used to go with as driver's mates

00:16:42.840 - 00:17:08.080

said you can go up there. God knows what language you go, I meant all queer up there. And so I knew of, but I had not experienced it first hand, quite a number of gay venues and as I say I was rather horrified. I thought why couldn't someone have told me that when I was feeling very lost and very alone. It would have been good.

00:17:14.900 - 00:17:49.280

So and then I actually managed to get married in the middle of all this as I've indicated earlier. I think the most difficult thing I've ever had to do in my life was to tell my wife that she'd got a gay husband. We'd been married then about three or four years. Her response was very interesting in a way because she assumed it was all her fault.

00:17:50.780 - 00:18:18.920

It was her fault because we'd had two children in very quick succession so I hadn't access to normal sexual outlet shall we say and she was convinced that this was my main trouble. And I had to say to her, no June I'm sorry it's not about you or my relationship with you it's about me. And we had to decide what to do about that. And we spent many hours

00:18:18.920 - 00:18:45.820

talking into the night about what you do about it and we eventually decided to get married. Do nothing about it and see what happened. And the agreement between us was that we would stay married until such times as it became impossible for either of us in which case we would honestly say that was the case and split up amicably hopefully. Well it never

00:18:45.820 - 00:19:21.620

actually came to that. We were still married after when my wife died which was thirty nine years after our original wedding. So yeah it was sort of difficult in a way because well obviously for both of us I was not as free to pursue my gay love as I might have been if I hadn't been married and June didn't feel free to do so either. So in a sense you

00:19:21.620 - 00:19:51.600

could say that having to keep the whole thing under wraps was a problem for both of us but we got on very well. I always say that June was my best friend at the time and we managed to cope with it somehow or other. I mean coping with the kids was a bit of a different matter. There was one famous Christmas when the kids were going through their presents and they

00:19:51.620 - 00:20:22.800

came to Smurphy. Smurphy was a character, a TV character at the time, a little fluffy doll thing. And oh this is Smurphy. Uncle Terry and Uncle Tony gave me that. They're two men, they're very fond of each other and they live together. You can imagine the reaction of my rather straight-laced aunt who was sitting there watching these proceedings. Her face

00:20:22.800 - 00:20:57.220

fell to I don't know where. Anyway, so we had a bit of fun like that. The kids by and large were pretty good about it. I mean my elder son Peter who was and still is a very intelligent guy had been raking around in my workshop and came downstairs one day and said, Dad, what's gay? And I said, why are you asking this? And he said, well you've

00:20:57.220 - 00:21:27.940

got all sorts of things. You've got some gay newspapers upstairs. What's gay? And I said well, you know, normally men and women fall in love with each other. And I said, well I'm afraid that in the case of gay people, we fall in love with people like us, us, other men. And he thought about this for a few minutes and then disappeared upstairs to his room

00:21:27.940 - 00:21:54.380

to continue doing what he had been doing before. Apparently none the worse for wear. How old was he at this point? He was about seven I suppose. And my younger son, we must have told Merlin at some point, I can't remember, we never had a problem with Merlin. In fact we had some rather funny

00:21:54.380 - 00:22:26.320

incidents. I was walking down through the Harrow Shopping Centre on one occasion when he was in his late teens and I was well and truly out and so on and so forth. And we passed someone who I thought was quite attractive and my eyes obviously diverted in the direction of this guy. And Merlin said, oh Dad, you don't fancy him surely? And I said, well why not?

00:22:26.320 - 00:22:48.500

He said, well he's a butler blonde. I said, well I actually rather like butler blondes. And I thought at the time, this is a very odd conversation for a father and a son to be having. But anyway, we have it just the same. And what prompted you sort of speaking to your wife about it? Was it being involved

00:22:48.500 - 00:23:14.820

in the group? It was living with someone and I didn't feel that I was being entirely honest, I felt that. I mean I suppose it was a good couple, married man, two kids and all the rest of it. Gone on getting away with that forever. But I didn't actually want to do that. I wanted to, well

00:23:14.820 - 00:23:43.220

I have a saying which is, I'd rather be hated for what I am than loved for what I am not. And that was very much the case there. So I just felt I had to tell her because I couldn't go on in that sort of dishonesty really. What role did faith play in all of that? You said you moved away from the Methodist church

00:23:43.220 - 00:24:11.720

after the guy, did you then come back to church later on? Yes I did. When we got ourselves a bit together, we're now talking about the mid-seventies. The minister we had at the time was a guy called Howard Booth, who was a wonderful man. And he came round one evening and he was delicately sipping his sherry. He almost sunk the rest

