The UK's most outspoken and high-profile gay equality campaigner will soon mark 40 years of being "homophobes' enemy number one". Peter Tatchell: Injured in Moscow Gay Pride attack, May 2007 Suggest to Peter Tatchell that it might be time to ease-up a little, and his response is simple: "No way!" He points out: "I am only 55, and only at my halfway mark. After another 40 years – when I'm 95 – perhaps then it will be time to retire from active campaigning." Tatchell took part in his first campaign in 1967 - then aged just 15 - against the death penalty in his native Australia. This was followed by his support of Aboriginal rights, opposition to military conscription and the Australian and US war against the people of Vietnam. In 1969, on realising that he was gay, the struggle for 'queer freedom' became an increasing focus of his activism. After moving to London in 1971, he became a leading activist in the Gay Liberation Front (GLF); organising sit-ins at pubs that refused to serve "poofs", and protests against police harassment and the medical classification of homosexuality as an illness. Tatchell will mark his 40th anniversary of campaigning on Human Rights Day, 10 December, by - you guessed it - staging a protest. In the evening he will attend the Human Rights Awards 2007. "It is a great honour and privilege to have been part of the international human rights movement," Tatchell says. "Over the last four decades, I have been involved in campaigns that have contributed to many spectacular human rights achievements: the fall of the dictatorships in Spain and Chile, independence for East Timor, an end to apartheid in South Africa, peace in Vietnam and the north of Ireland, and the transition to democracy in the former Soviet bloc states of Eastern Europe and the Baltics. "While I feel a strong sense of achievement, I am not complacent and I don't intend to rest on my laurels. There is still much work to be done – perhaps less so in Britain, and more so in other parts of the world." Almost 80 countries still outlaw homosexuality, with penalties ranging up to life imprisonment. Seven counties or regions of countries impose the death penalty, including Saudi Arabia, Iran, Sudan and parts of Nigeria and Pakistan. In dozens of other countries - including Jamaica, Iraq, Uganda, Mexico, Columbia and Brazil - death squads and vigilantes murder gay people with impunity.
Credit: GayNZ.com News Staff
First published: Saturday, 24th November 2007 - 9:31am