00:24:11.720 - 00:24:35.060

of the bottle when I came out with the fact that I was gay. He said, you know, I'm very sympathetic to gay people, but I can't bear to think of what they get up to in bed together. And I said, well Howard, as your married couples walk down the aisle of your church one Sunday morning do you think my God wanted you to get up to bed together last night? And he said,

00:24:35.060 - 00:25:08.880

well of course not, but you're absolutely right. And he was a great help. I actually decided I wanted to talk about being gay and the problems that gay people had at the Methodist Guild meeting we used to have once a month. And I told Howard this and he said, yeah, okay, all right. And he phoned me up about three or four days before the appointed evening

00:25:08.880 - 00:25:31.560

and said, I'm very worried about what might be going to happen when you come out with this during the week. And I said, well, I'm not worried. I really am not. And he said, well, I should chair that meeting myself in case it all gets out of hand. I don't know what he thought was going to happen, but it didn't get out of hand. I mean, people listened

00:25:31.560 - 00:26:04.640

attentively. One dear old lady wandered up to me afterwards and said, what is this business? What is it about being gay? What does it mean? And I said, well, it just means that whereas you assuming that you're heterosexual are attracted to, are or were attracted to members of the opposite sex, we're attracted to members of our own sex and we love them in

00:26:05.480 - 00:26:30.800

just the same way. And she just said, oh, is that all? I thought it was quite complicated. And I said, no, it's not complicated at all. So yes, that was my experience. Were there any repercussions from that meeting? Well, not that it ever hit me anyway.

00:26:32.840 - 00:26:54.220

And did people, did that mean that then people in your, were you going to a church regularly? Yes, I was an Orthodox Methodist at the time. So did people there then find out? Well, I'd stood up in front of 40 or so of them at this guild meeting and come out very

00:26:56.880 - 00:27:22.880

expressively. I never had any negative feedback. If I had have done, I should have told them that it was their problem, not my problem. And I think that is really, it was quite difficult to survive as a gay person intact in the 1970s, but I'm sure that was the recipe. If you stood up there and said, well, I am gay now, what are you going to do about it? Because

00:27:23.600 - 00:27:50.680

that's me. I'm me. If you can't cope with me, please go away. Did you have any, to what extent do you think faith was, because you talked about it at the beginning, there was an issue with kind of the way, there was an issue with the acceptance of gay people because of faith and then there was an issue because of culture as well. Do

00:27:50.680 - 00:28:10.580

you think kind of those two things were still true in the 70s or do you think one of them was? Oh, very much so. I mean, the 70s was, we hadn't sort of reached enlightenment. We were, those of us who were involved in the gay rights movement were hoping that if we were very

00:28:10.580 - 00:28:37.620

lucky we might be able to get the acceptance of gay people in the armed forces. The idea of things like gay marriage or anything like that was sort of over there. You just didn't think about it. It wasn't even, well, we just didn't, it wasn't on the agenda at all. Why do you think that was? Was it that people didn't want it or was it that people just

00:28:37.620 - 00:29:08.340

never thought they'd get there? Oh, I think we would have wanted it but we, I don't know, it was, it seemed so remote and so impossible that I used to think about it as a fantasy which might, you know, might happen but it certainly wasn't going to happen in my lifetime. So, it has of course.

00:29:11.280 - 00:29:41.780

And what, so what were the sort of main, what happened in those kind of groups at Harrow? Was it about organising campaigns or was it about support? It was about campaigning, it was about having a venue where gay people could meet in some sort of safety with people of their own inclination.

00:29:43.180 - 00:30:14.660

How safe was it? Were there ever issues with people protesting or? We didn't actually have any, we got chucked out of various venues. We used to, at one point, we always used to meet in pubs and then our meeting place was taken over and turned into an office block so we, that doesn't exist anymore. We moved to the, oh crikey,

00:30:14.660 - 00:30:41.860

what did we used to call the thing? Harrow Leisure Centre, that's right, which was complex with swimming pools and meeting rooms and one thing and another and we used to meet regularly there until some rather nasty Conservative council discovered that we were a gay group and made it more or less impossible for us to go on doing that. So we then had to look

00:30:41.860 - 00:31:14.220

for another venue, I think we had about four or five venues in as many years because people didn't want us. And what would people use to justify that? What reason would people give? Oh my goodness. I think they thought that if there was a gay group there must be all

00:31:14.220 - 00:31:42.260

sorts of immorality going on. I remember at one of our North Harrow Methodist meetings I was on the thing called the Family Mitty and the subject came up and one of the other committee members announcing that he was a policeman said, yeah we've got a group of them, they meet here, God knows what goes on down there and I said, God knows what goes

00:31:42.260 - 00:32:14.480

on down there, I'm chairman of this group and I can assure you that nothing goes on down there that I'm in any way ashamed of or to give any reasonable person cause for complaint. But I think there was a great fear of the unknown. I've always assumed that must be the reason. People didn't, in inverted commas, understand homosexuality and they

00:32:14.480 - 00:32:39.700

feared the worst. And I mean the stereotypes were fairly awful, we were all supposed to have limp floppy wrists and we were all supposed to be pedophiles taking the trousers of little boys down. I mean it was quite fantastic really. And the thing that's happened over the last 30 years is that for various reasons people have been forced into contact with the reality

00:32:39.700 - 00:33:11.260

of gay people and it didn't turn out to be like that at all. And ironically, I mean one of the things I think which helped sadly was the AIDS crisis because all sorts of people were revealed as having been gay as a result of dying of AIDS. And well, people just had to change their ideas because their favourite film stars and what not were obviously gay.

00:33:12.060 - 00:33:43.400

Yeah. What impact did the AIDS crisis have on your group and Harry? I had largely left the group by the time, well no, it started, I mean it was really happening over here in the 80s. I had sort of bowed out a bit because June felt it wasn't good with the kids for my name to be in the local paper and one thing, I was chairman

00:33:43.400 - 00:34:19.960

of a gay group. So I sort of bowed out at that. I was very aware of it because I happened to be in the States in 1981 in San Francisco of course where it was all happening. And I was fully aware of what was then called the Gay Cancer because people had this particular form of cancer which only affected gay people. I can't remember his name offhand now. I

00:34:19.960 - 00:35:02.720

think the effect, I don't think it was quite so terrible over here as it was in the States because dear old Margaret Thatcher was absolutely head opposed to homosexuality and we had all these government scare campaigns about the dreadful disease, gay plague and all the rest of it. And I mean the effect was more limited. I mean I had at that time a lot of contacts

00:35:02.720 - 00:35:26.140

with Amsterdam and it was quite dreadful out there because people were dropping like flies. You would go into your favourite gay bar and you would see, well you would see the missing people but that's effectively it. You would notice gaps in the people and you knew what had happened. In Britain we did have a sort of an AIDS prevention campaign on led by Norman

00:35:26.140 - 00:36:00.920

Fowler who did a wonderful job actually. So I don't think it hit us as hard as I was looking last night at a film about After Stonewall. It's an American film and I was impressed by the sort of dire situation in the States. Much worse than we ever encountered over here. We were isolated from this to a large extent. I think what really did affect us

00:36:00.920 - 00:36:38.760

was section 28. It was section 28 of the Local Government Act which said that it was a criminal offence for people who were involved in local government in any way to promote homosexuality. I haven't quite sure how you promote homosexuality but that actually had a wonderful catalysing effect because that was the thing which really got the gay rights movement back on its feet

00:36:38.760 - 00:37:14.720

again. I mean the organisation called Stonewall which you probably know about, that was born out of section 28. You had this ridiculous situation where people, teachers and so on and so forth, were committing a criminal act if they spoke about homosexuality to a class. I'm afraid some did and that was that but it did more to actually promote the cause

00:37:14.720 - 00:37:47.940

of gay rights than ever it did to suppress it and got everybody going and then eventually of course people like Ian McKellan came out of the closet and announced they were gay and of course everyone was suitably shocked and they began to look at such people and think, well he's not obviously gay so he didn't fit the stereotype, he hadn't got limp floppy

00:37:47.940 - 00:38:14.020

wrists, he didn't speak with a lisp and so on and so forth and so people were forced to alter their ideas about what being gay was about and I think it was that sort of exposure of the reality of gay life compared with the myths which had been spun about it which really got us out of trouble.

00:38:15.560 - 00:38:37.140

So you sort of took a bit of a break from being involved in gay politics and stuff in the 80s, did you then get back involved later on? Well I suppose, yes I suppose I did. I mean one of the things I got involved with which was nothing to do with gay politics

00:38:37.140 - 00:39:10.660

at all but I was one of the founder members of the Bluebell Railway Preservation Society which was set up in 1960, so I was involved in that and yeah I think I really, I'm just trying to think how I got re-involved, largely through Northwood Methodist Church I think because we had a minister there, Sue Mayall who's now in Pinner, not very far from here

00:39:11.660 - 00:39:43.480

and she was sort of very sympathetic to the cause and I happened to spend some time talking to her about my situation and she felt that this needed to be more widely known and there was a famous occasion when she decided that she wanted in one of her services to have various people talk about circumstances in which their faith had been challenged.

00:39:45.460 - 00:40:13.480

I volunteered to talk about why my faith had been challenged and it was a very interesting occasion because we had sort of 40 or 50 people in church listening to me talk about my experiences and at the end of it I waited for the heavens to open and all that happened was applause broke out.

00:40:15.480 - 00:40:57.000

So from that point onwards I've sort of been involved in talking to church groups, other bits of the Methodist church here. I always say I feel that I was created gay for some purpose and I needed to use it in some way and sort of trying to explain to people who hadn't really thought about the issue very much what being gay was about and how

00:40:59.840 - 00:41:32.220

it was quite difficult being gay in society. I got involved in quite a bit of that. I had been actually when I was with Harrow Gay Unity in the 80s I was involved in quite a bit of public speaking on the subject. So it wasn't exactly a new experience for me, it was rather I would say I was born again but not quite in the way that some evangelical friends would

00:41:32.220 - 00:42:00.520

like to think of. Did a lot of that speaking become in church context then later on? Yes. We set up a church, this was about three years ago now, three or four years ago. I wanted us to have a group, I wanted homosexuality to be discussable, that's before it was the

00:42:00.520 - 00:42:25.240

hot topic it now is. I made the mistake, well no it wasn't a mistake, it turned out to be a very good fortune. I actually announced the first meeting of our sexual diversity discussion group to a packed church in a parade service. It did not exactly go down well with some people.

00:42:27.400 - 00:42:47.860

Why was that? They thought we shouldn't be talking about this sort of thing, particularly in front of the children. I said well if they know what sexual diversity is they must be very well educated children so I shouldn't be too worried about that. But it did cause an absolute

00:42:47.860 - 00:43:19.920

storm. I went along that Sunday morning to the service because the notice hadn't got put in, the written notices had been edited out by some mysterious process. So I thought well it's not in the notices, what do we do about this? I will have to get the notice in person. So I informed the new minister that I was going to be making announcements

00:43:19.920 - 00:43:57.360

and I gave him the text of it and he was too busy to be bothered with it. Whatever it was I could get on with it. I did and it caused a bit of a storm. Actually it was a very good way of getting the group running because everybody knew about SDDG and the issue of homosexuality. I've been running that group now for about three years. We meet once a month. We actually

00:43:57.360 - 00:44:22.860

meet here in this house because initially we were told we couldn't use the church to promote such evil thoughts. So I said okay well I will hold meetings in my home and I presume no one can stop me doing that. How do you feel about the fact that sort of decades after that minister asked you, was

00:44:22.860 - 00:44:52.500

encouraging, you're still in a situation where the church is so negative about it? I feel very angry about it and I still feel very angry about it. In fact Sue Mayer said to me on one occasion, how did you find the courage in the seventies to come out publicly and in your work and so on and so forth? And I said Sue I was angry because I discovered

00:44:52.500 - 00:45:17.660

all the lies and falsehoods I'd been told about homosexuality. I was really angry and that's what fired me. And in a sense the sexual diversity discussion group at church, the reason I wanted to start that was I wanted to make homosexuality as an issue at least discussable. I wanted to feel that it could be discussed.

00:45:22.340 - 00:45:49.740

What are your reflections on how discussable it is now then? You mentioned that it's become a hot topic. Well yes it has become more discussable. We had a recent church council meeting in which the minister put the item on the agenda to say what would happen if somebody came along

00:45:49.740 - 00:46:21.020

to us in a gay relationship and wanted the church to bless it. What would we do? What would we say? What could he do? What could he say? And it provoked quite an interesting discussion. We have a church council of about 18 or 20 people I suppose and I rather forced the issue by saying well let's take a vote on it. Because everyone was floundering around

00:46:23.100 - 00:46:56.300

and the vote was about sort of 75% in favour of the church blessing a relationship. Which is not the same thing obviously as marriage. But it got the item on the agenda and people in the church have had to get used to the fact that there is this thing called sexual diversity and there is a group representing it which meets once a month and has its meeting

00:46:56.300 - 00:47:27.700

details in the church weekly newsletter and so on and so forth. I thought well sorry people are going to have to get used to the fact that gay people exist and if we as a church want to serve everyone we should be inclusive. And we had lots of people wandering around talking about inclusivity and how the church was inclusive and I said well yeah

00:47:27.700 - 00:47:55.720

that's fine when you say the words but what does it actually mean in practice? And what it seems to mean in practice is that we'd rather not think about it. And I think the Methodist Church is in that situation. We've got a period of reflection and prayer going on at the moment about the whole issue of same-sex relationships. I think there are

00:47:55.720 - 00:48:16.760

a lot of people in the Methodist Church who just really don't want to discuss it, they want to know, they look at what's happened in the Anglican Church and the fuss that's been created there and somehow or other they think that if they shut up and we don't discuss it it'll all go away. Well it hasn't of course, we've landed ourselves with gay marriage

00:48:16.760 - 00:48:43.980

at least for civil purposes. And I'd say happy to have another biscuit there. All right then. And how optimistic are you about the future given how fast things have changed? Or not? Well I think there are two things I want to say about that. Things have changed, I mean

00:48:43.980 - 00:49:15.820

on the legal front we probably lead the world as a country in our permissiveness in the fact that we've got rid of all of our anti-gay laws and so on and so forth. But of course there's a world of difference between the law and how people actually behave and how they think and how they feel. And I think there's not very far underneath the surface, there's

00:49:15.820 - 00:49:54.980

still a great deal of, I'd like to say anxiety about homosexuality. And I think this anxiety stems from ignorance and by sort of shutting up about it we can contribute to that. And I get quite frustrated with the church, I might say that on occasions I've been on the verge of leaving the church because if my reading of the New Testament is correct I

00:49:54.980 - 00:50:31.160

can't imagine that our Lord would have turned anyone away. And certainly not in the sort of vitriolic terms that one sometimes hears applied to the gay situation. So yeah I find it quite frustrating being gay and being Christian because a lot of the church's attitudes are so... they're not Christian. I find myself thinking well where is the love? Where are

00:50:31.160 - 00:51:04.980

the New Testament commandments of love? What do we think about all that? Does that not actually mean anything? And as you know we've got certain organisations in Britain, quite powerful organisations which are religious organisations and very anti-gay. So you've got things like the London... the Institute of Contemporary Christianity and so on and

00:51:04.980 - 00:51:41.800

so forth. Well I don't think we should have those organisations but there we are, we've got them. What makes you stay in church for all these years? God I ask myself that sometimes. I really ask myself that. Is it just a sort of a habit I can't get away from? I suppose I live in hopes that we've had two centuries of those, many centuries of those hopes being

00:51:41.800 - 00:52:11.000

frustrated. I live in hope that we will actually start taking a loving and inclusive view of gay people and bisexual people and transsexual people and so on and so forth. And it seems me quite natural that the church with its beliefs about love and so on and so forth should actually be leading that, not trailing along behind. I mean at the moment we trail

00:52:11.000 - 00:52:45.820

very reluctantly along behind and try and pretend it's not happening. We should be leading. So I sort of feel quite strongly about that, as no doubt some members of the congregation would tell you. What's your involvement been in LGCMA over the years? Not a great deal actually, not a great deal. I don't know why that is but I've always been aware of it.

00:52:48.040 - 00:53:17.580

But I haven't actually been that involved in it. And what's your reflection as somebody who took a stand a long time ago when other people weren't taking a stand? And what's your reflection on kind of, how do you feel about kind of what contribution you've made over the last few decades? I know it's a funny question

00:53:17.580 - 00:53:52.660

to ask but I'd love to know your answer to it. All I can say is I've done my best. I very quickly once I've accepted, I mean I thought that to accept being gay was completely evil and wrong and all the rest of it. And when I got involved in the gay rights business in the mid-70s, I very quickly discovered

00:53:52.660 - 00:54:32.520

that far from thinking of it as something wrong, I actually came to the conclusion that I know this sounds a bit pretentious but I actually came to the conclusion that God must have had some reason for creating me gay and I'd better get on with the job. I found it quite frustrating that the church does take such a long time it seems to me.

00:54:32.520 - 00:55:06.620

I mean everyone says well the change has happened quickly and of course it has. I mean in the last 20 or 30 years we've made more progress than we had in the previous goodness knows how long. But I still get frustrated about the thing. Do you have any reflections on the differences between the younger generation of LGBT people

00:55:06.620 - 00:55:42.100

that are coming along now? I think there is an age thing in this very much so. I'd like to think the younger generation get much less worked up over this and I think they do on the whole. Whether the evangelical sort of branches of the church take that same line I'm not sure. But in the population at

00:55:42.100 - 00:56:21.520

large I think it is an age thing. People under 30 probably don't understand what all the fuss is about and people over 70 typically still have the horrors and still go back to Leviticus chapter 18 and what not. Do you think, how is all those decades of being out there and kind of presumably taking

00:56:21.520 - 00:56:51.000

a lot of, bearing the brunt of a lot of people's prejudice, how do you think that's affected you? Oh it's made me very militant. No it really has. I mean, no I think it's, I really regard it as my duty actually to keep banging away at it even on occasions when it doesn't seem

00:56:51.000 - 00:57:20.000

to be getting very far. But I come back to this fact that if God hadn't wanted me as a gay person he wouldn't have created me as a gay person and created me as a gay person I certainly was. I mean no one perverted me in inverted commas. It was just something that was natural to me and all of the reading I've been doing about the causes of homosexuality

00:57:20.190 - 00:57:39.110

just convinces me more and more that it is something you're born with, just like the colour of your eyes, the colour of your hair and all the rest of it and you have to get on with it. Do you think there's been a cost though that people have paid over the years for being

00:57:39.110 - 00:58:03.830

out when other people weren't? Well I'd like to sort of act the victim and say yes there's been a terrible cost and all the rest of it but I think in many ways I've been protected by it because I was very open about my homosexuality. I mean I used to teach about the gay subculture in, we had a module

00:58:03.830 - 00:58:28.110

called City Studies at Westminster University and I used to teach on that and I was teaching about the gay subculture in the 70s. I got hauled up before the Dean who was very concerned about this in the Section 28 days to explain what the hell I was doing and what justification there was. In fact he said to me, well I hope there's a good literature in this and I said

00:58:28.110 - 00:58:58.090

well I've got about 200 or so references if you'd like to read them and it was very hard actually because people used to come up to me, fellow members of staff would come up to me and say I've got a student, he has some problems, I think they're problems that you might be able to help with and I used to think oh God here we go again.

00:59:04.330 - 00:59:33.470

No I don't think there's been a great cost to me personally, I mean it's just made me more determined and more thick skinned and so on and so forth. In fact in many ways it's done me a good turn, I mean I remember on one occasion in the early 80s a lady member of our administrative staff tried to claim that I had been making advances to her and

00:59:34.130 - 01:00:04.470

one of my other colleagues said well that's rubbish, everyone knows he's as queer as a three pound note, he's the last person who's liked to make advances on you and I thought well coming out does have its advantages actually. No I've always found providing you're sort of thick skinned enough to say well this is where I am and this is what I

01:00:04.470 - 01:00:30.950

believe and you can all get on with it. Cool. Is there anything I haven't asked you about that you think I should have done or anything else you think you want to say? Well I just wish that my own church, the Methodist church, could get itself together on this

01:00:30.950 - 01:01:08.430

subject. We've been, if you go back through sort of conference discussions and one thing another, since the mid 50s we have been thinking about it, prayerfully usually, and I just wonder how far we've actually moved in that time. We're still thinking about it. That I find very frustrating. We shouldn't be thinking about it, we should be doing about it.

01:01:14.190 - 01:01:52.990

Hopefully we will at some point. At some point yes. I find it very sad that the people who are most likely to be standing in your path are, in inverted commas, good Christians. They shouldn't be. I mean we had an STDG meeting last, oh a fortnight ago. I had this bright idea of getting two people

01:01:52.990 - 01:02:25.930

who had been refugees from Uganda and had fled Uganda because of the anti-gay legislation and attitudes there and had been received here as asylum seekers and have now got permission to stand. They came along and they talked to us about their experience. I mean what situation is it that we actually have people who are refugees from Christianity, which

01:02:25.930 - 01:02:48.310

is what it adds up to, refugees from Uganda and Christianity. I don't know how you can justify that. Thank you so much, I really really appreciate your time and your honesty, thank you. You're welcome.

01:02:51.410 - 01:03:26.230

Have you told your story much before? I think Sarah said she'd come and interviewed you about your story before as well. Yes, I did talk to the group over at Bury Lane Methodist. I'm not shy about it. I don't broadcast it from the rooftops but I'm certainly not shy about it.

01:03:28.590 - 01:03:29.950

Cool, well thank you.